> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Jeff Knows Hubris When He Sees It
- URL: https://goodoil.news/jeff-knows-hubris-when-he-sees-it/
- Published: 2026-11-02T01:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-02T01:29:59.000Z
- Description: Kennett warns the Vic Libs not to get too carried away with the polls.
- Author: Lushington Brady
- Tags: AUS Politics

When **Jeff Kennett** warns you that hubris will be your downfall, it pays to listen: if anybody knows, he does. Most especially he knows from bitter experience not to take polls, and voters, for granted. Best listen up, **Jess Wilson**.

In 1999, Kennett thought he had the election in the bag – and why not? All the polls had him cruising to a third term. Having done the job he was elected to do in 1992 – fix the state’s diabolical finances – and survived the furious backlash from the left in 1996, Kennett could have been forgiven for feeling pretty confident in 1999, with polls showing another crushing victory. The hubris showed: the campaign slogan, “Jeff Rules!”, awkward minutes of dead air as the premier point-blank to answer questions on Melbourne’s top-rated talkback show.

Then came the result: Kennett lost 15 seats and government in a shock result. It was close – Labor only took power with the support of three independents – but it was an unexpected humiliation for the formerly unassailable King of Spring Street.

With that bitter experience no doubt still rankling, Kennett is back with a warning for a Liberal leader who also clearly thinks she’s cruising to an easy victory.

> [When you haven’t](https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/is-that-a-whiff-of-arrogance-we-detect-from-the-liberal-leader-jeff-kennett-seems-to-think-so-20261029-p618rq.html?ref=goodoil.news) governed this state for 12 years and for only four years this century, vainglory should be the least of your sins. If a generation spent in the political freezer hasn’t taught the Libs a hard lesson about humility, they are glacially slow learners.  
>  
> It should be difficult to get uppity, as a Victorian Liberal, when you know that of 128 candidates running for your party in lower and upper house seats at this election, only two have ministerial experience.

Yet here we are, watching the Liberal heir-apparent throw her toys out of the political pram because television producers had the audacity to suggest she share oxygen with someone outside the club.

The immediate bone of contention is a televised scrap on the Nine Network. Premier **Ben Carroll** has put his signature on the invite. So has One Nation’s state chief, **Warren Pickering**. But Wilson, clutching her pearls with all the delicate disdain of a Toorak matron encountering an unwashed boot, refuses to attend if Pickering is permitted through the front doors.

Her spin doctors claim she will gladly duel Carroll “any day” in a uniparty tete-a-tete, grandly asserting that the contest is purely between the two aspirants for the treasury benches. Giving Pickering a podium, squeaks the Liberal hierarchy, is mere ‘platforming’ for the unwashed populist horde.

What pompous, self-defeating claptrap.

Across Victoria, between 20 and 25 per cent of the electorate is presently intending to cast a primary ballot for One Nation. That represents nearly one million citizens, men and women thoroughly sick of Melbourne’s lockdown legacy, debt mountains and managerial cowardice. They are not phantom apparitions conjured by polling algorithms – they are the furious heartland that the Liberals have abandoned for years while trying to woo the quinoa belt.

By running away from the studio, Wilson is not snubbing Pickering. She is snubbing the very voters whose second preferences she desperately needs to turf out Carroll’s tired, decrepit regime. Even her old mentor, **Josh Frydenberg**, recently noted in his memoirs that the populist revolt is driven by voters backing figures who address real kitchen-table miseries rather than elite pieties.

If Wilson genuinely believes One Nation is a party of lightweight slogans, then striding onto the stage, debating Pickering face to face and demolishing his platform in full public view should be the work of 10 minutes. Instead, her refusal smells of unvarnished terror: terror that an articulate populist might articulate the grievances of ordinary Victorians far better than a polished corporate apparatchik ever could.

Kennett knows this tune all too well. When you start believing the pollsters and bootlicking staffers, and assume the peasantry will fall into line out of sheer lack of alternative, the electorate has an exquisite habit of kicking you into the ditch. If Jess Wilson cannot muster the stomach to stand next to Warren Pickering under studio floodlights for 60 minutes, how on earth does she expect to master the ruthless crossbench when she tries to pass a supply bill?

Arrogance before victory is the surest recipe for disaster and the Liberal leader is measuring the drapery in the premier’s office while the ground beneath her feet is already trembling.

---

💡

****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.**