News last week that the Daniel Andrews-led Victorian Labor government is so desperate for cash they have approached his federal counterparts for help should be a wake-up call.

In particular, it should be a wake-up call to the Victorian Liberal Party. Stop the fussin’ and the fightin’, stop talking about fringe social issues, and make the contest of ideas about fiscal discipline and value for taxpayers’ money.

It’s been over 30 years since Victoria faced a fiscal crisis of any real kind, let alone this magnitude.

Successive governments, led by those on both the right and the left, have maintained fiscal discipline. That was until Daniel Andrews.

The Victorian State Budget was in a parlous state before the pandemic hit three years ago. Budgets on major projects aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, and the Andrews Labor government have said as much, citing the real risk being not to build. The 2019-20 Mid-Year Fiscal Outlook showed the budget was already in deficit.

Yet the Victorian Liberal Party, for almost the entire duration of Daniel Andrew’s premiership, has remained distracted by fringe social issues that most Victorians have already definitively made up their minds about, such as the Safe Schools Program, support for the gender diverse, and the gradual liberalisation of policies surrounding euthanasia and drug use.

This has divided the rank-and-file membership of the Liberal Party, with a large group happy to see these issues being raised but scratching their heads about why they keep losing elections, and a smaller group made up of social moderates and conservatives who want to see the Liberal Party focus on winning elections as a first priority.

Which is how we ended up in 2023 with the Andrews Labor government looking at sacking 1 in every 20 public servants and asking the Federal government to increase their allowance.

A Liberal leader once said ‘Labor’s plan for fiscal repair is a Liberal government’. It’s funny because it is true, but there will be no repair under this plan if the Liberal Party remains mired in culture warfare at the expense of bread and butter issues. And with the public service about to lose 5 per cent of its headcount, the definition of bread and butter issues just got bigger.

In short, now is the time for the Liberal Party to bunker down and ruthlessly reduce its messaging to a few key points that resonate with the voters it needs to win back from Labor in order to regain government. If it can do that, it can be competitive politically and electorally again, and it can save Victoria from financial ruin. Again.