It’s 2.30pm on a Wednesday in Melbourne’s CBD and Victoria’s opposition leader, Brad Battin, is nursing a Guinness in a corner booth of the Elephant and Wheelbarrow.
“Should I split the G?” he says, referring to the pub game of drinking down to the horizontal line in the Guinness logo.
“It’s actually a lot to drink, so I probably shouldn’t.”
This is the setting Battin has chosen for our interview – one of his “favourites” from his days as a police officer and reputedly where he and a handful of loyal MPs gather after parliamentary sitting days.
It’s all part of “brand Brad”. While his new suits might be sharply tailored, the image he’s trying to sell to voters is deliberately rough around the edges, plain-speaking and in tune with his outer suburban electorate of Berwick.
“I go to the pub and I do the pub test,” Battin says. “And when I say the pub test, I mean I literally go and ask people about a whole range of issues.”
He’ll head to the Berwick Springs hotel to speak to families and “the Cardi” – local nickname for the Cardinia hotel – to check the mood among tradies.
“I’ll buy a few beers, sit down and talk,” he says.
With Jacinta Allan’s popularity tanking and the long-dominant Labor government beginning to look vulnerable, attention is slowly shifting to the man who hopes to take her place as premier.
Battin landed the job in December, becoming the fourth leader of the Victorian Liberal party in four years and replacing the Hawthorn MP, John Pesutto. It was his third tilt at the job and marked the end of a bitter internal campaign waged by supporters of the MP Moira Deeming, whom Pesutto expelled from the party room in 2023.
Battin aligned himself with the party’s staunch conservative wing, including the Western Victoria MP, Bev McArthur, a key Deeming ally who was subsequently promoted to the shadow cabinet. Deeming herself was also returned to the party room.
The messy affair led Labor to describe Battin’s victory as a “hostile rightwing takeover of the Victorian Liberal party”, a label Battin says “doesn’t fit”.
Battin describes himself as an atheist and rejects that he’s a conservative, saying instead that he’s “common sense”.
He has repeatedly ruled out any changes to Victoria’s abortion laws or its ban on gay conversion therapy. He’s tough on crime but also backed raising the age of criminal responsibility. He supports justice reinvestment and alternatives to incarceration but also tougher sentences for serious offenders. He wants to reform the education system, but steers clear of arguments favoured by his federal colleagues about “indoctrination” in schools, instead arguing for more options for students who “aren’t suited” to the academic track of finishing year 12, and introducing classes on financial literacy.
“I don’t really sit anywhere … I feel like left and right is just irrelevant,” he says.
Even as the state’s crime rate climbs, he stands by his calls for sweeping reforms to the justice system that would see fewer people in custody.
“We’ve got to stop locking people up that we’re mad at and start locking people up we are afraid of,” Battin says. “If you make that shift – the entire justice system will change for the better.”
He’s previously argued against jail time for low-level and white collar crimes, a view that has the support of strange bedfellows the Institute of Public Affairs and the Animal Justice party MP Georgie Purcell, with whom he’s developed a cordial working relationship.
With no consultation from the premier’s office, the crossbencher says she has had “no choice but to reach across the aisle” – and while they don’t always agree, Battin has an “open door”. Recently, she helped him with an injured turtle. They also talk tattoos.
“It’s not often that a Liberal leader is more progressive on a social issue,” Purcell says.
Shooting into the headlines
Battin’s education policies become more clear when you learn his background: he went to local public schools, dropped out at 15 and worked a string of jobs in retail, customer service and corrections before joining Victoria police, rising to senior constable.
Politics wasn’t discussed at home.
“There was no politics, no religion at our dinner table,” Battin says.
His mum ran the canteen at the Heinz factory in Dandenong, his dad worked in car sales before moving into insurance and then international development. It’s a biography more commonly seen on the other side of the aisle.
A career in politics was not a consideration until a conversation with the then upper house MP Gordon Rich-Phillips, a childhood friend, in the early 2000s. He joined the Liberal party in 2007 and was preselected for and then won the seat of Gembrook in 2010.
