The Victorian Liberals have finally figured out the internet — and Canberra is taking note

From Jess Wilson's mock-Commonwealth Games stunt to Angus Taylor leaning into the meme that haunted him, the party that lost the youth vote is learning to speak its language.

FOR a party that spent the last federal election being comprehensively out-meme'd and beaten online, the Liberals have started doing something unexpected. They have got good at the internet.

It started in Victoria. Since Jess Wilson took over as leader of the state opposition in November last year — the first woman and the first millennial to lead the Victorian Liberals — the party's social media output has shifted gears entirely. At 35, Wilson is younger than the party's usual mould, and her digital presence reflects it: a steady stream of sharp, well-produced video content across Instagram and Facebook, where she has built followings of more than 60,000 and 50,000 respectively.

Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson, 35, has taken the party's social media presence to a new level since taking over in November, with content aimed squarely at millennials like herself.

 Making a splash

The clearest example landed to mark what should have been the opening ceremony of the 2026 Commonwealth Games — the event Labor famously cancelled in 2023, citing a cost blowout, at an estimated cost to the state of about $600 million.

Wilson and a cast of her colleagues turned that into a mock-Games of their own. The video runs through a full program of events, each one a dig at the government. There is the "running out of money relay", with MPs passing a baton and reeling off Labor's spending as they go. There is the "red tape hurdles", the "policy backflips" — complete with an MP attempting a genuinely dreadful handstand — and an archery segment where "once again, Labor's missed the mark". Wilson takes the "debt dive" into the pool herself, before climbing out to deliver the closing line.


The stunt launched one morning and passed 600,000 views by that afternoon. It was self-aware, it was built to be shared, and it was aimed squarely at a younger audience scrolling past on their phones. As one marketing specialist observed of the video, the Liberals were "obviously targeting a younger voter with this strategy". That is precisely the point — and it is a long way from the stiff, podium-and-press-release approach that has defined Liberal communications for a generation.

Canberra is taking note

What is interesting is watching the same instincts now surface federally.

When Angus Taylor took over as federal Liberal leader in February, he arrived carrying one of the most enduring memes in Australian political history. Back in 2019, when Taylor was energy minister, his official Facebook account posted a video celebrating new commuter car parks in his seat of Hume. In the comments, beneath the genuine praise from locals, sat one reply: "Fantastic. Great Move. Well Done Angus." The commenter was Angus Taylor's own account — most likely a staffer who forgot to switch from the work profile to their own before patting the boss on the back.

Where it all began: Taylor's official account congratulating itself under his own 2019 Facebook post, the screenshot that launched one of Australian politics' most enduring memes.

The comment was deleted within minutes, but the screenshots were forever. For seven years it has followed him. Labor frontbenchers have weaponised it in question time. Defence Minister Richard Marles sarcastically deployed "Fantastic, great move, well done Angus" after one of Taylor's military base videos. Independent MP Monique Ryan has used it as a sledge. It became shorthand for trying way too hard and getting caught.

So when the Socceroos drew with Paraguay last week and booked their place in the World Cup Round of 32, Taylor did something his 2019 self never would have. Rather than run from the joke, he made it himself — congratulating the team with a knowing "Fantastic. Great move. Well done Socceroos", a deliberate echo of the very meme that had haunted him for the better part of a decade. It was immediately and widely praised, including by the same left-leaning corners of social media that have spent years roasting him — by some distance the most relaxed and self-aware thing he has done online as leader.

Angus Taylor's self-deprecating "Fantastic. Great move. Well done Socceroos" post was widely praised as one of the most relaxed and self-aware things he has done online as leader.

Whether it works is another question

Taylor's Socceroos post landed because it stopped fighting the meme and started playing with it. Wilson's Commonwealth Games video landed because it did not look like it was signed off by a committee of staffers in their fifties. The most effective political content, it turns out, is not the most polished or the most aggressive — it is the content that feels human, self-aware and in on the joke.

None of this means the Liberals have solved their deeper problems. A slick reel does not reverse a primary vote, and a self-deprecating football post does not write housing policy. The Victorian party is still carrying the baggage of multiple leadership changes in a short space of time and a run of damaging missteps, while federally the Coalition is rebuilding from its worst election result on record. Social media savvy is a tool, not a turnaround.

But for a party that spent years being beaten at its own communications game by a Labor movement that understood the algorithm first, the shift is real. The Liberals have stopped being the punchline. They are learning, finally, to tell the joke themselves.