Full Transcript for Labor and Libs' plans post election

came to the attention of the Liberal Party that as part of this litigation, a judge had ordered discovery of his dealings with the Liberal Party and he was forced to hand over material involving his dealings with the Liberal Party. This order was granted some time ago And he had been complying with it. But he had been complying with it on an ongoing basis. That is to say that as they were... His correspondence and interactions with the Liberal Party in real time were being forwarded to the other side in the Liberal Party. And it was put to me that this made him basically non-viable. 00:03:43 Speaker 1: Well, I mean, that's deeply problematic. 00:03:46 Speaker 3: It's very funny too. 00:03:48 Speaker 1: I think there was another factor at play in getting rid of Grant. Because these legal issues aren't new. They've been around for a long time. 00:03:55 Speaker 3: No, he hadn't hidden them. 00:03:57 Speaker 2: He had. 00:03:59 Speaker 3: Revealed them to the party. 00:04:00 Speaker 2: But I think the full extent of what the implications of these legal issues were only became fully clear recently, and at which point they had to say Grant. 00:04:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. But I think there's another reason for Grant's very swift political exit. He's a hard right conservative or a far right conservative. 00:04:24 Speaker 3: He's a Christian conservative. Far? I mean, what's far in the modern Liberal Party? 00:04:29 Speaker 1: Well, in the modern Liberal Party, I would say he is on the far right of the spectrum that's there at the moment. There was great surprise that he was ever pre-selected. And there was a nervousness. I was taking calls about Grant five, six days ago. And there was a nervousness. 00:04:50 Speaker 2: Why did it dial up five or six days ago? 00:04:53 Speaker 1: Because there is a nervousness amongst senior Liberals that the Labor Party dirt unit is really starting to fire. There was a view that Grant, of all the candidates, would be firmly in their sights because of his Christian views on some issues, including abortion, which we've discussed before, that the Labor Party will want to speak about if they can. There was a view... and it seemed to be well formed, that already work on Grant by the Labor Dirt Unit had begun, and they were holding back doing anything until after the nominations for the election closed. 00:05:31 Speaker 3: I've heard this so much. 00:05:31 Speaker 1: So that, you know, nominations close, the Labor Party, you know, release what they do on Grant, cause the controversy, and then the Liberals have two options. They either go to the election with him, which is problematic, or they lose him, and then they lose what should be a safe seat. 00:05:47 Speaker 2: Well, he comes in as an independent. 00:05:50 Speaker 1: Well, that's right. But they still lose grants. So they've lost a number. And all of a sudden, rather than 16 seats you're chasing, you're chasing 17. It's something they didn't need. So I

think that's the much more plausible reason for getting rid of him. I think the legal issues are a neat way to publicly put it. But I think the real reason is they were very nervous about his Christian views. 00:06:10 Speaker 3: Well, backing your view would be. 00:06:12 Speaker 2: The fact that they seem to have had another candidate ready to go. 00:06:15 Speaker 1: It was very unlike the Liberal Party. 00:06:17 Speaker 2: Very unlike the Liberal Party. The speed with which they disendorsed one and endorsed another in the form of one Toby Waldridge. 00:06:25 Speaker 1: And they also do all that without really any leaks to the media. It was very uncharacteristic. 00:06:31 Speaker 2: Very un-liberal-like. Normally, you and I are on the call when these things are going down. How can they not have been doing that? It's very, very upsetting to discover these things after the event. But it also shows a political maturity that I hitherto had not suspected them being capable of. So well done, Liberals, executing one without us hearing about it first. Now, to the candidate, Toby Wooldridge. Son of Michael Wooldridge, the former Howard Government Health Minister. 00:07:01 Speaker 1: Nephew of. 00:07:01 Speaker 2: Mary, who was Minister in the Baylieu and Napfung Governments. 00:07:08 Speaker 1: Much more moderate pick than Grant. 00:07:12 Speaker 2: Bright guy. Everyone who deals with him agrees about that. 00:07:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, and much more in line with the Liberal Party. Jess Wilson wants to take the election. 