Apathy rules in Victoria

The Liberals closed the gap between Labor and themselves during the election campaign, and may be the result could have been closer. If the swing to the Liberals was continuing during the last week of the campaign it may have stalled two days before polling day when Victorians, like all other Australians, became consumed with the tragic and extraordinary death of cricketer Phillip Hughes.

Still, as Professor Julius Sumner Miller used to ask, why is it so?

Why did undecided voters largely voted for the Coalition in 2010 and this time vote for Labor?

One of the differences between the Liberals' 2014 election campaign and their 2010 campaign is that they acted to move the undecided vote by putting the Greens last on their how-to-vote cards in 2010 and made an issue of it.

This time they relied solely on their campaign both to make up ground and to move the undecided voters.

The fact that that the Liberals did not make an issue this time of their decision to put the Greens last by talking up the possibility of a Labor/Green government, especially given the dependence of Labor on Green preferences, is a reminder that they were dragged kicking and screaming into making the decision in 2010.

While everything makes a difference in a close result, there are probably significant reasons which lie directly at the feet of Denis Napthine for the Liberals' not receiving the benefit of history.

From a political perspective there five or six critical portfolios ̶Premier, Treasury, Health, Education and Transport and arguably Attorney General and Police.

A government needs its best people in these ministries. Under Ted Baillieu that was not always the case.

Further Ted Baillieu was becoming a reason for people to vote against the government. Partly it was due to his style and approach and partly due to policies such as TAFE cuts which revived memories of the Kennett years.

It is interesting that, during the election campaign, the Electrical Trades Union ran an expensive television campaign focusing on the TAFE cuts and that the ALP also made the TAFE cuts a major focus of their advertising campaign.

Then there was the dispute with paramedics which began during Mr. Baillieu's stewardship and continued on under his successor. Ambulance vehicles were used as mobile billboards, much to the consternation of the backbench who could not understand why nobody in the Government apparently had the wit to settle the dispute and to have political messages removed from the vehicles, and why, at the 11th hour when it was all too late, the Government seemingly capitulated.