Facts behind the Baillieu story

From the perspective of the post 2006ers, Mr. Baillieu was part of the problem. The Liberal leadership's insensitivity has caused this group of backbenchers to get mobilized and organized, a development which had implications beyond the entitlements issue, given that the backbench has been a disorganized rabble. The Member for Frankston, Geoff Shaw, has been one of those backbenchers taking a keen interest in this issue.

The fact that Mr. Baillieu was alienating his backbench at a time when they were getting hammered in their electorates about the Government's performance and the polls were not good, also went unnoticed and unreported in the media.

Clearly there were two events last week which were unforeseeable. The first is the timing of the release of the taped conversations. Former adviser Tristan Weston's nemesis is Police Minister Peter Ryan and one issue the media has not pursued is 'whose idea it was to release the tapes and why'.

The other was Mr. Baillieu's response. Stripped to its essentials, the story was that the Premier's chief-of-staff and the Liberal Party's state director tried to sort out a problem by telling a disgruntled former employee that he had got a raw deal, that they would help him try to find a job and that the Liberal Party would give him about $20,000 to help tide him over.

Instead of saying that, Mr. Baillieu referred the matter to the recently-created Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), without bothering to read the transcripts of the tapes. Further he made the decision without telling Cabinet ministers, even though there was a Cabinet meeting last Monday.

From that minute, the career of Mr. Baillieu's chief-of-staff, Tony Nutt, was finished and Mr. Baillieu had weakened his position with Cabinet colleagues.

One important question was what Mr. Shaw, who already had Mr. Baillieu in his sights because of superannuation, thought of this. Mr. Shaw has his own problems and presumably will need head office support if he is to be pre-selected by the Liberals to re-contest Frankston in 2014. Perhaps Mr. Shaw concluded that, if Mr. Baillieu could drop Mr. Nutt in such a cavalier fashion, he could do the same to him and that he had more to gain by stepping outside the Liberal tent than by staying inside.

The last issue is why Dennis Napthine was the logical successor to Mr. Baillieu. The answer lies in the internal dynamics of the Liberal Party. Ted Baillieu has lived with pronouncements about his imminent demise for the last few years. The odds were that he would take the latest sabre-rattling as seriously as he took the others.

Thus the odds were that if he were to quit it would be because he chose to quit - not because he was forced to. Mr. Baillieu's administration appeared at times to reflect a continuation of the internal Liberal Party fights in which he had been involved over the previous 20 years, so it was hardly likely he would stand aside for somebody he had been fighting in the trenches in those battles. That ruled out Planning Minister Matthew Guy, regardless of his merits.

However it would be necessary for Mr. Baillieu's successor to have the support of what was called the Kroger-Costello group which now coalesces around people such as Matthew Guy and Energy and Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O'Brien. Mr. Guy served as Mr. Napthine's chief-of-staff when he was Opposition Leader and was more likely to be acceptable than other ministers associated with the Baillieu group.

Further Mr. Napthene is one of the handful of noteworthy performers of this Government and, in the eyes of those who did not know him, has performed above expectations.

Finally, the Liberals need to manage a generational transition because of their failures between 1999 and 2010. Electing Mr. Napthene enables that to happen. Thus they avoid the risk that a relatively untested prospect such as Mary Wooldridge or Michael O'Brien proves not up to the task. It also enables them to translate Mr. Guy to the Legislative Assembly in an orderly way in 2014 rather than appearing desperate by persuading an Assembly member to resign and generate a by-election to make way for him.

Thus comparisons between last week's events and Julia Gillard's knifing of Kevin Rudd are as much a demonstration of the media's ignorance as they are a figment of their imagination. The so-called coup plotters would have been the least of Mr. Baillieu's concerns. He walked. He was not pushed. Given Mr. Baillieu's motivation and the demands of the job, there was always the possibility that there would be a straw which broke the camel's back, just as it was likely that if the backbench were to get organized superannuation would be the catalyst.