00:07:21 Speaker 2: Modern, moderate, in tune with the... zeitgeist in Victoria in 2026. Yeah. 00:07:29 Speaker 3: Whereas poor old Grant, well, he was old too. That's the other thing. I mean, Grant was back. 00:07:34 Speaker 2: Into his 50s, maybe even had been into his 60s. Was not, wasn't projecting the young, dynamic image that the party's trying to get with under Jess Wilson. So, sayonara, Grant. Hello, Toby. We've had two polls in the last week and both of them are pretty, I was going to use a non-family friendly word, disastrous for the government, aren't they? 00:08:02 Speaker 1: Labor is in huge, huge strife on this polling. 00:08:05 Speaker 2: Where are Labor's primaries? 00:08:07 Speaker 1: Labor are still in the mid-20s. They're not... Which is just a long way from home. The key about Labor is they're not getting any better. I think the coalition were up one point, One Nation were down. But the really interesting number in. 00:08:18 Speaker 3: Both of these polls. 00:08:20 Speaker 1: Well, certainly in the Redbridge one, but yeah, if it's in both, is that increasingly people are... getting behind Jess Wilson, not as preferred premier. 00:08:29 Speaker 2: Oh, no, no. No, that's true. That's not what I was thinking of. I thought the worst thing in it was that both these polls showed major deteriorations in Ben Carroll's net favourability. 00:08:41 Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, absolutely. But I think the positive for the coalition is that when the question is asked, has Jess Wilson and the coalition done enough? Do they deserve a term in government? Increasingly, that number is growing. I mean, we discussed this recently. When this podcast first started, that even though the primary was growing, that number of people who thought the coalition deserved a chance at government was actually not doing anything. That is now starting to really grow. As we get closer to the election, people are turning their minds to what the next government looks like. And increasingly, they are saying it's time for them. 00:09:16 Speaker 2: Oh, mate, and for them, that is everything because they're not in a two-horse race. 00:09:19 Speaker 3: They're in a three-cornered contest. 00:09:22 Speaker 2: And the more they look like they're ready to govern, the more likely they are to draw away from a head. 00:09:27 Speaker 3: Of one nation. 00:09:28 Speaker 2: And based on this polling, right, Labor's primary vote is not shifting. If you talk to people in Labor world, as I had a conversation with a federal minister and I said something like, oh, you know, there's no evidence that Carroll has improved the primary vote and I got sharply corrected. 00:09:46 Speaker 3: No, no, it's gone backwards, right? 00:09:48 Speaker 2: It has. 00:09:48 Speaker 1: I mean, the only question you have to ask when you talk about that is if Jacinta Allen was still there, would it be going backwards faster? You know, I mean, you can never know that. 00:09:59 Speaker 2: And the people who thought she had to go will tell you it would have. And the people who thought she should have stayed would say, oh, we wouldn't be in this mess if she was there. And you know what? 00:10:07 Speaker 3: It's an unknowable unknown, but we are where we are. 00:10:09 Speaker 1: But what we know is that Ben hasn't made things better. 00:10:12 Speaker 2: No, he hasn't made things better and things have got worse under him. And you can see the change that's going on at the moment. Like when you talk, I don't know what your experience of this is, but when I find myself talking to Liberals, frequently the conversation now is not about the government. The conversation is how are we doing vis-a-vis One Nation? And to that end, it would be interesting if we could just have a look at two of the ads or an ad that was dropped on Wilson's Instagram account at the weekend. 00:10:39 Speaker 4: We need to start fixing Victoria now, and my team is ready to go. If we are given the honour of being the next government here, if I'm the state's next premier, I will not miss a moment. I love it here. I'm raising my family here, and I want it to be the place that it was when I was growing up. And that's why I'm really focusing on how important it is for us to get to work straight away. 00:11:02 Speaker 2: As you can see, what's really interesting to me about this is... I don't know if you can see the same thing. What's really interesting about this is it is... an ad that

