VICTORIA’S Liberal Party has just shot itself in the foot after sacking it’s latest parliamentary leader, the former policeman Brad Battin, and appointing an inner city girl who supported the Voice and now backs the state’s Treaty with Aboriginals.
Jess Wilson, a 35-year-old blonde woman, is the first woman leader of the Victorian parliamentary Liberal Party, which apparently makes her “special”. Ms Wilson would have slotted right into the Teals or Greens, had not the offer been put to her. She is the third new leader appointed by Victorian Liberals this year.
“The new leader of the Victorian Liberal Party – not just any ‘moderate’, she supports treaty,” says political commentator Matthew Camenzuli. “I think that tells you all you need to know. The handiwork of the backroom boys – so the grift may continue unabated. Victoria is lost.”
Battin was apparently dumped because, as the ex-copper, he focused too much on fighting crime, although his own story shows he certainly wasn’t any type of tough guy. He lasted just under a year as Opposition leader.
Wilson’s first “policy announcement” is right up the alley of Jacinta Allan’s Socialist Left: “targeting coercive control of women in homes”.
New Victorian Liberal Party leader Jess Wilson has targeted domestic violence in her first policy announcement as opposition leader, promising to criminalise coercive control, the ABC approvingly reported.
“Coercive control is a pattern of ongoing, continuous abuse over time, used by a person to control, dominate and intimidate another person, usually an intimate partner,” the ABC explained.
“While Victoria has existing family violence laws, it does not explicitly criminalise coercive control as a separate behaviour, according to domestic and family violence groups.”
Ms Wilson labelled coercive control “sinister” behaviour that needed to be identified. “This is an insidious pattern of behaviour that we need to put a name to and we need to call out,” Ms Wilson said.
So Ms Wilson, just like Ms Allan, is all for the state taking an even bigger role meddling in domestic affairs.
The tragedy is that the genuine conservatives who exist within the Victorian Liberals have been sidelined and marginalised. Maybe it’s time to let the lefty Libs merge with the Teals.
