If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and steals bread off tourists like a duck – well, it’s probably a small yapping poodle, according to the Victorian Electoral Commission.

Despite carrying similar branding, sharing wealthy backers such as Climate 200, copy-pasting policy, using very similar websites, and in most ways presenting themselves to the public as a ‘movement’ – the Teals remain ‘Independent’.

That didn’t stop the Liberal Party from lodging a formal complaint with the Victorian Election Commission against Teal Independents which Climate 200 has called ‘baseless’ and ‘vexatious’. It’s all a bit late for Matthew Guy, with no hope of the issue being resolved before the November 26 election.

In the meantime, the ‘machine of Teal’ is amassing a war chest to target Liberal seats. If they follow the same pattern as the federal election, Teals in Parliament will become just another green group that support legislation favouring renewables investment and ever-increasing coercive ‘climate’ legislation.

It’s a dangerous prospect for Victoria, whose election map looks like a red bullet wound with a tiny bit of gangrene in the centre leaving the rest of the state held hostage by inner-city virtue-seeking politics.

Matthew Guy’s Victorian Liberals probably thought they’d be safe if they polished their ‘green’ credentials ahead of the state election, but – like blue ribbon wealthy seats in Sydney – the Teals are waging a vicious ‘battle of virtue’.

Hawthorn and Kew are in the firing line, with the Liberal Party letterboxing in an attempt to convince voters that ‘a vote for the Teals is a vote for Daniel Andrews’.

The Teals, who paint themselves as eco-friendly conservatives – a bit of Liberal ‘blue’ dipped in ‘green’ to make ‘teal’ – are actually much closer to a corporate lobbying group backed by the deep pockets of renewables barons.

And therein lies the problem for the Liberals.

After agreeing to the lie of ‘climate change’ and endorsing the need to rip up the energy grid in favour of ‘renewables’ – the Liberal Party have all-but endorsed the politics of ‘teal’. They are going to go the way of Dave Sharma and Josh Frydenberg, whose campaign posters could have been printed by the World Economic Forum and pinned up by the United Nations.

The Teals are fighting back on the green-front, insisting that the Liberals ‘support the indefinite logging of native forests’ and that voting for Matthew Guy is a vote to ‘destroy Victoria’s environment’.

This would be the perfect opportunity for Matthew Guy to point out how much logging is done to install wind turbines and solar panels – but he can’t, because he’s decided to subscribe to Net Zero (which is a neat bit of marketing, not a statement of fact).

The Liberal Party have instead chosen to scare voters with phrases like ‘Daniel Andrews for a second decade’. Those watching Victoria from afar think that’s a pretty alarming prospect, but Victorians living in the crucible of Big State Daddy culture have formed an emotional dependency on their tyrannical leader – just as the peasants in communists states cling to their dictators for fear of the unknown opposition.

It will take an economic calamity, such as the complete collapse of the power grid, to dislodge Daniel Andrews. Even then, to ditch Labor at the same time the Liberal Party are going to need a combative and ruthless politician to break down the castle walls of the Andrews Empire.

The small business owners, who once formed the basis of Liberal support, have lost their life’s work. This should play in Matthew Guy’s favour except that this generation of hard-working employers have lost faith in the political system. Who would risk their savings starting a business knowing that the government can shut it down for years at a time? These are smart people, and they understand that survival in Victoria is best achieved by taking public handouts in exchange for votes.

As for the young, they profited from Covid. They were paid more to sit at home watching Netflix than earning an honest living in a cafe or shop. It’ll be a long time before they realise that the Big State is not their friend and that easy money comes with some pretty nasty strings – like the installation of a glass ceiling at shoulder height, holding the economy back for decades.

‘A decade of Daniel Andrews’ sounds like Utopia to them. As with all Utopias, it’ll end as a dystopian horror – but that’s a long way off and no help to Matthew Guy, who has leaned far too heavily into the ‘nice guy’ persona to prosecute the case.

‘Don’t wake up this Sunday with a Daniel Andrews hangover. Vote Liberal.’

The hangover will come, but it’ll be after the energy grid is ripped up and replaced with ugly, rusting wind turbines and carpets of solar panels. When people’s energy bills have quadrupled and Andrews is still insisting that ‘renewables are cheap energy!’ maybe Victorians will realise that they were lied to. Or maybe they’ll wait until they’re huddled around candles they’ve had to import from New South Wales…

Matthew Guy and the Victorian Liberals are desperate to fight this election on Health, corruption, and debt, given these are weak points for the Daniel Andrews campaign. If they are forced to fight a separate war on climate against the Teals, they could very well lose crucial seats and vanish into obscurity like their Western Australian kin.