Victorian Liberals face an uphill battle to bounce back to political victory

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There were two major upsets on a September Saturday 20 years ago.

Carlton knocked off premiership fancy Essendon and Jeff Kennett was toppled from office by Steve Bracks.

The Bombers bounced back to lift the cup the next season, but the performance of the Victorian Liberals has more closely followed the Blues' past two decades.

Since the 1999 shock defeat, the Liberals have been belted twice, lost on two other occasions and "wasted" their only term in office.

Now with just 21 MPs in the Lower House, Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien is trying to steer the Coalition towards the middle ground of politics while dealing with internal division.

He believes he can win in 2022.

"Politics is volatile. Elections are volatile, the community isn't rusted onto parties the way they used to be," he tells the ABC.

Divisions run deep

Fears of a "takeover" of the Victorian branch by social conservatives have been well documented over recent years. As, too, have the party's internal divisions and fights.

"I'm not interested in talking about Liberal Party internal dynamics. Frankly, I barely care about it," Mr O'Brien says.

"The Liberal Party needs to be back in the centre ground of politics. That's where Victorians are. We need to be listening to them and responding to their concerns. Not our concerns."

He has embarked on a listening tour of Victoria to find out what issues matter to voters.

He also wants the party to become an attractive organisation for people from diverse backgrounds to join, which will produce more diverse MPs and candidates.

But less than a year into the gig, there are already malcontents expressing anger at Mr O'Brien's leadership, with some warning he won't last the distance to the next poll.

A decision to throw some doubt on a crackdown on priests not reporting abuse revealed in the confessional sparked that fire.

This week MPs are unhappy with his performance over a whopping 11.8 per cent pay rise for the Premier, ministers and Mr O'Brien as Opposition Leader.

No regrets: Matthew Guy

Defeated former opposition leader Matthew Guy, now a backbencher, says he would not change the policy platform he took to last year's poll, despite the savage defeat.

In an interview with the ABC he has hit back at critics who blamed a focus on law and order as a cause of his defeat.

"I don't apologize. Not one bit. In fact, I'd go harder, because that issue will be around in Victoria for some time. And it's not going to be addressed by the people in charge," he says.

In an energetic interview, Mr Guy also says population growth will continue to be an issue for Victorians.

"People love to look for cracks in the Victorian Liberals. They haven't been there. Yep, we lost the election. We're going to get on with it. We're going to win," he says.

There's been speculation he will leave state politics, but he says he isn't going anywhere.

And he says he does not want to return to the leadership and rejects assertions that the party is damaged by the so-called "lurch to the right".

But many in the party blame a perceived shift to the right as a reason for the party's malaise.

It's the middle, stupid

The only person to defeat Labor in the past two decades, Ted Baillieu, says his success was due to a pitch to voters in the centre.

"I believe we got it right. We got it right because we stuck to the middle ground, we stuck to a focus on industry, focus on internationalism, focus on diversity, which I think is critical," Mr Baillieu says.

But enemies in the party blame the Baillieu government, characterised as being "inert", as the cause of Premier Daniel Andrews's success.

"We f***ed it up," one senior figure says.

"It was a wasted opportunity."

Mr Andrews and Labor have built their success on being the opposite of the Coalition government, willing to spend tens of billions of dollars building projects.

But Mr Baillieu blames internal troublemakers as the cause of the Coalition demise between 2010-2014, not inaction.

"It's just complete nonsense. I can rattle off all the things we did," Mr Baillieu says.

"But we ended up talking about ourselves. And we became the issue. I think there were various forces at work that wanted a bit more for themselves."

A common criticism from Liberal figures is that too many people in the party are worried about internal fights rather than focusing on winning government.

And even in government, people in the party have to watch their backs.

Several Liberals highlighted the attacks on former federal minister Kelly O'Dwyer days after she arrived home from hospital with a newborn.

"It's about culture, too much of the party is about internal fights rather than winning elections or focusing on campaigns," a prominent figure says.

'The team is poor'

"We don't have the team, there's too much dead wood," is how one senior Liberal describes the current team on Spring Street.

It's a view shared by many inside and outside the party room.

"They've lost five of the last six. Perhaps there needs to be a look at the team. The team is poor," another says.

Mr O'Brien backs his team.

"I've got a very hard-working group of MPs, very talented group of MPs around me, both in the Shadow Cabinet and on the backbench," he says.

Even with a starting salary of $182,000 it is hard to attract experienced business people to run for politics, let alone running for State Parliament in a team with a poor success rate, party sources say.

A problem identified by several Liberals is that there has been a failure to properly renew and move on MPs.

Federal party also lagging

And while there is a focus on the Spring Street doldrums, the performance of the federal team in Victoria isn't much better.

The success of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has papered over some of the cracks.

The party only won 12 of 38 seats in Victoria.

It was predicted to lose more.

Many are pinning their hopes on Treasurer Josh Frydenberg raising the profile of the state.

He says the party will target seats in the growth corridors in Melbourne's west and north at the next election.

"These are people with a mortgage, with a small business, a young family," Mr Frydenberg says.

"Our policies of economic opportunity and aspiration appeal to all Victorians."

Topics: government-and-politics, states-and-territories, elections, state-elections, state-parliament, parliament, political-parties, liberals, alp, melbourne-3000, vic