Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Later this year the Victorian people will have an opportunity to cast a verdict on the Napthine Liberal government, a government which has been lurching from crisis to crisis over the past few years. The most recent incident was news over the weekend about Minister Mary Wooldridge, who was the Premier's hand-picked candidate for the state seat of Kew—in fact, he practically guaranteed her preselection. But it did not happen that way. There was a revolt within the Liberal Party ranks and the circumstances were that the minister was defeated.

Before that, we had the issue of the operation of the parliament and the circumstances around the rebel member for Frankston, Geoff Shaw. Again, he was a candidate put forward by the Liberal Party at the last election—some three-plus years ago—and the circumstances are that we have seen allegations made about Mr Shaw; we have seen his being expelled from the Liberal Party, which is underway at the moment; we have seen his being expelled from the parliamentary party; and we have seen a situation where the operation of the parliament has lurched from crisis to crisis. We have had the Premier saying, 'It's all fine, there's no problem; it's all under control', and then we see its work program being overturned. We see a situation where there is a complete lack of control and complete mismanagement, all of which is showing that this Liberal government does not know what it is doing. He is incapable of managing the state and he is going to go to a heavy defeat come November this year.

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