Just a week after getting some encouragement from an opinion poll, Victoria’s opposition leader Ted Baillieu has hit the headlines again by entering the controversy over violence towards Indians in Melbourne. In a speech to “Australian and Indian business leaders” on Monday night, Baillieu said that racist violence was a serious problem and that the Brumby government was “in denial” and “blaming the victims”.

The government has reacted vehemently, accusing Baillieu of having in effect labelled all Victorians as racists. According to education minister Bronwyn Pike, his comments were “damaging the international reputation of the state.” Baillieu responded by saying “They’re very keen to attack me, but they’re not keen to attack the problem”.

So Baillieu has succeeded in at least the first aim of any Opposition leader’s tactic, to get noticed. How well the move will play with the electorate is another matter, but an opposition needing a 5% swing to win government can’t afford to be too cautious.

In some ways it’s the government’s response that is more interesting. It draws attention to two features that it shares with other members of the wave of state Labor governments that won power between 1995 and 2002, all of which, bar Western Australia, are still in office. (Present indications are that the Rudd government shares the same features as well.)

The first is that it governs, unashamedly, from the right. With occasional exceptions (abortion law reform in Victoria, legal injecting rooms in NSW), none of these governments are given to progressive policy initiatives; their approach is very much steady-as-she-goes, pro-development, tough on crime and unafraid of pandering to right-wing populism.

So John Brumby’s ministers this week are doggedly trying to present the Indian attacks as a crime issue rather than a race issue, and giving vent to the sort of “What, us? Racist?” rhetoric that one might expect to hear from the right.

The danger with that strategy is that they could become caught in a bind: if the public believes the attacks are simple criminality, but Labor fails to stop them occurring, then it will play into Baillieu’s (otherwise unbelievable) “Labor soft on crime” narrative. But if they come to believe (more plausibly) that at least some attacks are racially driven, then Baillieu’s latest remarks will be vindicated.

The second common feature of the state governments is their breathtaking cynicism — some would say mendacity. Pike yesterday said “I’d like to ask Ted Baillieu to name those racist people, maybe it’s my next-door neighbour, maybe it’s someone’s mum and dad, maybe it’s somebody’s friends”. In context, that can only be intended to imply that there are no racists at all in Victoria — a sentiment so absurd that it’s hard to imagine anyone could take it seriously.

Labor ministers, however, have perfected the art of saying such things with a straight face. That gives a real opportunity to an Opposition that can present a message of trust and honesty. But it may also create the sort of public cynicism that makes it difficult for such a message to get believed.