The Victorian election demonstrates a desperate need for powerful leadership based on principle, something last seen in the 2013 Abbott landslide.

Abbott cut through then by promising to turn back the boats and repeal the carbon (dioxide) and mining taxes. Even the unsympathetic mainstream media could not dilute the effect of that.

But in the Victorian election, Liberal leader Matthew Guy stayed too long in his bunker, playing down the issues on which he could have won. What does this mean for the coming federal election?

The polls tell us that Australians intend to install a government which will deliver electricity even more expensively than now and so unreliably that they will have to replace Rudd’s pink batts in their roofs with expensive batteries. Soon, border control will be compromised to cater for those who despise our values but expect to be housed and maintained by the taxpayers.

That government will further balkanise the nation into minuscule ‘communities’, even ones which only exist in the imagination of their leaders.

Such a result will confirm an apparent preference for representatives not of the quality of General Jim Molan, Sophie York, Riccardo Bosi or likely NSW politician, Mark Latham Mark II, but only from the careerist, opportunistic, political class endowed with gold-plated superannuation, surrounded by advisers and constantly engaged in endless and unnecessary luxury travel, building up massive CO2 footprints.

It will suggest they would prefer to be governed by constitutional vandals who have wiped the floor with their oaths of allegiance and who will impose new taxes totalling over $200 billion. This includes the theft of $46 billion of company tax already paid and due to those who dare to think they should not, in retirement, be a burden on the taxpayers.

Such a result will be an endorsement of a federally-controlled education system, however unconstitutional, ensuring students know little about their history and have a lesser grasp on science and mathematics than the children of most countries to our north and notably of Kazakhstan.

Instead, children will be encouraged to question their sex as determined at birth, with free access, without parental approval, to all medical means to change that, including, if they wish, irreversible surgery.

This government will continue to refuse to drought-proof Australia and will, like the Turnbull government, fail to properly defend Australia preferring to raid the defence budget to shore up electoral support.

The choice of such a government – singularly worse on any objective evaluation than the Turnbull government was – could hardly be the choice of a properly informed electorate. That requires a responsible media.

But as the distinguished British editor Lord Deedes said of the 1999 referendum campaign, he had rarely attended  a vote in any country, ‘certainly not a democratic one’, in which the newspapers have displayed ‘more shameless bias…determined Australians should have a republic…(using)… every device towards that end.’ This bias was reflected in most of the electronic  media and it has since been repeated again such as over the knighthood for Prince Philip. In fact, too many media outlets became fake news  collaborators in the long  plot to bring Abbott down.

Remember that the media, especially with the coming extinction of the mogul, is a prime example of John O’Sullivan’s First Law: ‘All organisations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing’. Today it would seem that only the Murdoch press, Macquarie Radio and Sky News report the conservative position fairly. While their audiences are significant, most voters obtain their political information from gallery journalists on TV bulletins and garbled pieces on the internet.

With all this, is it possible that Morrison could still lead the Coalition to victory? The answer is ‘yes, but’.

It is true that Morrison sometimes breaks out from the circle of so-called  ‘moderates’, Liberals In Name Only (LINOs) , which surround him. He did this in relation to the imams and, thanks to John Stone, on the UN global migration compact. When he does, he comes through as a victor.

But too often he tries to walk on both sides of the street. Locating our embassy in Jerusalem as something under consideration rather than a thing decided demonstrates Morrison’s tendency to equivocation.

He should remember that it was the LINO circle which led him into teaching Labor how to steal from the self-funded retirees. It was the LINO circle which persuaded him to try to tax away almost one third of the small earnings of the young foreign backpackers, without realising they’d go to New Zealand or America instead and that the harvest would not be collected. And it was the LINO circle which persuaded him to join in the installation of the worst Liberal PM the country has ever seen.

Instead of sending Abbott on worthy missions, he should listen to him: above all get out of Paris and halve immigration. Abbott is always the same, working from principle. Hopefully he has learned not to treat his enemies as some prodigal son to be forgiven and even favoured. That said, he was right to forgive Morrison for what he did in the Turnbull coup; both realpolitik and principle demand what Abbott is giving to Morrison: unconditional loyalty.

Morrison made a serious error for himself and the country over Turnbull. Has he learned from this? Not in full.   To win he must adopt Abbott’s agenda, making him at least his de facto deputy or more, a Roman consul. Abbott is too honourable to abuse this and as co-campaigner, would be lethal to the forces of darkness.

Morrison surely realises Abbott’s agenda and Abbott are crucial to victory.But if Shorten wins because of Morrison’s failure, do not despair, all will not be lost although what Shorten  will do will seriously damage Australia.

First, the combined right could enjoy a Senate-blocking majority. Second, Abbott could resuscitate an ailing Liberal party. Third, there would be an increasing awareness that the governance of Australia is overripe for fundamental reform.