No one would call Steve Bracks audacious. But that's the only way to describe his behaviour during last Friday's state election debate.
The Victorian Premier asked Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu whether he would apologise for any of the decisions taken by the Kennett government. Baillieu evaded the question and said Jeff Kennett was a friend, a great premier, and that no government was perfect.
Quite sensibly in the context of the debate, the Liberal leader decided to talk about the future rather than revisit the past.
The question from Bracks was audacious because none of the achievements of his Government since 1999 would have been possible if it had not been for Kennett.
That the Premier chose to ask the question is revealing. Obviously, the Labor Party's advisers believe there is political advantage to be gained from reminding voters about the "damage" of the Liberal years. And they're probably correct. In anyone's terms, cutting 80,000 public servants and closing 350 schools is a lot of damage.
But every Kennett decision was necessary, and if those decisions had not been made Victorians would have suffered even more. It wasn't Kennett that caused the damage of the Kennett years -- Cain and Kirner were those responsible.
In 1992, Victoria's debt was unsustainable, unemployment was at record levels, and public services were run by and for the benefit of the trade union movement. Seven years later the position was entirely different.
Labor's boasts about the state's economic growth, and budget surpluses are only possible because of what the Liberals did. Last week Treasurer John Brumby pointed out that the ALP had "delivered twice as much on infrastructure as the previous Liberal government did under Jeff Kennett". This is true and there's a simple reason for it. When the previous Liberal government was in power, Victoria was broke.
Since its election, the Bracks Government has succeeded brilliantly at blaming every problem on the policies of its predecessor without once acknowledging the situation that Kennett inherited. And the opposition has allowed Labor to get away with this tactic.
The Liberal Party has been hamstrung in its efforts to confront Labor over the Kennett legacy. It doesn't know whether to defend Kennett's record, ignore it, or do as Steve Bracks suggests and apologise for it. All three strategies have been attempted, none with much success. Part of the reason for this failure is the circumstances under which the Liberals lost government.
To this day, many Liberals (and some Liberal MPs) still believe that it was an accident that their party lost in 1999, and that it was an accident that three independents sided with the ALP to dispose of Kennett, and that it was an accident that in 2002 the Liberal Party was not returned to government at the first opportunity.
The belief that every election loss is not your own fault, but rather the result of an unfortunate mistake made by the electorate is comforting. Such a belief breeds complacency and laziness. Kennett and his key ministers did most of the thinking for the Victorian Liberal Party. Since Kennett and those ministers went, many Liberals (and some Liberal MPs) have struggled to explain what they believe and why they believe it.
Bracks and Brumby are eager to talk about Kennett's record. They are less eager to explain what they would have done differently.
In education for example, the Liberals' policy of consolidation and closure was the consequences of decades of poor planning and neglect.
In some suburbs of Melbourne there were up to five secondary schools that together had capacity for 5000 students, but whose total enrolments were less than a thousand. In other suburbs there was a chronic shortage of facilities, with students spending their entire school careers in relocatable classrooms. In many situations closure was the only option.
The Kennett government saved the financial fortunes of Victoria, implemented important reforms, and paved the way for the state to gain the economic benefits now enjoyed by Labor. That's nothing to apologise for.
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