Opposition Leadership Pours Fuel on Victorian Liberal Party Dumpster Fire

Victorian Opposition Leader Giovanni Pesutto addresses the media at the Parliament of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, on March 27, 2023. AAP Image/Diego Fedele

Commentary

Just when I thought things could not possibly get worse for the centre-right Victorian Liberal Party ... they did!

Having agreed weeks ago to suspend conservative MP Moira Deeming from the Parliamentary Liberal Party for nine months after speaking at a rally that was hijacked by neo-Nazis, the leadership has now plunged the organisation into further turmoil.

The suspension outcome was a face-saving measure for the leader of the opposition, John Pesutto, having realised the notion that Deeming had somehow colluded with neo-Nazis to be unsustainable.

Messy though it was, that should have been the end of the matter.

But a failure to release a joint statement, arguments about party meeting minutes, the leaking of those minutes, MPs calling colleagues “terrorists,” and threats of legal action created a farcical situation. The only winners are the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and the Labor Party government.

Deeming has been expelled from the parliamentary party, but she remains a member of the Victorian division, no doubt entitled to continue to describe herself as a Liberal.

She now has a profile and a position to proclaim her message more broadly.

Thousands of people have reached out to her. If she uses it wisely to promote the spectrum of conservative liberal beliefs and policies, she will continue to engender support.

MP Moira Deeming leaves the Parliament of Victoria in Melbourne in Melbourne, Monday, March 27, 2023. AAP Image/Diego Fedele

But what of the Liberal Party in Victoria?

“My colleagues and I see the challenge now, which is to turn the party outwards. There’s a place for debates about important issues—absolutely—but they can’t, they can’t override the primary mission, which is to reflect our community,” the opposition leader Pesutto told The Guardian.

The left-wing Guardian Australia reported him as saying he has a “reform plan” to address the issues facing the party, including bolstering membership, identifying “community leaders” who could make good Liberal candidates, setting up KPIs for MPs, and working to improve the party’s organisational structure.

Yet the track record of Pesutto and his supporters to date has been to expel or suspend three MPs—all of them conservative.

Party Too Damaged to Repair

Unless the party returns to the “broad church,” as described by former Prime Minister John Howard, it will continue to shed voters and supporters to various other parties.

From the very beginnings of the Liberal Party, freedom of speech, religion, and association have been fundamental values.

Contrary to the direction of Sir Robert Menzies and the founders of the Liberal Party, many now running the organisation believe in a post-values world.

A consequence of this is a zeitgeist where Twitter and social media become the worldview of many leaders.

There is little indication of the existence of the goodwill and compromise necessary to recreate workable peace in the party.

Too many activists are more interested in defeating their internal opponents than defeating the Labor Party and winning government.

Serving the people of Victoria has become a secondary consideration for many.

A measure of the ongoing division is the attempt now to describe people who express traditional values about social and life issues as members of “fringe” groups. Yet these are the values shared by the vast majority of Liberal supporters.

Another measure is to assert that rank-and-file branch members can no longer be trusted to vote in the preselection of candidates. But when preselection processes result in candidates from the left of the party, there is no objection to be heard.

The state president wrote to members a week ago stating, “I understand that many of you are frustrated and concerned.”

Unless he has a plan to restore trust and goodwill, those feelings regrettably will prevail.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.