Liberal policy record

Jess Wilson has led the Victorian Liberals since 18 November 2025, when she replaced Brad Battin. Her deputy is David Southwick. The election is on 28 November 2026, and the party holds 20 Assembly seats and 12 in the Council Election Tracker .

This page is the record as it stands on 29 October 2026. Every commitment below is one the party has published, with its own costing where a figure exists and a plain note where none does. Caretaker begins on 3 November, so the platform is close to final.

The claim the campaign rests on

The Liberals and the Nationals are campaigning as a coalition, and the savings ledger belongs to both. When The Age asked how the health promise was paid for, the answer was the blanket claim: “All our commitments are fully costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office” The Age .

The flagship is SurgerySooner: $1.27bn over four years to send public patients to private hospitals at no cost to them. It promises 25,000 extra operations a year on contracts with more than 100 private hospitals and day surgeries Liberals . The stated aim is to halve the elective surgery waitlist ABC . The party says the whole cost is “wholly offset” by winding up Breakthrough Victoria, the state’s venture capital company.

The Age tested that offset on 12 October and found it $883m short The Age . About $1.1bn of the $1.27bn saving comes from repurposing capital funding earmarked for the next ten years. The other $170m comes from selling assets, most of them illiquid. Against a four-year operating cost, and using Innovation Victoria’s own budget figures, the two sides don’t meet.

The paper also reported how the offset was chosen. When senior campaign figures saw how close the two numbers were, it says, “they decided to use one to ‘rhetorically’ offset the cost of the other” The Age . The party declined to release the full costing behind either number.

There is no public test of the claim. The Parliamentary Budget Office costs election policies and platform summaries for party leaders when they ask, and publishes them when the leader asks for that too. So only the items the party chooses to release are visible Parliamentary Budget… . We found no 2026 pre-election assessment of the Liberal and Nationals platform on the office’s site. The only platform costing there is the 2022 document, which names Matthew Guy as leader.

A ledger that compares ten years with four

The party’s answer to criticism is arithmetic of its own. It says it has announced more than $24.5bn of savings. That total was restated on 20 October, when the party added $578m from selling the Melbourne Market at Epping and winding up the Melbourne Market Authority Liberals .

The ledger runs different horizons side by side. Winding up Breakthrough Victoria is booked at $1.27bn over a decade Liberals . Treaty repeal is booked at $948.3m over ten years Liberals . The hiring freeze is booked at $22bn over ten Liberals . The promises those savings are meant to fund are costed over four.

David Hayward, professor of public policy at RMIT, added the four-year numbers a different way. He found $6.4bn of cuts against $3.4bn of new spending and about $7bn of tax cuts, a shortfall he put near $9bn ABC . “There’s savings, but they don’t add up enough to compensate for the massive tax cuts,” he said.

Underneath sits a cash surplus by 2032 Liberals , and a signed guarantee in Our Plan that there will be “no new or increased taxes” Liberals . Saul Eslake told the ABC the two can only both hold if a government breaks one of them after the election ABC .

Tax: what would go, and what it would cost

First home buyers would pay no stamp duty on purchases up to $1m, which the party put at $1.09bn over four years in May 2025 Liberals ABC . That figure predates the 2026 budget and has not been re-released, so the current cost is unknown.

Land tax would return to a $300,000 threshold, phased over five years, which the party says saves 280,000 people up to $975 a year Liberals . Labor adopted the same policy on 4 October, which removed it as a point of difference between them ABC .

Payroll tax would lift its threshold to $1.2m by 2028–29, then cut the metropolitan rate to 4.8% from 2030–31, which the party says helps 23,000 businesses Liberals . No costing for it has been published.

Four repeals carry no figure at all: payroll tax on non-government schools, the payroll tax on GP clinics, the short-stay accommodation levy, and the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund Liberals Liberals . Replacing the fund with the Fire Services Property Levy is listed for legislation before Christmas in the first 100 days plan Liberals .

A toll cap of $50 a week would run for two years from 1 July 2027. It would be paid as a quarterly rebate through Service Victoria, for cars, light commercials and fleets of up to five Liberals . It is uncosted. Labor’s competing cap is $30 a week, costed at $191m for one year Labor .

