Libs “needed more dirt”

Hamish Heard
A post-mortem into Geelong Liberal candidates’ disastrous showing at last year’s state election has found a failure to dig dirt and a lack of local presence led to Labor’s continuing dominance in the region.
Failed Bellarine candidate Don Gibson said the party’s electorate committees had dissected the lead-up to November’s election to find out why voters failed to elect any local Liberals.
“One of the considerations was that we didn’t focus on digging up dirt on the Government’s performance and pointing out its failures,” Mr Gibson said.
Ted Baillieu had also directed candidates to campaign on Liberal policy rather than attacking the Government, Mr Gibson said.
But the strategy backfired, with the party citing a lack of community understanding of Liberal policies as a key reason for the electoral wipeout.
“The electorate had to understand the points of difference between Labor and Liberal policy,” Mr Gibson said.
“We had to be clear as to why people shouldn’t have voted Labor.”
The committee reports also identified Labor’s stranglehold on local electorates since 2002 as another problem for the Liberals.
“Liberal voters represent about 40 per cent of the electorate and it’s the biggest population outside Melbourne. We have good federal representation but no state representation and that has to be considered as well,” Mr Gibson said.
He supported plans to relocate one of the Liberal’s two members for Western Victoria to Geelong.