Victorian Liberal Party

Ted Baillieu is the current member for Hawthorn and Opposition leader.  He is a member of the Victorian Liberal party.

He is a former architect.  He told the local paper that the three key issues for the electorate were street violence and rising crime, failures in the transport and health systems and rising state taxes and utility bills.

Under his leadership, the Coalition has supported the Brumby Government’s climate change bill and the 20 per cent cut in greenhouses emissions by 2020 now passed into legislation.ment. While the Coalition has received plaudits for some of its proposed transport initiatives, such as more train carriages, new stations,  promises to introduce  rail services to Tullamarine and Avalon  and the introduction of a central  transport authority,  a focus on climate change and a plan to reach the 20 per cent target have failed to yet materialize.

The Coalition has not addressed Hazelwood, the state’s most polluting brown coal generator, and backs the proposed new brown-coal/gas power station, HRL. Its wind farm policy would make it harder for wind farms to start up.

There have been a number of policy announcements by the Victorian Liberal National Coalition that have been classified as Environmental Policies. Upon closer inspection there are a number that really are imposters e.g. Family Fun Day Every Weekend under Coalition’s Free Zoos Policy and then there’s the Coalition Landfill Rescue Package for Casey Families Policy. There is very little in the way of quantification of impact on climate change of their policies and very little in the way of substantial policies.

It therefore requires a leap of faith to believe that the Coalition under Ted Baillieu is serious about reaching the 20 per cent target or urgently cutting greenhouse emissions.