Despite trailing in polls by a reasonably comfortable margin, Victorian state opposition leader Matthew Guy is firmly on the attack in the lead-up to the November 24th election, and his apparent campaign strategy seems utterly hell-bent on pandering exclusively to the furthest, sharpest edges of conservatism imaginable.
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Guy, along with the Victorian Liberal Party, trails incumbent Premier Daniel Andrews by a hefty 8 points in the most recent two-party preferred polls released today, with Labor holding a 54 – 46 lead.
Despite this, Guy is running plays straight out of the Federal Liberal Party’s Wentworth playbook, promoting far-right policy at the expense of literally anything else.
Case in point, Guy (who once forked out millions in taxpayers money to settle a lawsuit he was the cause of because he was terribly scared of losing his job) addressed the Australian Christian Lobby (aka the group that vehemently backed in the No movement on the marriage equality plebiscite and who birthed unto the world one Lyle Shelton whom should now, and forevermore, eat shit) and asserted that, if elected, not only will the VicLibs axe the vital Safe Schools initiative that gives hard right conservatives waking nightmares much like plane crashes do for me, but they would also reintroduce religious instruction into state schools while scrapping Indigenous history.
The long and short of it is that Daniel Andrews previously removed Jesus from public schools, arguing that as secular institutions it’s not really Government-employed teachers’ duty to teach kids that Christianity is the one and only. Instead, schools were allowed to run religious instruction but only during lunch breaks and before or after school on an opt-in basis. As a result, many schools dropped the programs altogether.
Guy, addressing a Baptist Church in Burwood, stated his plan would be to “bring back religious instruction in schools because it’s very important,” which is kind of akin to him saying “lead paint is unbanned now because I never once drank it.”
Interestingly enough while asserting that teachers should tell kids about religion, Guy also asserted that Safe Schools will also go because “a government I lead will always believe that you determine the values by which you raise your children, not the education department,” which just about sets a land speed record for contradictory reasoning.
On a completely unrelated note, the VicLibs are campaigning under the slogan “Get Back In Control,” which is very funny when you consider the fact that the URL getbackincontrol.com points to a Danish colostomy and incontinence support company.
Pretty apt for a bloke who is clearly pissing his pants on a minute-to-minute basis.
