On Friday, I spent an afternoon at the H R Nicholls Society annual conference, as a guest of the Society. It was a gathering of sound economic minds, including former our distinguished weekly columnist Judith Sloan, former federal Treasurer Peter Costello, and current Tasmanian Treasurer (and, I discovered, regular Morning Double Shot reader), Eric Abetz.

I didn’t turn up, however, expecting any useful contribution from the Victorian Liberal Opposition. After all, they’ve barely made an economic dent against the high-spending, high-taxing, huge-borrowing profligacy of the Daniel Andrews-Jacinta Allan Labor state government…

In the current Victorian parliamentary term, the Vic Libs’ treasury spokesmen – especially James Newbury who failed to put on a boxing glove in his tenure, let one lay one on Labor – were more concerned about numbers in their viperous party room than Victoria’s red ink-soaked balance sheet.

Whether recently-appointed Shadow Treasurer Jess Wilson would have effectively taken up the cudgels to Labor while working hard on a pain-to-gain plan for budget repair and economic revival, is now moot. Wilson was, of course, last week parachuted into the poison chalice job of Vic Lib and Opposition Leader.

Wilson, very rightly, has declared budget repair to be her top policy and political priority. However wet she is on social policy, she has the intellect, ability, and career background to make a go of it, provided she has the right (and Right) people to help her, both in the leader’s office and, especially, in her parliamentary team (not that that rabble deserves to be dignified by such a term).

Most importantly, that depends overwhelmingly on appointing a Shadow Treasurer who has imbibed fundamental Liberal values of capitalism, free markets, and fiscal responsibility. An individual who has the ability to explain and communicate to jaded Victorians why budget repair means pain as well as gain, can win the confidence of business and confront the naysayers, has extensive pre-parliamentary business, entrepreneurial experience, and can think on their feet.

It can’t be Newbury, or his immediate predecessor, Brad Rowswell. While Wilson owes them hugely for their role in ensuring her the numbers to depose Brad Battin as leader – Rowswell as a consistent Wilson supporter and Newbury as the party room’s resident Vicar of Bray, backing whoever looks a winner – they’ve had their chance as Shadow Treasurer, and neither has enough real-world experience of being in business as an employer or C-suite decision-maker. Wilson can’t go back to the future with them in Treasury.

But at the Nicholls conference, I think I saw the solution to this personnel problem: the Liberals’ industrial relations spokesman, Richard Welch.

Welch wasn’t meant to be there. He was sent in place of the newly-elevated Wilson to give the state Opposition’s address, which he did in a rather formulaic, inherited (if tweaked) formal speech. What impressed me was his performance in a panel discussion about the state of industrial relations and the spectre of artificial intelligence on the future workforce. It’s just my opinion, but Welch was outstanding. He was very much pro-free markets and large-scale deregulation; clear-headed about macro-economic challenges; saw the challenges of doing business in the basket case state that is Victoria; was determined to break union power with meaningful industrial relations reform; and very thoughtful on how AI will affect the future workplace, and how businesses will do business in an increasingly AI-saturated environment.

He sounded like a Treasurer and, in a party room of leaners, presented as a genuine lifter. I was impressed enough to look up his bio: a first-term Upper House MP (and first-termers being promoted is suddenly fashionable), he’s had several private sector career evolutions as a merchant banker and then entrepreneur, not only inventing and bringing to market early AI technology but capital raising and then establishing a factory in India to manufacture the hardware to support it.

Why Welch chose to become an MP in a dysfunctional state Opposition would be interesting to know, but his 2024 maiden speech presents him as an economic and social conservative – although, as he told the HR Nicholls conference, he’s an anti-establishment conservative because, ‘Try living in a Labor-run state for a decade, and see who you end up siding with!’

Prepared to work hard, economically literate, real-world business experience and unashamedly conservative: What’s not to like?

Here’s my friendly memo to Jess Wilson. Give Richard Welch the Treasury gig. Face down the placemen and numbers men who think it’s theirs. That Welch is in the Upper House doesn’t matter as, after all, Jacinta Allan’s puppet Treasurer, Jaclyn Symes, is also an MLC.

If you want the Victorian Opposition to be taken seriously as an alternative government and win next year’s election, the likes of Welch need to be in the forefront. Stand up to your friends, and especially to unreliable turncoats who not only don’t have the pedigree for the job, but whose highest loyalties are to themselves. It will pay dividends.

If you don’t, the Vic Lib clown show will roll on, and your chances of becoming Premier will roll away with it.