With yet another leadership coup in the Victorian Liberal party, the normiecon legacy media are spinning it like the Second Coming. But then, they did the same when Brad Battin took over from the hopeless John Pesutto. Just as they’d resolutely backed Pesutto even as he became a victim of his own stupid stubbornness, in refusing to simply apologise to Moira Deeming for falsely smearing her as a ‘Nazi’.
Yet, Battin was indeed making headway against the Victorian Labor government, which was in itself something of an achievement in Australia’s Wokest State. Although, perhaps, not so much, given just how dire the Jacinta Allan government is, something even Victorians are finally admitting.
The only thing stopping them deserting Allan in droves – aside from the same weird masochism that made them worship ‘Dictator Dan’ Andrews and cry, ‘lock us down harder, daddy’ during Covid – is that the Liberal opposition is so plainly just useless. So, is new leader Jess Wilson the messiah the Vic Liberals have been waiting for?
She’s certainly talking a big game.
New Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson has vowed to hammer the state Labor government over record debt, collapsing business confidence, housing pressures, hospital failures and the state’s crime crisis, in a multi-front assault one former opposition leader described as “Jacinta Allan’s worst nightmare”.
That would be Michael “Windscreens” O’Brien – so named for his glass jaw. As Minister for Gaming, O’Brien tried to amend the Gaming Regulation Act to make it illegal to insult the minister. O’Brien is yet another of the ‘moderates’ who riddle the Victorian Liberals like a plague of intestinal worms – and with about as much backbone.
Wilson is cut from much the same cloth. She was the only Victorian Liberal to publicly back the failed ‘Voice’ referendum and vocally supported the Allan government’s ‘treaty’ with box-ticking ‘Aborigines’ – a support she’s suddenly claiming to have backflipped on.
A moderate who endorsed net-zero emissions targets in her maiden speech, she said she would maintain a focus on emissions reduction while being “unashamedly focused on delivering cheaper power for Victorians”.
Ms Wilson did confirm the party would maintain its opposition to the government’s recently signed treaty with First Nations Victorians.
To be sure, she said plenty of tough-sounding stuff at her first press conference. But then, the Allan government is nothing if not a target-rich environment.
Describing herself as a “new generation” leader, Ms Wilson nominated budget repair, the economy, crime, healthcare and helping young Victorians onto the property ladder as her key priorities.
“We have a government that has seen financial mismanagement in this state deliver net debt soaring towards $200bn, an interest bill every single day over $20m,” Ms Wilson said.
“That is the state of the finances here in Victoria and my focus will be to get the budget back under control so we can deliver the essential services.”
Ms Wilson said $50bn of cost blowouts and $600m to cancel the 2026 Commonwealth Games were signals of a government that “has its priorities all wrong and Victorians tell me every day that they are desperate for change”.
She continued that attack in her first question time, accusing Ms Allan of allowing debt to surge to unsustainable levels, imposing a proliferation of new taxes and presiding over falling business confidence. It was a marked shift from Mr Battin, who typically centred his questions on the state’s crime crisis.
All well and good, but even against a government as hopeless as Victorian Labor’s, solid policy alternatives are a must, otherwise masochistic Victorians will surely stick, yet again, with the devil they know.
In what was at times a stilted press conference, Ms Wilson repeatedly declined to nominate specific policies, instead turning questions back onto what she said were Labor’s failures.
Equally unconvincing is stuff like this:
“As someone who is a millennial, who is 35 years old, I understand the pressures when it comes to trying to get your foot on the property ladder,” Ms Wilson said.
Somehow, I don’t think mortage-belt Victorians are going to be exactly persuaded that the daughter of a former Liberal MP, who attended Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar, played hockey for a club in ultra-exclusive, old-money Kew, knows all about the hard scrabble of housing affordability.
Former Liberal premier Jeff Kennett also congratulated Ms Wilson but warned victory at the November 2026 election was not assured despite the Allan government being in the grip of a budget and crime crisis.
Kennett knows all about having to rescue Victorians from their own disastrous infatuation with hopeless Labor governments who plunge the state into staggering debt. But Kennett was, in many ways, a proto-‘moderate’. He just had the good luck to have the ultra-dry Alan Stockdale as his economic manager.
It’s an open question whether Wilson is up to the challenge. Good luck to her, if she can.
