Dictator Dan and the Hillbilly Dictator have a lot in common

Dan Andrews lost some bark in the 2022 election – a swing of 3% or so on a two-party preferred basis – but still ended up with 54.3% 2-party preferred, a result most premiers would kiss a million babies to achieve.

As predicted, there was a protest vote. This was against both major parties with one-third of voters deciding to give their first preference to a minor party, and neither major party breaching 40% primary vote.

It skewed against Labor, who suffered swings up to 19.9% to the Greens, and up to 16% to the Liberals in various seats.

These were seat-specific swings, generally safe Labor ones, where the swing didn’t actually change the member. They were also mostly to minor party candidates or independents.

If Daniel Andrews thinks he can keep ruling Victoria the way he has, then he is not listening to the electors of Victoria, and he, or his successor will pay the price. He runs a government that is seen as authoritarian, spendthrift, incompetent, dishonest, but electors generally can’t see any alternative, viewing the Liberals as just as bad.

This Victorian election reminded me of Queensland elections in the 70s and 80s. There are a lot of parallels between the style of government. On the one hand we have Andrews “Dictator Dan”, and on the other Bjelke-Petersen “The Hillbilly Dictator”.

Queensland police never used rubber bullets, but they were free with their truncheons. Opponents were spied upon and demonised. For Dan Andrews, channelling Joe Biden’s “Dark Brandon” speech, his opponents were all fascists, Nazis, racists and misogynists. Joh would flutter and sputter about Commies and socialists.

Both states had former police commissioners denouncing their systems as corrupt, and government-owned corporations and QANGOs rife with cronyism.

There is even a puritanism and group think, different in style, but similar in substance, that both states, separated in time, share. And no one from any other state could or can understand how voters put-up with either government.

The only major difference between both is that the Bjelke-Petersen government was financially and fiscally prudent, luxuriating in a reputation for low tax, high growth and low debt – it even fully-funded its public service superannuation scheme, an asset which is still on the state’s books.

And then it was 1989 and things changed with the election of the Goss Labor government.

This holds lessons in particular for the Victorian Liberal Party, who were the underperformers of 2022.

What kept Bjelke-Petersen in power was the lack of a decent alternative. The Liberal Party (between 1983 and 1989 on the cross-benches) was regarded as a milquetoast version of the Petersen’s Nationals, while the ALP was a group of boyos who’d become comfortable with Opposition and its spoils.

Andrews might be bad, but would swapping him for Guy have achieved anything for most voters? As the election was an unseemly auction with both sides promising dollars for votes, which side is more likely to pony up in reality? No contest – the ALP leads in credibility when it comes to spending.

In Queensland in 1989 the ALP fixed three major things. One, they recruited good candidates, like Wayne Goss, and two, they learned negative campaigning under the generalship of the other Wayne – Swan. Last they fixed their organisation with a reform faction forming around Dr Dennis Murphy who became party president. They also put a lot of work into policy, but policy doesn’t win elections, issues do.

If it wasn’t for this, the Fitzgerald Commission of Inquiry might have been a damp squib of the IBAC variety.

The result was a 7.8% swing, but only to 53.8% of the 2PP vote. More significantly they gained 60.67% of the seats, running a campaign which won votes where they had most effect to amplify their bare share of the mathematical tally.

If the Victorian Liberals want to win they could look to Goss Labor for inspiration.

The Vic Lib organisation needs a thorough cleaning out, and they need to strategically select good community candidates, not party hacks. Returning to Matthew Guy as leader is the best demonstration of the paucity of talent on their frontbenches.

Where they had good candidates they did well.

They also need to learn how to campaign. The hunger doesn’t appear to be there, nor the ability to bite and hold onto the government.

Right-of-centre parties of all stripes also need to adapt their game to the new media. I’m not just talking about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok, but Google. These days all of our interactions are polluted by partisan algorithms which push one-sided information at us.

When even the eponymous search engine is telling everyone to vote Labor or Greens you have a problem, and it is not solved by more tweets or posts. The ground game needs to be changed completely.

Undoubtedly the debate which will consume the Libs is whether they should move to the left or the right. The seats where they staved-off the Teals are emotionally important to them and winning back seats like Kooyong must seem like redeeming the family silver.

In other Anglophone countries the parties of the right now tend to represent the middle to working classes, leaving the upper social stratas to the socialists and woke.

Revolts in outer Melbourne against Andrews suggest some possibilities. Most voters are swung by issues that matter directly to them, not generally grand policy narratives, and addressing these properly can induce huge swings.

Inner Melbourne seats tell a different story, with Greens candidates, and Green-like independents, as well as Teals doing well.

Again drawing on Queensland, an electoral map of South East Queensland from the 70s bears little resemblance to one now, things and people change, and parties have to change with them.

There was also a wrinkle in a handful of seats where ethnic Chinese make up over 25% of the vote. These seats should have been within reach of the Libs, but fell back towards Labor, apparently on the basis of Peter Dutton’s foreign policy. Belt and Road paid dividends for Andrews.

Ultimately the answer is not to be, as appears to be the case now, Labor-lite. Voters have to know what you stand for, and what benefit they will get from it, and you need to demonstrate that they will not, and cannot, get it from the other side.

Sometimes that means taking a risk and opposing policies that are popular in the short-run for a long-run gain. But it also means not appearing to be too radical. The Goss government won by offering solutions to issues that mattered, not by promising to change the world.

Offer competence, and voters will follow as the other side fails.