is attempting to really talk directly to the One Nation voter. Don't throw your toys out of the pram. We understand there's a problem. 00:11:19 Speaker 3: Everything's bad. 00:11:19 Speaker 2: But stick with the system. We have a solution. 00:11:23 Speaker 1: Is that? Yeah, I mean, that's the acknowledgement of, or sort of the sell that the Liberals have been talking about for some time, that if you want to get rid of Labor, you must vote for a Liberal Party. Because if you split that vote, we can't guarantee how it's going to break up. We can't guarantee how preferences will flow. We can't guarantee what will happen on a seat-by-seat basis. The only way to guarantee a change is to vote for Liberal Party. And these ads speak very much to that, really. 00:11:50 Speaker 2: Look, it's a strange situation in which the opposition at this point is really talking past the government to a segment of former government voters and saying, come to us, don't go to them. 00:12:01 Speaker 1: Well, I think it's odd because we've not really seen it before and there hasn't really been the ability to do that because we haven't had that third party like we've got now. But it speaks very much to the fact that I think the Liberals, well, the Liberals generally are convinced that Labor's had its day as far as in the public realm. And they're doing all the door knocking. They're speaking to all the people. And their view is that Labor are so far on the nose that there's almost no saving them. And they can afford now to, as you say, speak over them. 00:12:36 Speaker 3: What does Labor do from here? 00:12:38 Speaker 1: I think if either of us knew that, we're in the wrong job, aren't we? I mean, it's how you turn this ship around. They've thought, if you look over the past 12 months, they've had all these ideas they thought were the answer and nothing has worked. 00:12:52 Speaker 2: So what would go through them? 00:12:53 Speaker 1: Well, you know, working from home, I would say, was one of Jacinda Allen's big ideas to turn the public view around. Any efforts they've made on crime, They have done really only to save votes. This is not something they wanted to do or they would have done it three or four years ago. The change to Ben, which was long talked about and probably got there too late. Since Ben's been there, the Royal Commission, the free dental they thought would be a winner, the sort of rejigging of suburban rail loop they thought would have some sort of impact. There's been a whole raft of things. 00:13:28 Speaker 3: There's very reactive things with the exception of dentistry, isn't it? 00:13:30 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:13:31 Speaker 1: Yeah. And really none of them have made a difference to anything. And now what we're seeing, let's say over the past couple of weeks we've seen it, is the emergence of a very, very localised campaign. You know, we're not seeing Labor talk about big state-based issues. They are, you know, if you're being targeted with ads on YouTube or wherever you, you know, online, TV, at least my experience is I'm increasingly getting local MPs speaking to me saying I'm XYZ And I've done X, Y, Z for the local community. And if you reelect me, I will fix this park, fix that swimming centre, whatever it is. And if you look at the election commitments that Labor have made, one in three are very targeted local community promises to fix small community things. They're not big, broad promises. The Liberals... about 15% of their commitments are targeted like that. So Labor are sort of double the local effort because they are just trying to... You know, I said to someone yesterday, they're trying to cling on to power. They said, no, we're not trying to cling on to power. We're trying not to be obliterated. Like, that's where we're at now. 00:14:49 Speaker 2: What you're really saying is Labor cannot sell the Labor brand or a narrative for the government. 00:14:59 Speaker 1: I mean, how can they... We agree, but if you think about the things that Labor. 00:15:03 Speaker 3: No, I'm not saying they should. 00:15:04 Speaker 1: Of course they can't. No, no, no. The things that Labor should sell, should be able to sell. Health, well, they can't do that because it's in the toilet in this state. Crime, well, they can't. 00:15:14 Speaker 3: Even more, like far more than the health system. 00:15:16 Speaker 1: Roads, they can't. 00:15:17 Speaker 3: No. 00:15:18 Speaker 1: Their big bill, they can't because that's now the. 00:15:20 Speaker 3: Big corruption bill. That's the subject of a royal commission. 00:15:22 Speaker 1: What can they sell? 00:15:25 Speaker 2: Well, the only thing they can sell at a kind of, Macro level is fear of the alternative. 00:15:33 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:15:34 Speaker 2: But, so basically, Labor's election strategy at this point is to try and terrify the people into the idea of a one nation coalition coalition and to say, don't worry about, you know, the big story over here. 00:15:52 Speaker 3: My guy, the local guy. 00:15:53 Speaker 1: He's a good guy. She's a good guy. And he'll look after your community, you know. And a lot of that is really about just trying to save the MPs that are there, let alone winning new seats. The focus for a lot of them has turned away from winning government and just hanging on and trying to hope they can form a credible opposition. 