The big lesson from the Victorian election: get things done if you want to win

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Victorian election 2018

Gay Alcorn

People voted for a government, rather than against the Coalition’s policies, style or leader

@Gay_Alcorn

Mon 26 Nov 2018 13.52 AEDT Last modified on Mon 26 Nov 2018 17.20 AEDT

‘People will overlook your shortcomings if you tackle problems that matter to them. In this era of scrappy poll-driven politics, it’s a radical idea’ Photograph: James Ross/AAP

After every state election, as soon as the result is known, the next story is what the federal implications might be. Usually, there are none. Australians routinely vote differently in state and federal elections, smart enough to differentiate their functions and sometimes favouring one party at the state level and another at the federal.
We’ve known for months if not years that the federal government is headed for a drubbing, bar an extraordinary comeback, and yet Tasmanians and South Australians elected Liberal state governments in March, at the same time as Newspoll had Labor ahead federally 53% to 47%.

The Victorian election, because it came only months from a federal poll, might be a little different – and I’ll get to that – but the Scott Morrison government, as dysfunctional as it is, is not to blame for Matthew Guy’s crushing defeat on Saturday. Changing the leader from the more urbane Malcolm Turnbull – perhaps more appealing to Melburnians than Morrison, but hardly popular – is not to blame, either.
The distraction of the leadership change did not help, and the Liberal “brand” is indeed tainted, but local leaders pointing at Canberra are missing the point. This was an election where people voted for a government, as novel at that may seem, rather than voting against the Coalition’s policies, style, or leader.
If there is one message for any government, state or federal, from Saturday’s result, it is this: people will overlook your shortcomings if you tackle problems that matter to them. In this era of scrappy poll-driven politics, it’s a radical idea.
Daniel Andrews won the 2014 election because there was a perception that the Coalition government, headed first by Ted Baillieu and then Denis Napthine, suffered from inertia, particularly in neglecting long-overdue infrastructure and transport projects.

"People appreciate a government that has convictions, even if they don’t agree with all of them"

Andrews got on with it. Level crossing removals might seem a baffling issue in other states, but it is possibly the most important thing the government did in his first term. Level crossings are scattered throughout Melbourne suburbs and cause horrid congestion and deadly accidents.
Andrews said he would remove 25 in his first term, and he removed 29. Work on the $11bn Melbourne Metro Tunnel is underway, another visible reminder of stuff happening across a city straining to cope with record population growth.
He’s built schools, upgraded hospitals, restored funding to Tafe. On Monday, his first act as premier was to release the tender documents for the North East Link, the “biggest road project in our state’s history”.
Andrews and Victorian Liberal party president Michael Kroger agreed on just one thing on ABC radio on Monday. Andrews said that whatever polling booth he visited on Saturday, people said to him, “I’m with you today because you get things done”. Kroger said, “the biggest problem we had is that people would say Andrews has done things.”
Victoria is indeed the most progressive state in the country, the “jewel in the crown” days a distant Liberal memory. By 2022, Labor would have been in power for 19 of 23 years, the only blip being the Baillieu-Napthine government. That was a humiliating loss for the Liberals after a single term, and Saturday’s defeat only underlines that this is a Labor state.
If there is a second lesson from Victoria, it is that people appreciate a government that has convictions, even if they don’t agree with all of them. From domestic violence to a safe injecting room to Safe Schools, Andrews is an unashamed progressive, who pursued those values whatever the conservative media said or the latest opinion polls showed, and despite political risks.
The state is normally an afterthought during a federal election, when attention focuses on swing seats in Queensland and NSW, the assumption being that Victoria is so Labor there are few vulnerable seats to be contested.
If the state result was replicated in a federal election – and that’s a big if – even seats like Deakin held by Michael Sukkar and Flinders by Greg Hunt would be at risk. If a state like Victoria is in play, there is a bloodbath ahead.
The election threw up one other point of tension relevant across the country. Liberal leader Matthew Guy is a moderate – you have to be to lead the party in Victoria. As multicultural affairs minister in 2014, he opposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, saying the federal government’s proposals were unnecessary and risked social cohesion.
But the local party has seen an influx of rightwing conservatives, and some policies seemed designed to satisfy them, such as opposing the safe injecting room trial and pledging to reintroduce religious education in schools.
But in Melbourne, where the big swings were, the Liberal “base” is made up of small-L liberals in leafy suburbs of Box Hill, Hawthorn and Sandringham, turned off by hyperbolic law and order rhetoric. They want action on energy policy and climate change. Guy’s pledge to scrap the state’s renewable energy target and to build a new power station – possibly using gas or coal – was out of touch.

Rightwing commentators took bizarre messages from the result, their prejudices reinforced despite all the evidence. The Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Devine’s analysis was that Guy hadn’t gone hard enough on culture war issues like Safe Schools.
Andrew Bolt concluded Guy was too “moderate”, “just like the federal Liberals under Turnbull and now mini-Mal Morrison”.
That is unlikely to be the conclusion of the review of the party’s performance and is yet more evidence that the Coalition listens to the rantings from the right at its peril.
But the focus on the opposition is missing the real story of Saturday. This was a state election fought overwhelmingly on state issues. The Coalition didn’t lose it.

Labor won it because so many people, even traditional Liberal voters, liked what it had delivered in its first term and trusted it to do more. Daniel Andrews drives this government, and the victory is his.