The Victorian Liberals have installed a moderate who was pro the Voice to Parliament and pro climate policy.

Bewildering.

It was a ‘blink and you missed it’ coup with MP Jess Wilson snatching the Victorian Liberal Leadership off Brad Battin. The move makes the former staffer to Josh Frydenberg the first female leader in the 76 years since the party was started in 1949.

Not that Ms Wilson should dwell on that point, given how badly playing the ‘first female’ card has gone for embattled Federal Leader, Sussan Ley.

During her first speech, Jess Wilson claimed her top priorities were the Budget, the youth crime crisis, access to healthcare, and home ownership.

There is credible reason to hope that fixing the Budget is something a Liberal government could do under her watch.

And yet these are not the issues likely to win an election.

Fury over the Treaty and its creation of race politics and inequality among Victorian citizens is something voters desperately want Liberal leadership on. Their second biggest priority is mass migration which has fuelled the housing crisis and deterioration of public safety.

How can the Liberals fight Labor on their Treaty process and withdraw it within 100 days of government (their only popular policy) with a leader who went all-in on the Voice Treaty Truth referendum?

There will need to be some immediate and strong statements from Ms Wilson making clear her intentions on the Treaty or the minor conservative parties will devour her election chances.

The same goes for her position on Net Zero. Are regional Victorians going to be offered up as fodder for climate pledges and renewable investors? If Ms Wilson can offer binding assurances that some of this destructive climate legislation will be reversed, they may forgive her previous views.

The sudden change of leader makes sense of the social media frenzy Brad Battin has engaged in for the previous few weeks. While perfectly sensible, and something other Liberals should try, it’s now clear this was a last-ditch attempt to salvage sinking opinion polls.

Mr Battin had the unenviable task of rescuing the Liberal Party from John Pesutto’s disastrous leadership which included a civil war between the factions. The treatment of popular MP, Moira Deeming, was so egregious it is very nearly the only thing Liberal voters outside of Victoria know about the state party.

Brad Battin was left to fight for votes on the back of youth crime, but even here he stumbled with calls that originally supported the banning of machetes (something which has since turned into an exercise in the waste of public money through the machete surrender bins).

If we are being honest, Matthew Guy’s term in office wasn’t much better. Certainly, being followed around by guys dressed as giant lobsters didn’t help.

The Liberal Party has to shake off its poor decisions and flat policy with a new leader. Clean house, so to speak.

As Battin told reporters today of the vote that saw him lose the leadership, ‘The vote didn’t go my way.’

He added, ‘The Victorian Liberal Party need to make sure that we’re on path to ensure that we can get into power at the next election, because we need to see genuine change and we can’t just wait for it to happen. Politics isn’t about just being inside the Parliament. It’s actually about people. It’s about the people we’re supposed to be representing. In the time I’ve been in this role, it’s been an absolute privilege.’

Changing leaders now could be seen as opportunistic and indicate that the Liberals can sense the weakness in Jacinta Allan’s premiership.

Labor’s radical pivot on youth justice, much to the shrieking and complaining of bleeding-heart activists, indicates that Labor is now more frightened of the vengeance of the voting public than they are of the parasitic and over-stuffed bureaucracy.

Allan’s policies for adult time for violent crime, extensive sentences for gang leaders, and new punishments for those who attack retail staff is a clear attempt to head-off the Liberals in case they try to replicate the success of Queensland Premier David Crisafulli.

The Victorian Liberals will have to do more than echo Labor’s new mantra on crime.

At 35, the Member for Kew is a young Opposition Leader with a pre-political history in ‘energy and climate policy’ along with ‘digital security’ and ‘Covid response’ for the business community.

And, as MSN points out, ‘[Wilson] has represented a more moderate wing of the party, breaking with her colleagues to become the only Victorian Liberal MP who supported the Indigenous Voice to Parliament publicly.’

During her maiden speech, only a few short years ago, Ms Wilson said:

‘Let me also say something on climate action, an issue which is important to me and the community in Kew. I spent the last five years working in energy and climate policy. I have helped to bring large businesses to the table to develop a policy agenda and work out solutions to achieving a Net Zero economy.

‘We have seen an incredible acceleration in the transition over a short time, but we must be honest and acknowledge it gets harder from here. How we achieve the transitions matters to Victorians’ livelihoods.

‘The transition must be a market-based approach, not through top-down regulation. Governments must take the least-cost, most-efficient pathway, not the politically convenient.’

Generally, her messaging appears to be tilting toward family, education, lowering the tax burden on Victorians, and calling out the government over its use of public money.

There is no denying that this is three leaders in 12 months. The Liberals are trying to work their way through an identity crisis created by policy incoherency.

They have picked the Moderates.

It seems the only way the Liberals will be returned to power in Victoria is if the Labor Party gets itself into such a mess it surrenders the State voluntarily.