There is a political tremor running through Gippsland, and for once it is not being generated by another announcement from Spring Street about closing an industry, sacrificing regional jobs or saving the planet with somebody else’s livelihood.
It is the sound of voters walking away from the two-party establishment.
An ABC report on Liberal leader Jess Wilson’s campaign through Gippsland reveals just how serious the revolt has become. A recent RedBridge poll placed One Nation on 32 per cent of the primary vote in the Eastern Victoria Region, ahead of the Coalition on 28 per cent and Labor on 22 per cent. Across Victoria, One Nation has also polled 27 per cent, marginally ahead of both major parties.
These numbers cannot be dismissed as a temporary tantrum. Nor can voters be patronised as angry people looking for somewhere to lodge a protest. They represent the accumulated consequences of governments that have treated regional communities as expendable and an opposition that has too often watched it happen.
Gippsland has seen coal mines, power stations and timber mills closed or condemned. Secure industries that sustained families and towns have been replaced with transition plans, glossy brochures and promises of green jobs that seldom arrive in the same number, location or wage bracket.
The most damaging mistake would be allowing several conservative alternatives to divide the vote while Labor wins through the wreckage.
Labor calls this progress. The Coalition calls it regrettable. The people who lose their jobs call it reality.
After 12 years in government, Labor cannot pretend it is an innocent observer. Its energy and environmental policies have been imposed with the enthusiasm of people who will never have to explain to a worker why his job has disappeared or to a small manufacturer why electricity has become less reliable and more expensive.
Yet the Coalition’s defence is hardly more inspiring. Nationals leader Danny O’Brien says that voters who want to remove the Allan government must vote Liberal or National because other parties represent “protest and grievance” rather than solutions.
This is the cry of a political establishment discovering that the electorate no longer belongs to it.
Regional Victorians have supported the Nationals and Liberals for generations. They are entitled to ask what that loyalty has delivered. Where was the effective opposition while power stations were marked for closure? Where was the political fight when the native timber industry was shut down? Where was the alternative economic plan before communities were presented with another fait accompli?
The Coalition wants the electorate to believe that voting for it is the only practical way to remove Labor. That argument might carry more weight if it had not spent so many years treating conservative voters as captives who had nowhere else to go.
The Liberals drifted towards the fashionable centre, surrendered arguments before making them, and seemed more frightened of being criticised by the ABC than of disappointing their own supporters. The Nationals continued relying upon inherited loyalty while regional industries disappeared around them. Now that voters have found alternatives, both parties demand unity—provided everyone unites behind them.
That is not unity. It is entitlement.
One Nation’s rise presents a genuine opportunity, but polling alone will not change Victoria. The party must convert public frustration into credible representation. That means selecting capable local candidates, properly vetting them, and producing a Victorian platform addressing matters the state government actually controls.
Affordable and reliable energy must be central. Regional jobs, responsible resource development, sustainable forestry, manufacturing, small-business regulation, roads, health services and the growing concentration of power in Melbourne are also important.
One Nation does not need a telephone-book-sized manifesto written by consultants. Voters have endured enough policy documents that promise everything and deliver nothing. It needs a short list of clear commitments, accompanied by an explanation of what will be done, how it will be achieved, and what it will cost.
Other non-major conservative parties and credible independents also have a role. They should resist the temptation to spend the campaign attacking one another for ownership of the same disillusioned electorate. The objective should be to break Labor’s hold on Victoria, end the major-party duopoly, and ensure that conservative preferences are not exhausted or delivered back to the government through vanity, incompetence or personal feuds.
This is the cry of a political establishment discovering that the electorate no longer belongs to it.
Cooperation does not require ideological uniformity. It requires political maturity. Smaller conservative parties can retain their identities while reaching practical agreements on preferences, upper-house strategy and a core program of shared principles: cheaper energy, smaller government, lower taxes, stronger regional economies, individual responsibility and an end to ideological attacks on productive industry.
The most damaging mistake would be allowing several conservative alternatives to divide the vote while Labor wins through the wreckage.
One Nation must also avoid overconfidence. Social-media enthusiasm is encouraging, but comment sections do not elect members of parliament. Candidates, volunteers, booths, scrutineering, preference discipline and local credibility do. Declaring victory months before nominations close risks turning momentum into complacency.
Nevertheless, the opportunity is real. Morwell may be “ground zero”, but the revolt extends well beyond Gippsland. Outer-suburban families, tradespeople, manufacturers, farmers and small-business owners increasingly recognise that Labor and the Coalition are competing managers of a system that no longer listens to them.
The major parties will call it grievance because they cannot admit it is judgement.
Victorians are not abandoning the political establishment because they have stopped caring about government. They are abandoning it because government stopped caring about them.
November 28 offers voters something more powerful than another change of management. It offers them the chance to change the political equation itself—and remind both major parties that no electorate is their property.