00:16:11 Speaker 2: It really is... It does... What are we now? 48-something, 46, 45 days? Yeah. 00:16:18 Speaker 1: I mean, pre-poll opens in 30-something days. 00:16:19 Speaker 2: It's starting to feel end of days, isn't it? 00:16:22 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's... You know... Your question was, what do they do from here? I don't know what they do. 00:16:30 Speaker 2: I did ask someone the other day, have they started... Shredding? Well, not shredding. 00:16:35 Speaker 3: It's preparing for opposition. 00:16:37 Speaker 2: Have they started taking out the documents they're going to need for the quans? 00:16:40 Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. 00:16:41 Speaker 2: All of, like, the stuff that you take. And the classic example of this was in the final days of the Keating government. 00:16:49 Speaker 3: Behind the back of. 00:16:50 Speaker 2: The PMO in Canberra, people started quietly emptying the offices of and it was one of the reasons why Howard's first term was so difficult was because people in the previous government had accepted reality some months before the inevitable defeat and had started prepping for opposition. I was talking to someone in Labor, I said, has this started yet? And they said, no, not really, but it's going. 00:17:19 Speaker 3: To have to. 00:17:20 Speaker 1: It's an interesting point, though, about Howard's first term. I mean, what will a Wilson first term look like? I mean, are they going to struggle? 00:17:26 Speaker 3: Use the critical word. There, in that sentence, was first term. 00:17:30 Speaker 1: Well, is it going to be the only term? 00:17:32 Speaker 2: Depends not how big they win, because I think we acknowledge that even if they get to a majority, it's going to be a similar situation to Canberra in that Anthony Albanese in the first term had a small majority, but the Liberal Party was a. 00:17:46 Speaker 3: Long way from home because you had a giant crossbench, right? 00:17:50 Speaker 2: If Wilson gets to majority, she's still likely going to have a large majority. One Nation component sitting in the lower house. 00:17:58 Speaker 1: In the lower house? 00:17:59 Speaker 3: They're going to win some seats, aren't they? 00:18:02 Speaker 1: You presume so. 00:18:03 Speaker 2: They're going to win some seats. Nobody I've spoken to thinks they're going to win no seats. They're going to win some seats. The Liberal Party's praying that they've still got enough to reach majority. So Labor could be a long way from government, but the Coalition not have a huge majority. 00:18:21 Speaker 1: But do you think they're ready to govern as far as Do you think that team that's there at the moment is a government-ready outfit? 00:18:30 Speaker 2: I think they've done the best they can in the time available to turn themselves into. 00:18:37 Speaker 1: But then what does that look like? 00:18:39 Speaker 2: Are they ready? 00:18:40 Speaker 3: Are they really ready? 00:18:40 Speaker 2: I actually weirdly think. 00:18:42 Speaker 1: Or do you think it's something you grow into? 00:18:45 Speaker 2: Well, some people do and some people don't. I mean, the one thing I would say about these guys is... The best answer I can give is I actually think they are better prepared for government in this election than they were in 2010. I think they're much better prepared than when they came in with Bailiw because I don't think they really expected to win in 2010. I think they thought they were going to go close, but they would be lucky if they got there. This time, everybody thinks they're going to win. and they have a much greater responsibility to look like they're ready to

go. But also, in 2010, things weren't in the state they're in, right? Like, everybody knows there's big problems out there, and just walking in there, sitting down and enjoying the ride in the car isn't going to be good enough. 00:19:31 Speaker 1: Do you think Jess gets four years? Just given the history of this party and this team, do you think she would be given a four-year run? 00:19:41 Speaker 2: Well, you'd have to hope so. I mean, she gets them elected. 00:19:44 Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah. 00:19:45 Speaker 2: But, you know, there are a lot of people in that Liberal Party room who, yeah. I can answer that two ways. Of course, she should immediately get the loyalty. She should get the loyalty because she's won them an election that a year ago they weren't looking like they were going to win. On the other hand, there'll be some people who think, oh, I could have got us there. You know, she's only won because the government was dead. 00:20:07 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:20:07 Speaker 2: You know, she's there. 