Health beyond the flagship

The rest of the health package is capital builds and small programs. A $99m fund would build up to 10 patient transit lounges to ease ambulance ramping; the release doesn’t say over what period Liberals .

The new West Gippsland Hospital is $850m for 230 beds, a 33-space emergency department and 60 residential care beds ABC . Smaller lines include $10.4m towards proton beam therapy at Peter MacCallum Liberals . Hamilton’s emergency department and intensive care get $45m, Bairnsdale stage one $120m, and Goulburn Valley’s cancer centre stage two $95m Liberals .

Seventy protective services officers at seven hospitals, run as a two-year pilot, have no published cost Liberals .

Police and sentencing, none of it priced

The law and order offer reaches furthest and costs least clearly. It promises 3,000 more police, half to fill existing vacancies and half new. Half of the whole intake would be experienced officers from the UK, Ireland and New Zealand, on a $5,000 relocation allowance Liberals ABC . More than 40 closed or reduced-hours stations would reopen. No dollar figure has been published for any of it.

Adult Crime, Adult Time would move youth offences into the County Court. Twelve offences were added in April, bringing the list to 20, and five more in July, bringing it to 25 Liberals Liberals . The April additions included burglary, serious assault and attempted murder. The policy does not change the age at which a child can be charged. It changes which court hears the case.

The one-strike bail rule denies bail to anyone charged with an uplifted offence while on bail. It moves those applications to the County Court and removes the youth exemption for breaching bail Liberals . Neither the prison beds nor the sitting days that follow appear in any published costing.

Two more items carry no figure: 200 additional protective services officers across 119 stations, and a Court of Appeal split into criminal and civil divisions Liberals Liberals . The $100m for early intervention and rehabilitation is the exception, and it funds the residential Restart program for serious repeat offenders aged 12–17 Liberals .

Coercive control is no longer a live difference. The Liberals introduced a standalone offence bill in December 2025, and the government’s own bill passed on 17 September 2026 Liberals Parliament . What remains theirs alone is Clare’s Law, a right to ask about a partner’s history, which Labor voted against in November 2025 Liberals .

Energy: VNI West dies, nuclear stays unmentioned

VNI West would be cancelled. The party moved from “pause and review” in May to outright cancellation in August ABC . “As far as the Nationals and Liberals are concerned, VNI West is dead, buried and cremated,” the shadow energy minister, Emma Kealy, said. No cost has been published for walking away from a project with Commonwealth money in it.

The Western Renewables Link would be paused for a transmission review that also examines renewable energy zones and an alternative route Liberals . New firm generation would be bought through an Energy Security Requirement, a reliability scheme modelled on NSW and South Australia and expected to be met mostly by gas Liberals . It has no price.

The gas ban would be scrapped within 100 days and conventional onshore exploration reopened. Wilson puts the all-electric rules at up to $15,000 on the cost of a new home, and the party cites up to 830 petajoules of undiscovered onshore gas Liberals . Neither the repeal nor the exploration program is costed.

Coal would run to its technical end of life, wind farms would need 2km buffers, and objectors would regain VCAT appeal rights Liberals . On nuclear there is no state position at all. Our Plan doesn’t mention it, and Wilson’s office did not answer The National Account’s questions in October The National Account .

She also declined in November 2025 to recommit to the legislated target of net zero by 2045. Her answer was that there were “no plans to change what legislation has gone through the parliament” ABC .

Transport: pause the rail loop, build the roads

The Suburban Rail Loop would be paused. A Coalition government would halt tunnelling and order a review Guardian . No estimate has been published for the cost of stopping, for the contracts already signed, or for the $6bn the Commonwealth has put in AFR .

The biggest transport line is $1.7bn for 25 hybrid electric trains on the Melton and Wyndham Vale lines, which the release says doesn’t preclude electrification later Liberals . Roads get $5bn over four years and a promise to fix a million potholes ABC .

The Western Freeway gets $550m from the state alongside $1bn from the Commonwealth Liberals . Bellarine Link stage one is $335.1m, which the party says the Parliamentary Budget Office costed Liberals . Passenger trains would return to Mildura and Dimboola by mid-2029 for $51.2m Liberals .

On airport rail the record contradicts itself. Wilson promised a Keilor East station by 2031 in a video on 30 September. Her transport spokesman, Matthew Guy, said the next day that there was “no public-interest case for it” The Age . Wilson called his remarks “historic comments from a time and place”, 24 hours old, and recommitted. No release was issued and the promise isn’t in Our Plan.

