OPINION
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TED Baillieu is a decent bloke. The worst personal insult Labor could hurl at him was that he was the toff from Toorak. But no one could say he was arrogant, cruel, bad-tempered or ego-crazed.
He once told me an odd story that spoke to the kind of person Baillieu is. He’d found some old house plans from his previous life as an architect. He thought the house owners might like them so he drove all over Melbourne delivering them to old clients.
His former chief-of-staff, Michael Kapel, wrote about driving with Baillieu to Kinglake after Black Saturday. Baillieu wanted to visit a man whose property was once marked proudly with an Australian flag — he had met the man before and had a new flag for him.
“Baillieu, 6 foot 7 inches, came lumbering down the driveway, flag under his arm, found the owner working outside and gently handed him the flag,” remembers Kapel. “The man put down his shovel, looked up at Baillieu, took a moment to understand what was happening, and cried.”
So what happened to Ted Baillieu? How does a nice guy with a genuine desire to improve the state, a man with a great and deep love for Victoria in all its multi-cultural wonder, get spat out of a premiership mid-term? Is it, as Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger puts it, because “he wasn’t really cut out for the nasty side of politics, the cut and thrust, the undermining, the backbiting”.
Do our leaders need to be nasty, power-hungry, self-promoters to keep their jobs?
When he was opposition leader, on one visit to the Sunday Age, Baillieu didn’t seem engaged. His mind was someplace else – as if he didn’t want to be there.
And at a luncheon with The Age editors and reporters, many present said he talked of Labor corruption and offered little in terms of a vision for the state. He had no message.
These anecdotes were not uncommon. I often watched him in Parliament during the years of opposition, his lanky frame draped over his chair like he was a big doll in a small doll’s house.
When he was being castigated by former premier John Brumby, when the Labor frontbench was in uproar, he would sit back, loose-limbed and relaxed. Oddly disengaged. His deputies Louise Asher and Peter Ryan were on the edge of their seats, backs straight, leaning forward, scribbling notes.
In his heart, it seemed, Ted just wanted to be someplace else. Yet he became premier, in an election he wasn’t supposed to win. He has always looked like a premier – tall, presidential, handsome.
Yet something was missing.
He was awkward in public, rarely able to speak off the cuff.
This both goofy and thoughtful guy never really developed a relationship with the people.
He wasn’t loved for his basic kindness as Steve Bracks was. He wasn’t seen as a strong Bob-the-Builder type like Brumby. He didn’t earn the grudging respect of Victorians as Jeff Kennett did. When Baillieu came to power I applauded his low-key approach to spin and the media – he would focus on governing not endless press releases and “announceables”, he said.
Just the opposite of Labor control freaks Brumby and Bracks. Their focus on the news cycle often led to ill-considered policy.
Journalists were so busy shoving a microphone under Brumby’s nose they barely had time to do proper journalism.
Baillieu didn’t feed the news cycle nor explain what the government was doing and Labor’s “do-nothing” taunts soon stuck.
Ted’s fall is, ultimately, Ted’s fault. He inherited a slumping economy so adopted prudent financial ways. But he wasn’t strong enough to sell that or any other message.
If he had been, this police leadership crisis would not have touched him.
In the end, with poor polls and the whiff of scandal, he was weakened fatally.
His heart wasn’t in it.
Melissa Fyfe is an Age investigative reporter and a former Sunday Age state politics reporter.