Michael O'Brien elected Victorian Liberal leader, replacing Matthew Guy after state election loss

Updated

Former treasurer Michael O'Brien has been elected Victoria's new Opposition Leader, replacing Matthew Guy after his disastrous state election defeat and promising to change the Liberal Party.

Key points: The Liberal party room has nominated former treasurer Michael O'Brien as leader

Outside Parliament, Liberal MPs criticised the party's disastrous election campaign

Cindy McLeish, one of seven female Liberal parliamentarians, was elected deputy leader

He was elected at a partyroom meeting this morning, after Mr Guy quit last week and the party's Victorian branch president, Michael Kroger, resigned on Friday night.

Cindy McLeish was elected deputy leader.

Mr O'Brien was an adviser to former federal treasurer Peter Costello and an industrial relations lawyer before being elected the MP for Malvern, in Melbourne's inner-east, in 2006.

The 47-year-old served as a minister in the Ted Baillieu-led Coalition Government, and was promoted to treasurer when Denis Napthine became Premier in 2013.

Addressing the media following the partyroom meeting, Mr O'Brien sought to hit the reset button for the party, which has been criticised for drifting too far to the right and running a negative scare campaign concentrating on crime.

Making the point that the Liberal Party was a "mainstream party with mainstream values" he said the election was a humbling experience, and the party would review all the policies it took to the public.

"We are going to be a team that will listen and learn the lessons from this election," he said.

"We will be leading the change in the Liberal Party and the change in Victorian politics that Victorians want to see.

"The Liberal Party's values are about freedom of the individual, reward for effort, environmental stewardship, looking after the vulnerable, about making sure that people have got the opportunity to achieve their full potential in life.

"These are positive values."

While counting continues following the November 24 vote, Labor is set to govern with a 56-seat majority in Victoria's 88-seat Lower House, up from 45 at the close of the last Parliament.

The Coalition looks to have won just 26 seats, losing a number of previously safe electorates, including Hawthorn, which had been held by potential leadership contender John Pesutto.

Mr O'Brien said he had not spoken to Mr Guy about his future, but that the former opposition leader had given him no indication he would leave Parliament.

'An opportunity for change'

As the surviving Liberals entered Parliament today, many offered analysis of what went wrong during the campaign, but Mr Guy avoided questions about the election loss, saying it was a matter for the new leader.

Upper House MP Bernie Finn said the campaign was "disgraceful" because it failed to properly communicate with voters.

He also lashed out at criticism from Labor about the lack of women in Liberal ranks.

"If the Labor Party and the Greens want to have more women in the Liberal Party, what they should have done is not defeated them, that would have been a very good thing if they hadn't run against our women," Mr Finn said.

Upper House MP Mary Wooldridge — one of just seven female parliamentarians in the party — said it must stop a lurch to the right of politics.

"We will win government when we reflect the majority of Victorians' views and … we must have a range of moderate perspectives," Ms Wooldridge said.

Ms McLeish is one of just three Liberal women elected to the Parliament's Lower House.

She worked as a teacher and consultant before becoming the MP for Seymour in 2010 and Eildon in 2014, following the last state redistribution.

Ms Wooldridge urged greater efforts to recruit more women to the party and did not rule out supporting quotas.

"I think we need to reassess on a whole lot of policy fronts," she said.

"This sort of crisis presents an opportunity for change and a big shift back to the centre."

Asked whether he supported quotas, Mr O'Brien said he would work with his colleagues to get more women into the party, but that he was "far more interested in outcomes than mechanisms".

'Steven Bradbury' of the Liberals

Mr O'Brien was defeated by Mr Guy in a Liberal leadership contest after the Coalition's 2014 state election loss.

He was heavily criticised for signing a "side letter" guaranteeing that the consortium building the East West Link would get hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded compensation if the road project was scrapped.

This morning, Labor labelled him "the Steven Bradbury of the Victorian Liberal Party" — referring to the Winter Olympic speed skater who won a gold medal after his competitors fell over — claiming most Liberal MPs preferred Mr Pesutto.

"Everyone knows that Michael O'Brien is just warming the seat, while his hopelessly divided party finds a way to get John Pesutto back into the Parliament," Deputy Premier James Merlino said in a statement.

Mr Pesutto did not rule out a comeback to politics when asked if it was possible there may be a resignation in the Upper House, which could allow him to return without a by-election.

Conceding defeat to Labor's John Kennedy yesterday, Mr Pesutto also called on the party to recruit more women and culturally diverse candidates and to do more to address climate change.

He cited his 17-year-old daughter, who went to Melbourne's climate change protest on Friday, as an example of the kind of voter the party should be attracting.

"I'm concerned that there are conservative people, conservative-leaning people, and even moderate-leaning people who just want our party to do something on that front," he said.

Mr O'Brien defended the party's record on climate change, saying it had a history of investing in renewables.

"A majority of scientists are telling us that climate change is happening and the majority say humans are contributing to it, so let's not have an argument over whether it's happening or not, let's have a contest of good ideas of how we can best address it," he said.

"That's what I think Victorians want — they expect all parties to take the issue seriously but they don't believe there's only one way to fix it."

Topics: government-and-politics, state-elections, state-parliament, liberals, melbourne-3000, vic, hawthorn-3122, malvern-3144

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