Matthew Guy 2.0 and the ongoing IBAC debacle have improved the Liberals’ chances, but not enough to win.

Mr Guy has learnt the value of quietly putting a message of hope rather than loudly harping and criticising since he became Opposition Leader.

And he has several things going for him right now. The pandemic has resulted in long lockdowns, with many businesses and families suffering. IBAC continues to uncover unsavoury practices in the ALP. It has claimed another minister, Luke Donnellan, bringing to a total of four who have lost their jobs because of the issues IBAC is looking into.

It’s true that branch stacking or even the use of electoral staff for party work are not unique to the Labor Party. The Liberal Party has its own skeletons on those fronts.

But IBAC is not chasing Liberal transgressions.

The constant references by witnesses at IBAC to specific ethnic groups branch stacking is upsetting for many legitimate Labor members of ethnic background. Many feel Labor will increasingly make ethnic political participation and representation more difficult. Labor’s reputation as the party of diversity, and consequently its vote among these communities, may suffer.

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All of this means the next election is likely to be much more competitive.

Guy has generally stuck to his new script with one early lapse when he got animated and used the dreaded “outrageous” word.

He pulled back and has since also managed to deliver a (slightly) more moderate Tim Smith and (temporarily) pulled Bernie Finn into line. Guy is capable of more cut -through than former leader Michael O’Brien. However, he leads an opposition that has collectively failed to gain traction against the Andrews government and has a poor record on diversity.

So, the question is: Can Guy reinvent the Liberal Party as well as himself? At the last election Guy’s reputation was eroded by the famous meal that included an alleged crime figure. This was seized upon by Labor and relentlessly contrasted to the Liberals’ law and order stance. In this context Guy desperately needed a cut-through signature principled stance. It never came.

When Ted Baillieu won an unlikely election to become premier in 2010, a major reason for his success was that he overrode forces close to the Michael Kroger camp and announced that the Liberal Party would put the Greens last in all state ballots.

Baillieu’s stance had an immediate effect. The electorate saw a leader of the Liberal Party prepared to take on party apparatchiks and make decisions based on principle.

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In the 2018 election Guy did not take the kind of principled stance that Baillieu had taken because he had to deal with a resurgent Kroger who preferred pragmatism over principle in preference distributions, and fear over hope in the Liberal message.

Both Jeff Kennett and Baillieu called for Kroger’s resignation after the drubbing the party received in 2018. Baillieu noted that: “The campaign didn’t work, the policies didn’t work, the administration didn’t work.”

I saw this first-hand in the campaign in which my daughter, Kat Theophanous, ousted the newly elected Greens member for Northcote, Lidia Thorpe. Kroger wanted to help Lidia Thorpe get re-elected in the hope that if the election was close and the Labor Party needed the Greens to govern Thorpe would be a disruptive force.

Kroger went to extraordinary lengths. He couldn’t quite get the Liberal Party to preference Thorpe but he did the next best – or worst – thing and put out a split ticket with one side preferencing Labor and the other the Greens. Not only did this lack principle, but it also confused Liberal voters and damaged Matthew Guy.

Think about this. The Liberal Party helping the Greens get elected through preferences is akin to the Labor Party helping Pauline Hanson or Clive Palmer candidates get elected. In my opinion both are unprincipled. The Greens and the Palmer Hanson lot will no doubt try to blackmail the major parties into preferencing them. The question is will they resist?

I know Guy well. As planning minister, he appointed me to the then Metropolitan Planning Authority board. For me, it showed he was prepared to set aside ideological differences and appoint across the political divide despite pushback from some colleagues.

Guy’s new posture may help.

But he will have to add principled positions as Baillieu did and convince the electorate that the Liberals support women and diversity to have a show.

Guy has big challenges on this front and there are still many in his party, including Kroger, who are champing at the bit for the party to be pragmatic rather than principled and to weaponize fear rather than hope in the election campaign.

To win, Guy not only has to overcome these obstacles. He has to overcome Labor’s advantage of incumbency and its massive majority, with more than twice the number of seats in parliament.

By the time the election comes around in a year, lockdowns will be a fading memory but the strong leadership by Daniel Andrews and his team in getting us through a pandemic and the economic growth Victoria will experience will emerge as powerful reasons to vote Labor.

With Guy as leader, Labor cannot take victory for granted at the next election.

Still, despite the change of leader, I wouldn’t be placing bets on a Liberal win just yet.

Theo Theophanous is a columnist and former Victorian Labor Minister.