00:20:09 Speaker 3: She's inexperienced. 00:20:10 Speaker 2: She hasn't got the chops to do the job as well as I would. 00:20:14 Speaker 3: Like, you know, like, who knows? 00:20:16 Speaker 2: I don't know. It depends how realistic are some of those people in that parliamentary party is the question. How much self-knowledge do they have about their abilities? Not so much in my experience. Some of them really have a quite... There's quite a large gap between their view of themselves and the rest of the world's view of themselves. 00:20:37 Speaker 3: Do you disagree? 00:20:39 Speaker 1: No, I don't. I think that view that, you know, she could be the Stephen Bradbury of Victorian politics because, you know, she just had to be there and she got the gig because Labor fell over. I don't accept that. 00:20:51 Speaker 2: No, no, no. I don't accept it either. But can you not see how some of those numpties might think that? 00:20:56 Speaker 1: Some of them absolutely believe it. But I think that's crazy. I think she's... made a huge difference to the way that team is operating. 00:21:04 Speaker 2: And there's no question. I mean, I think the answer to that is if they've got their head screwed on, the public expect her to be given a fair go. Don't they? 00:21:14 Speaker 1: Just this term alone, we've had three premiers and three opposition leaders. I think people want just a bit of stability. Don't they? 00:21:21 Speaker 2: Well, they'd like... There's good stability and bad stability. I think they want a different stability to what. 00:21:25 Speaker 3: They've got now. Finally. 00:21:30 Speaker 2: There was a great and sad historic announcement this week from one of this podcast's favourites, Sonia Terpstra, the Terps, pothole enthusiast. 00:21:46 Speaker 3: And Upper House Labor MP. 00:21:49 Speaker 2: Terps, almost at the death knock of this Parliament, has announced she's had enough. 00:21:57 Speaker 3: She's given it away. She's not. Going to come back. 00:22:03 Speaker 2: Again. We have seen the last of Terps. Shannon Deary, can you give us some appropriately serious words before you do that, that we might just play the pothole video one more time? 00:22:21 Speaker 3: Not everyone's on board with your pothole thing. They actually like it full of potholes. 00:22:26 Speaker 1: I almost missed this very, very sad news because... I think Sonya's blocked me from being able to view her on Instagram. So when she published her statement, it wasn't there for me to see. 00:22:39 Speaker 3: Well, she hasn't blocked me. She's my local member. 00:22:42 Speaker 1: I think it's outrageous to be blocking your constituents from being able to see you. 00:22:47 Speaker 2: The best thing about it was it was just– it wouldn't have been Terps if there wasn't some kind of twist to it. It was like I read her statement on Instagram and you get to a point and it said, if you want the rest– Go to Facebook. The dignified place to do the full resignation announcement is Facebook in 2016. 00:23:03 Speaker 3: Not on Instagram. We're not going to do the whole thing on Instagram. 00:23:06 Speaker 2: Got to go to Facebook. 00:23:07 Speaker 1: I mean, for me, the most interesting part was, I think yesterday was October the 12th. On the 28th of September, she was talking about recontesting the seat. So she certainly had quite the change of heart over the past two weeks. And I think that change of heart might be born in the reality of the polling that suggests that she was going to lose her position. 00:23:25 Speaker 2: But even a month ago, I think, Most of us had accepted Parliament after November was likely to be a Terps for his own. 00:23:32 Speaker 1: Well, I don't think she'd accept that. Just like she didn't accept that potholes were a thing that we don't really like here. 00:23:38 Speaker 3: She likes it. 00:23:38 Speaker 1: It just took her a bit of time to get there. 00:23:40 Speaker 3: Not everybody's with you, pothole thing. You pothole thing. 00:23:45 Speaker 1: Oh, look, so... I don't know what's next for Terps. She can spend more time with her dog, Braxy. 00:23:50 Speaker 2: Braxy! Oh, mate. The dog's called Braxy. That is true believer stuff, isn't it? The dog's called Braxy. 00:23:58 Speaker 3: It's not called Dan. 00:24:01 Speaker 2: Thanks for brightening our lives, Terps. You go well. You have been listening to The Splash, the Herald Sun's bi-weekly podcast featuring me, James Campbell, and Shannon Deary, and produced by Jonty Burton. Please subscribe. Please give us a review. 00:24:22 Speaker 3: And please press the little. 00:24:23 Speaker 2: Bell so you get an alert when the next one drops. 00:24:25 Speaker 1: See you soon.