Luckily, we have been able to escape the Pothole State for a few weeks. The car is safely in the garage, resting up for its next encounter with the goat tracks that are now common in and around Melbourne.

Thankfully, the pigeon carrier service has been working overtime and we have been staying abreast of developments – should that be shenanigans? – in the Victorian Liberal party. I use the term Liberal party with some caution because so many Liberal state parliamentarians are clearly liberal in name only (LINO). Talk about wet – many of them make Niagara Falls look like a desert.

The crescendo for last year was the legal judgment against the then Leader of the Opposition, John Pesutto, who was found to have defamed Moira Deeming, member of the Legislative Council. She had also been a member of the parliamentary wing of the Victorian Liberal party until she was expelled after a vote of Victorian Liberal parliamentarians. (Note that Pesutto is the member for Hawthorn, an inner-city seat that covers part of the Teal-held federal seat of Kooyong.)

It is too easy to conclude that Deeming’s transgression was to attend a rally for women’s rights which was subsequently invaded by neo-Nazi sympathisers.  No one in their right mind could blame her for that unsavoury pack of activists turning up. But Pesutto and his band of LINO supporters had other ideas.

Evidently, he thought he was in with a chance of ‘winning the week’ against the then premier, Dan Andrews. As if, I thought at the time. But that was Pesutto’s pathetic excuse for defaming Deeming and organising her expulsion from the party.

Of course, the real reason that Deeming had to go was that she is a conservative – or should that be a Conservative. She believes that biological women should have rights that should not be infringed upon by trans people. To her, the family plays a central role in a functional society and that role should be respected. She has no time for identity politics, something which preoccupies the thoughts of Labor and LINO politicians alike.

Forget all that carry-on about the Liberal party being a broad church. In Victoria, Pesutto and his merry band of wet confrères preferred to expel Deeming rather than accommodate a difference of views. The evidence put forward in the defamation case clearly showed it was not just the intolerance of Pesutto that was unmistakable; the small-mindedness was shared by a number of senior colleagues.

The amazing development after Pesutto’s emphatic loss in the defamation case – he is up for several millions of dollars for the payout and both sets of legal costs – was his belief that he could hold on as Leader of the Opposition and that Deeming’s exclusion from the party should stand. The delusion lasted a week or so before the party came to its senses and voted for a new leader, a new deputy leader and the reinstatement of Deeming. By rights, this is the last we should hear of Pesutto.

On the face of it, newly installed Liberal leader, Brad Battin, has a substantial task to restore some order in the ranks of his party but, more importantly, take it up to the Allan Labor government. In fact, the second job looks like a walk in the park compared with the first.

The pigeons had also delivered the news of the retirement of Tim Pallas, the long-serving Victorian Labor state treasurer. You never got the impression that he was in the driver’s seat. Rather he dutifully took orders from Dan and then Jacinta.

What he should have been telling these disastrous premiers was that the state simply couldn’t afford to expand the public sector without end and to commission ill-considered massive infrastructure projects. Either he was ignored or he didn’t tell them in the first place – my money is on the second option. And let’s not even think about the pathetic role that the bureaucrats in the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance have played over the past decade or so.

The figures tell you all you need to know. When Timbo – former official of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, what else – first took the reins, government debt was a tad over $20 billion. When he left office – no doubt he will pop up on the board of one of the industry super funds – total government debt for the state was over $155 billion or nearly $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the state. It’s heading for over $200 billion.

To be sure, the Covid spending was part of the story, but bear in mind the insane overreaction of Dan the Man – lengthy lockdowns, school closures, a bizarre set of restrictions – would obviously necessitate more government spending. But government spending in the state was already out of control before the pandemic hit.

Each year, Timbo would make a modest prediction about the growth of employee expenses, the single biggest item in the state budget. Each year, the previous forecast would look way too low relative to the actual outcome. But Timbo would try the same trick year after year.

As for project selection and management in Victoria, the less said the better. Having blown over $1 billion on a project that was never built – the East West Link – the State Labor government then behaved like a Kardashian at a high-end shoe shop. It ordered far too many CFMEU-dominated projects with clearly underestimated final costs as well as impractical deadlines.

It has been a complete fiasco. The underground rail project has been massively delayed and the costs have blown out to over twice the original estimates. Fearing the loss of a serious photo opportunity associated with its opening at a convenient political time – for Labor, that is – the Victorian taxpayer has been forced to throw even more money at the seriously overpaid workers to get to the finish line. Again, Timbo just went along with the ruse.

While it’s relatively small beer, the Victorian government, with Timbo in charge – he also had the title, Minister for Economic Growth, pause for laugher – set up the Venture Growth Fund (VGF) at the behest of former Labor premier (and China pal) John Brumby.

It has been a complete disaster, with most of the money soaked up by incompetent bureaucrats who don’t have the faintest clue about doing venture capital deals. But you will be pleased to know that all VGF loans ‘will need to meet the Victorian government’s ESG governance policies’.

So, Brad, go for it. The economic record of the Victorian Labor government is so appalling you can’t miss. Per capita income is now close to that in Tasmania, it is only a matter of time before the state’s credit rating is downgraded (adding to the already enormous interest bill) and more people start to flee the state, in part because of the crazy additional taxes Timbo snuck in during his last few years in office.

All Liberal politicians need to put their personal grievances in their parliamentary lockers and keep the doors shut. There is a real chance the Liberal party could win the next election – it’s not until the end of 2026. In the meantime, there needs to be a plan about what the party should achieve in the first and subsequent terms in government. Helping Peter Dutton win seats in Victoria should also be a high priority. There’s lots to be gained and very little to lose.