Another Own Goal by the Victorian Liberal Party!

Last Sunday the 18th of June was a significant day for the Victorian Liberal Party.

Following the announcement on Wednesday the 31st of May by current State Liberal MP Ryan Smith that he was planning to retire from politics; an announcement that now triggers a by-election for the Legislative Assembly seat of Warrandyte, Victorian Liberal Party members (rank and file) gathered to choose who would contest the seat of Warrandyte for the party.

There were a number of candidates who put up their hands for the seat and as a consequence, they had to have several rounds of voting to get down to the final 2.

The final 2 was a vote between Nicole Werner and a young 22-yr old woman named Antonietta Di-Cosmo.

So what we had essentially was a contest between a young woman who was looking to make her first foray into politics and another woman who actually contested the seat of Box Hill and suffered a 4.5% swing on 2PP against her.

There was one piece of good news before the final vote, they had 2 women going for the right to represent the Liberal Party for the seat of Warrandyte. It shows that while yes; the Liberal Party still do have a problem when it comes to women, they are at least slowly starting to learn.

All those rank-and-file members had to do was make the right choice. Seems simple, right?

In this instance, it wasn't that simple because what they ended up doing was voting for Nicole Werner over Antonietta Di-Cosmo.

Nicole Werner was chosen to represent the Victorian Liberal Party in the Warrandyte Byelection

So why is this an own goal by the Victorian Liberal Party? They had a democratic process that whittled down the number of nominees from nine candidates to just two and then they had conducted a fair vote to decide who the winner would be.

Surely this is a good thing for democracy?

Antonietta Di-Cosmo made the final two against Nicole Werner and will definitely be a future Liberal candidate

Well, this is unfortunately where things get very murky.

Nicole Werner before turning to politics was a Pastor and a Business Development Manager for a food relief charity Empower Australia, which was set up by the Planetshakers Church.

The reason why this matters is that while the Planetshakers Church is advertised as a church for all where everyone is welcome, the Planetshakers Church is officially an evangelical Christian Pentecostal megachurch.

Given how our previous Prime Minister Scott Morrison was a Pentecostal Christian and proceeded to treat most of the nation with absolute contempt, surely this is something to be cautious of. NOTE: I am not saying at this point that all Pentecostal Christians are bad as that is a gross generalisation that is, I assume flat-out wrong.

Here's the problem though: The Christian right-wing/far-right wing has been slowly trying to take over the Victorian Liberal Party. These people (and I mean no disrespect at this point) leading that charge have absolutely no clue about what Victoria is. These people want to restore Conservative values in a state that is probably the most "progressive" in Australia. To tackle Victorian Labor, you need to present sensible policies but also present yourselves as a "moderate" alternative.

The people who voted in that final contest had a chance to either vote for someone who is a known Pentecostal or vote for a fresh face. They chose the religious option. I want to make two things clear at this point 1) While it comes across that I am against religious people in politics, I believe you can be a religious person as long as you don't let your religion get in the way of commonsense 2) I don't presume to know whether Antonietta is religious or not.

The truth is, the Victorian Liberal Party had a potential opportunity to show that they had learned and were interested in modernising by choosing Antonietta. Having her as the candidate would've been a great win, not just for women but also for young people as they could look and see what could be possible. I'm not saying she would win the seat automatically (no one knows that yet) but she wouldn't have done their chances of retaining the seat of Warrandyte any harm at all.

Unfortunately, they chose to go down the other path where a fiercely religious person would be the candidate and thus, continue the plan of the Christian Right to try and take over the Victorian Liberal Party.

This was a missed opportunity by those who voted and it leaves me shaking my head in absolute disbelief, even a week later as I write this. There is unfortunately no other way to say it. This is a very bad own-goal by the Victorian Liberal Party that could come back to bite them when the vote takes place sometime around August/September.