He kept a relatively low profile until 2017, when he shot into the headlines during Victoria’s fire services dispute for wrongly claiming that no professional firefighters had responded to the Black Saturday bushfires for the first five-and-a-half hours.
The backlash was swift.
“You’ve got to cut through the bullshit sometimes … and admit you’ve got it wrong,” he says.
More recently, he faced criticism for speaking at a rally attended by neo-Nazis (he left when he became aware), for his all-male leadership team, and for taking a cruise while the Labor government announced new bail laws, instead claiming he was visiting his cyclone-affected parents (he did visit his parents for one day after the four-day cruise).
He admits he should have been more upfront about the cruise, which was for a friend’s 50th, but says he spent most of it on the phone.
“I wasn’t out drinking margaritas all day.”
The incident led to some rumbling within the party room, but Battin insists they’re united and have created an environment where everyone “can speak up”.
“Not everyone’s going to be best friends,” he says. “But you can be professional.”
‘I’ve grown up differently to Peter’
Battin is less forthcoming about his federal colleagues, particularly during an election campaign.
He does, however, reveal a conversation with the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, about the “language” he would use when discussing the federal plan to build a nuclear reactor in the Latrobe Valley, and made it clear the state party was focused on boosting gas supply.
So far, his presence alongside Dutton has been limited to one photo opportunity at a petrol station in Caulfield to promote the proposed halving of the fuel excise.
He missed the press conference announcing a joint $3bn for Melbourne airport rail, where Dutton also committed to divert $2.2bn in federal funds from the Suburban Rail Loop, citing parliament commitments, but tells Guardian Australia his position on the project is more circumspect.
“I want the project cancelled today, but when we get to the election … and they say you’ve got to pay out $10bn and get nothing for it, that’s irresponsible, and I can’t do that,” he says.
“If there’s an exit clause and it costs us next to nothing – and we can reinvest that money elsewhere – I’m doing that.”
Despite earlier leaning on their shared police background, Battin appears keen to differentiate himself from Dutton.
“We’ve also got a lot of differences. I’ve grown up differently to Peter did,” Battin says.
“I had challenges that Peter may not have had and I think that changes who you are.”
Dutton is less popular in Victoria than in other states, and some of his remarks, such as his 2018 comments blaming “African gangs” for trapping scared Melburnians in their homes, have blown back on the state Liberal party.
Asked about those comments, Battin says he “won’t judge others” for past remarks but claims he “never” used the term himself and was “very cautious” about placing blame on the African community for the actions of individuals.
“I don’t believe that was the reason they were in a gang,” he says.
“I’m more of the Les Twentyman style, I’d go out there and engage and try to find ways to fix it rather than finger point.”
Once the federal election is over, Battin plans to focus on new policies, including on housing. He recently sold his investment property to his tenant and says such transactions should be incentivised with lower taxes.
“To me, it’s the ultimate outcome,” Battin says. “Shouldn’t we encourage that?”
He also wants a review of all housing-related taxes, including stamp duty, and is open to the federal government looking at negative gearing – with caution.
“If you take it away too quickly, or you change it, you’re going to cause massive issues through a rental market already under pressure,” Battin says.
The Liberal party, he adds, needs to decide who it’s backing when it comes to housing.
“The people I support the most … are a generation that wants to have a go and get the opportunities without being in competition with, effectively, people that can just outbid them,” he says.
Ultimately, though, the biggest issue, by Battin’s “pub test”, remains crime.
He’s pushing for more proactive patrols and investment in crime prevention – “practical, commonsense measures” such as the Coalition’s 2010 promise to recruit 900 protective services officers to patrol Melbourne’s railway stations every night. It was widely credited at the time with winning Ted Baillieu the election.
Though a very different leader to Baillieu, Battin shares the same goal: to convince Victorians it’s time for a change.
“We’ve got 599 days to go. Not that I’m counting,” he says.