Housing: no target of any kind

The planning package would fast-track 27 Precinct Structure Plans, expand the Capital City Zone, repeal the 70–30 target and return growth-area levies to local councils Liberals Liberals . None of it is costed.

The party has published no housing target of any kind. It repeals Labor’s 70–30 split and sets no replacement for it. There is no figure for supply, for approvals or for social housing in Our Plan or in any release we read Liberals .

Two parts of the package pull against each other. One promise is greater density in the inner city through the Capital City Zone. The other is to scrap “Labor’s high-rise activity centres in the suburbs” and return planning control to local residents Liberals Liberals . No document says which applies where.

Treaty, integrity and the regions

The Statewide Treaty framework would be repealed within 100 days. The party puts the saving at $948.3m over ten years, PBO-costed Liberals . Repeal would end the Statewide Treaty Act 2025 and the bodies it established. “Labor’s Treaty will spend a billion dollars on a bureaucracy that Victorians do not want and cannot afford,” Wilson said Liberals .

The Liberal release names no replacement body. First Nations Victoria, a standalone service delivery agency reporting quarterly on Closing the Gap, appears in the Nationals platform and in a Nationals statement, not in the Liberals’ Nationals . No cost has been published for standing it up. The $948.3m is booked as a saving, and the record gives no figure for what would replace the Treaty bodies.

On integrity, the party promises a royal commission into CFMEU misconduct, IBAC “follow the money” powers, and legislation forcing IBAC to table reports in Parliament Liberals Liberals Liberals . The reporting law would apply retrospectively to the suppressed Operation Richmond report. All three are uncosted.

They rest on a $15bn “corruption tax”, put at $5,000 per household, which no audit body the party cites has verified Liberals .

For the regions, 25% of new infrastructure spending would be locked to country Victoria, on the argument that the regions hold 25% of the population Liberals . It moves existing money, and the party has published no costing.

Planned burning would double, with cultural burning expanded and fuel thinned across 5,000 hectares of public forest a year ABC . None of that has a price. A bushfire detection camera network would get $2.52m over four years.

Schools, training and the rest

The Literacy and Numeracy Guarantee sets an interim target of a 15% lift over ten years and a long-term goal of 90% proficiency, with no published cost Liberals . Ten new Technical Colleges for 5,000 students are costed at $222m over eight years Liberals . An apprenticeships fund covering half the off-the-job training cost is $115m Liberals .

Three new select-entry high schools and six conversions are promised before 2030 with no figure attached Liberals . Weekly red bin collection would be mandated for every council, with the rate cap applied to waste charges, and the cost to councils has not been published Liberals . The Victorian Racing Industry Fund would continue at $72m Liberals .

What the Liberals have not published

These are silences in the record as it stands, checked against the party’s releases, Our Plan and its first 100 days document. Each one is a commitment the party has made without a dollar figure.

• A cost for 3,000 police, the bail and sentencing package, the 200 protective services officers or the new criminal appeal court.
• A cost for cancelling VNI West, for the Energy Security Requirement, or for reopening onshore gas.
• A cost for pausing the Suburban Rail Loop, and any treatment of the contracts already signed or the federal money already committed.
• A cost for repealing the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund, the schools payroll tax, the GP payroll tax or the short-stay levy.
• A cost for a Treaty replacement agency. The Nationals name First Nations Victoria; the Liberals have named no successor body and published no figure for one.
• Any housing target, supply figure or social housing number.
• Any state position on nuclear power, and any commitment to keep, change or repeal the 2045 net zero target.

How this compares

On the emergency services fund the two major parties are opposites. Labor would keep the fund, freeze its variable rates and retain the volunteer rebate Premier . The Liberals would repeal it and restore the Fire Services Property Levy, and have not costed the difference Liberals .

On Treaty, Labor would keep the Act and the Liberals would repeal it within 100 days Liberals . On police, both promise more officers and neither has published a cost: Labor’s offer is 1,500 Labor . On tax, Labor’s three cost-of-living measures each carry a figure and the Liberal package mostly doesn’t.

The pages for the other parties set out their records in the same form, and the issue notes take the same evidence by topic instead of by party.