The president of the Victorian Liberals, Philip Davis, has warned his party to unite ahead of the 2026 election or “we will be in a crisis”, after he survived a leadership challenge.
Davis defeated his immediate predecessor, Greg Mirabella, in a vote at the Victorian Liberal party’s state council at Moonee Valley racecourse on Saturday by 493 votes to 404.
The result is a major win for the Liberal moderate grouping, after Davis’s entire ticket also retained their positions on the party’s powerful administrative committee (which was then renamed the “state executive”).
The showdown followed a campaign described by one party member as the “nastiest, most toxic” they had been involved in.
Just days before the vote, the Victorian Liberal party director Stuart Smith was forced to resign after text messages were leaked in which he mocked the party’s women’s council and joked that upper house MP Bev McArthur had dementia.
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Davis said after the vote on Saturday that the week had “not been the highlight of my life or presidency, to be blunt”.
“I hope we don’t see the like of it ever again,” he told party faithful.
While he acknowledged “not everybody will be happy” with the result, he pleaded for party unity.
“If we are incapable of governing ourselves and being able to win in 2026, in my view we will be in a crisis,” Davis said.
“All of us need to do the best we can. And I know sometimes in politics – I’ve been in politics now for 50 years – the elbows go out and it’s very hard to get over it. But you’ve got to set those differences aside, kiss, shake hands and make up.”
The former MP, who served in state parliament for more than two decades, first won the presidency in September 2023 by just 11 votes and has fended off two challenges since.
He was instrumental in drafting the $1.5m loan to former party leader John Pesutto to help him pay defamation costs owed to Moira Deeming, which was approved by the party’s administrative committee in June.
Mirabella is understood not to have been supportive of the loan.
While the makeup of the committee is yet to be finalised, if Davis secured a majority his grouping could move to block Deeming from being preselected again and push for the suspension of committee member Colleen Harkin.
The group flexed its power on Saturday when it successfully carried a motion to remove the immediate past president – currently Mirabella – from the committee after 12 months.
“We need to draw a line in the sand and move on from this,” one member, who declined to be named, said.
Battin, meanwhile, used his speech to announce a $100m plan to tackle crime, which included a pledge to introduce Jack’s law – a Queensland law that permits police to randomly detain any person to search them with a metal detecting wand – in the state if elected next year.
The law was named after teenager Jack Beasley who was fatally stabbed while out with friends on the Gold Coast in 2019 and his father, Brett, welcomed the commitment.
“It is making a real difference in Queensland, and it will make a real difference in Victoria,” Beasley said.
However, a Griffith University review of the first year of the law in Queensland found no reduction in knife crime after a year and risks of stereotyping.
The Victorian government hasn’t ruled out its introduction but the police minister, Anthony Carbines, said the state’s current stop and search powers were already effective at getting weapons off the streets.
Under the opposition’s plan, a Coalition-run government would also establish a youth crime prevention program and residential service for repeat and serious offenders aged between 12 and 17.
The federal deputy Liberal leader, Ted O’Brien, also addressed the crowd, warning of the “enormous task ahead” for the party.
“The starting point is for us to double down on the values which unite us,” he said.
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