Marking 100 days to go until the Victorian State Election, the annual York Park Group & Reith Gordon Mid-Year State of Play event brought together around 115 corporate affairs professionals to discuss the issues shaping Victoria, what voters are looking for, and who is driving the policy debate.

Guests heard from the Australian Financial Review's Melbourne Bureau Chief, Patrick Durkin, Nine News’ State Political Reporter, Heidi Murphy, the ABC's State Political Reporter, Richard Willingham, and Fleetwood Strategy Partner, Andrew Laidlaw.

Fleetwood Strategy conducted bespoke voter polling and analysis for the event, which can be downloaded below.

It found 69 per cent of respondents believe the state of Victoria is heading in the wrong direction.

“This sense of who has conviction is going to be really important... What’s changed (since COVID) is we’re now going in the wrong direction, and so that number - that 69 per cent - the reason that’s really hurting Labor is it’s seen as their decisions that caused it... all of this is feeding into ‘it doesn’t need to be this way’.”

“It’s sort of easier to be a conviction politician like Pauline Hanson when you’re less lumbered with a whole political party or an organisation, where you have to balance stakeholders and different interests - I think that's what we’ve seen. Ben Carroll, I think, has been surprisingly strong in some of the changes he’s made – and business has sort of welcomed that.” - Patrick Durkin

“Voters aren’t interested in hearing about a politician’s life, their family and photo opportunities. They actually want to hear the conviction... right now, I can’t say that there is a politician with conviction on Spring Street – and that should be worrying.” - Richard Willingham

“The Coalition, I thought, would be a little bit better prepared for Ben Carroll as leader. They haven’t been terribly effective, apart from 10 minutes on the first day of Question Time, on really niggling him hard on things he’s said and now flipped on. I don’t know that they’ve quite landed the blows I was expecting.” - Heidi Murphy

A fantastic evening, covering a lot of topics - with plenty of laughs throughout.