But back to that farewell speech, when those things dearest to Baillieu were given heartfelt voice. So what were the high points of his time in office, the things he valued most? Two items topped his list: the belief that multiculturalism is Victoria’s “greatest strength” and his abiding love for our local “arts community.” Apart from testifying to the pernicious influence of his party's multi-cultists on the ex-Premier’s thinking, the former also explains why that affront to free speech, the state's anti-villification statutes, survived party room efforts to scuttle them; likewise that lawyers' picnic, the Human Rights Charter.
And his abiding affection for “the arts community”? No black-clad luvvie has ever been known to knock back a grant – or, for that matter, admit to voting Liberal (if such an unlikely ballot has ever been cast, that is). A Premier who doesn’t know where to find his real friends has even less claim on the trappings and power of office than does the subsidised author of some unwatched and unwatchable bolshie agit-prop to the taxpayers’ wallet.
It was not the daubers of state-funded transgressive art who brought down Baillieu, of course, but the ongoing and toxic residue of his government’s failure to close the open sore of matters related to the police. A strong Premier, one with convictions, might have taken office and immediately fired then-Police Commissioner Simon Overland, who could count few admirers and many enemies in the Coalition ranks. Instead, like the scheming eunuchs of an Ottoman court, it was all whispers and hidden tape recorders, followed by leaks and transparently unconvincing denials. The farce that policing in Victoria became during the last days of the former Labor government does not bear repeating, nor a recounting of the jostling rivalries and palace intrigues that, at one point, saw the Office of Police Integrity at loggerheads with the Ombudsman. Meanwhile, garden-variety policing, seemingly an afterthought, suffered as a consequence.
Now those tape recordings have borne their bitter fruit and the Premier who allowed such a mess to fester is gone, and thank God for that.
With less than two years until his government must face the voters, Napthine has a lot of lost ground to make up. If he has the ticker and the core conservative beliefs to do so, that is.
