Big beneficiaries of Victorian money raising stories are the Greens

A little bit of excitement for Victorian Labor Party campaigners this morning when they saw that The Australian had decided that some kind of investigation into some kind of fund raising by a couple of insignificant Liberal Party candidates was worthy of front page treatment.

Quite strange news sense for a national daily because no one outside of Melbourne’s Spring Street would actually give a hoot but perhaps it’s indicative of the News Corp head honchos wanting to give a sign that during this campaign they will not be venting their anti-Labor spleen. Whatever. On the ordinary voter it will have no influence whatsoever. Scandals, even real ones, rarely do and if they do it’ only after months and months of repetition. The best (or the worst, depending on your political prejudice) that can be said about this story is that it took the Victorian government off whatever their planned strategy was for the day.

Actually, the party most likely to be suffering from stories about political fund raising in Victoria is Labor. The pictures of Labor leader Daniel Andrews mixing with Melbourne’s rich and famous surely will be turning the minds of inner-city lefties even further towards the Greens.

Getting an assurance from Lloyd Williams that James Packer was doing everything in his power to help the state Labor cause was not really a good look for anyone interested in matters of government governance.

And if support from that quarter was not enough to suggest that fund raising has made something rotten in the state of Labor then perhaps the sight of Victoria’s richest family lending a helping hand might do the trick.