It’s long been accepted in the Liberal Party that sometimes you have to give a bit of “red meat to the base”.
Be it advocating for mandatory sentencing or tinkering with the school curriculum, the party has historically believed that it must provide policies that play to the sentiments of its more conservative members.
John Pesutto is a self-declared moderate, but you wouldn’t know if from his party’s positions on social issues.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
What’s often missing in this calculation is an acknowledgment that the party’s more moderate supporters – who still champion liberty, free enterprise and equality of opportunity – also need to be shown a little love, too.
When John Pesutto – a self-described small-l liberal from the well-to-do inner east – was elected leader, he was billed as the great moderate hope for the increasingly unpopular Victorian Liberal Party.
As he told the Australian Financial Review during his campaign to win back Hawthorn, “I don’t think it’s a secret that my views lean towards a more modern, progressive kind of Liberal.”
But a little over one quarter of the way into the political term, it's hard to find a policy where Pesutto has been able to affirm his moderate credentials.
In the past 12 months the opposition leader has said no to pill testing, and he expressed “major concerns” about raising the age of criminal responsibility from the age of 10.
He didn’t back the Voice to parliament and scrapped the Coalition’s support for treaty, but agreed to support a push from now-expelled Liberal MP Moira Deeming to set up an inquiry into gender-affirming care.
At each turn, there have been excuses – including reasonable ones – but when you step back and look at his track record from voter land, it’s hard to see what he has done that could bring back the more moderate voters who have turned their backs on the party in recent years.
This brings us back to the internal fight within the Liberal Party about whether it should abandon voters in inner-Melbourne electorates where its support is waning, in favour of working-class outer-suburban seats once dominated by Labor.
There is little doubt the demographics are shifting. Yet, it’s always struck me as strange that the Liberals would walk away from their supporters in a seat like Hawthorn – where the party still attracts 42 per cent of the primary vote – in favour of Greenvale, in Melbourne’s outer north, where it managed to convince only 25 per cent of the electorate to support it at the last election.
Either way, the point is moot. As former Liberal leader Michael O’Brien eloquently pointed out ahead of the 2022 election, “There is no path to 45 seats in Victoria (the amount needed to form government) for the Liberal Party that doesn’t run through Malvern, Kew and Hawthorn.”
Conservative Liberal MPs argue that by opposing progressive social policies, the Coalition is offering voters an alternative to Labor. Perhaps, but the opposition also runs the risk of looking like it is unwilling to constructively engage on social issues that will be key to winning over Gen Z and Millennials, who are on track to make up 45 per cent of the state’s voters by 2026.
There is no path to government without them.
Take the party’s recent decision to withdraw its support for treaty. There was no alternative put forward about how to close the gap, or constructively reform the state’s Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws, which even Indigenous groups agree could do with a fine tune.
Liberal MPs seem to believe they’re on track due to the rejection of the Voice vote in Victoria. It has given them a false sense of security that backing out of the treaty agreement wouldn’t have any electoral ramifications. They may well be mistaken.
Of the 19 lower house seats held by the Liberal Party in Victoria, voters backed the Voice in eight (Nepean, Mornington, Sandringham, Brighton, Caulfield, Malvern, Hawthorn and Kew). If you look at their target seats, Ashwood, Box Hill, Ringwood, Bentleigh and South Barwon also supported constitutional change.
The seats the party once ruled and the ones they seek to gain are awash with progressive-minded voters who are open to voting Liberal but put weight on social issues.
Former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu is one of the most unfairly maligned figures in the Liberal Party. His short-lived premiership (2010-2013) may have been rife with internal warfare and his office characterised by micromanagement, making it difficult for his government to function effectively. But as the only Liberal leader to actually win an election in Victoria in almost 30 years, he must have done something right.
Like Pesutto, Baillieu was a moderate Liberal with a social conscience, which saw him withstand white-anting and leaks over fears he was leading the party too far to the left.
But he never shied away from supporting progressive causes. As opposition leader he backed the decriminalising of abortion, voluntary assisted dying, equal rights for the LGBTQI community, gambling reforms, and a plan to give condoms to prisoners.
Polling suggests that the departure of former premier Daniel Andrews has triggered a jump in the number of Victorians open to reassessing their vote, but so far, they have been unwilling to indicate support for the Liberal leader.
On the cusp of a months-long defamation battle with Deeming that will do little to help the party’s brand, No amount pandering to the conservatives is going to win their support. The time has come for Pesutto to find his moderate voice.
Annika Smethurst is state political editor.
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