Ted Baillieu's colleagues in Spring Street are up in arms over his mismanagement of the Blog-Gate crisis, originally revealed on the OC, your blog of freedom.
The Australian's Rick Wallace reports:
■ Incoming state director Tony Nutt's inquiry will be extended to include the leaking by Ted Baillieu's office to Paul Austin at The Age of emails from Simon Morgan, John Osborn and Luke Dixon;
■ Outgoing state director Julian Sheezel is furious about the leak of the emails (at last showing some decency in this whole bizarre episode)
■ "Disgruntled Liberal MPs compared Mr Baillieu to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and US Senator Joseph McCarthy over his hunt for 'cells' of 'traitors'.
The OC has learned that Baillieu's leadership is now under genuine threat by a rapidly growing of MPs openly despairing about the direction of the state parliamentary Liberal party. And we also hear Red Ted's daily phone calls to his Svengali Liberal uber-wet and leftist Petro Georgiou have now increased to many nearly frenzied calls for advice and assistance.
SLIPPING ON YOUR OWN LEAKS
There are reports emerging from Red Ted's bunker at 157 Spring Street that some in his office have become very concerned about the consequences of the public release of private information for Baillieu. This is rather ironic given that it was an open secret that they handed private emails to Paul Austin to set the stage for a high-tech lynching of Baillieu's factional foes.
Senior Liberal insiders say that all those involved in leaking those emails, on Baillieu's staff and Baillieu himself should "seriously consider their position" if their phone and email records indicate they have had contact with Austin and provided the emails to The Age. Baillieu is clearly unfit to be Liberal party leader if he sanctioned such a move, senior Liberals tell the OC most emphatically.
Whispers have come out of the Red Ted Stasi that certain correspondence, audio tapes and other material won't be revealed or leaked to the public.
The content of this material is said to reveal that key members of 104 staff, MPs and electorate officers and other influential party members who were discussing and actively plotting the downfall of Red Ted and his replacement by a patriot who has come to be known in Liberal circles, as well as on the OC, as the GTM (Great Terry Mulder).
These comments first started appearing on the OC blog a number of weeks ago by Liberal Mulder boosters: "the GTM Express will be departing soon ... all aboard" and "the GTM Express is on its way to Spring Street" (a play between his nickname which was first coined by former Upper House Leader Phil Davis, and his current public transport portfolio).
Panicked by the disastrous situation and the threat of Mulder emerging as a leadership rival, Red Ted however has apparently ordered that this damaging material gathered his staff/wannabe intelligence officers not be released at this time.
A Liberal insider tells the OC:
"There are 3 reasons for this. Firstly, it demonstrates that Red Ted was very quickly losing, if indeed he hadn't already lost, the confidence of key sections of the party. Secondly, some of the tactics expressly required replicating what Ted's supporters did to former leader Robert Doyle in 2006. It is thought that it would be very difficult to leak these emails to Paul Austin and for them to still make sense if references to this material which is damaging to the Jeffista faction were deleted. Thirdly, it appears that, strangely enough, these plans were being formed without any knowledge or support by Terry Mulder himself. So it is regarded as unlikely to damage Mr Mulder at all, and would only serve to bring him into the spotlight as potential leadership material.
Red Ted went quiet yesterday. This is the reason why. Watch him try to defuse the leaking tit-for-tat as quickly as possible.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL CHALLENGE 101
Another Liberal very familiar with the situation told us:
"There are two requirements for a successful challenge:
1) Complete destabilisation (OC: CHECK)
2) A candidate everyone can get behind (OC: CHECK)"
In Terry Mulder, they say, there is a candidate many Liberals could support. He is a genuinely nice guy, has a quiet charisma, an old-fashioned country charm, consistently delivers the best one-line media grabs from the Opposition, can give good off-the-cuff speeches, has an every-day common-sense approach to politics, is completely non-factional and is a true-blue conservative who doesn't feel the need to be in close consultation with Liberal super-wet Petro Georgiou.
It certainly is clear that Ted Baillieu is finished as a credible Liberal leader. It might take some time for the change to happen depending on future missteps.
THE NATS CRACK A SPAT
But it's clear what the Liberal coalition partners think of all of this. They're disgusted. And not just with the idea that a blog attacking the party leadership would be run out of the party secretariat. At the Nats party office in Collins Street, they're trying to figure out what all this fuss about a "bog" is. "Who got stuck?" one staffer asked yesterday. Boom boom.
Well it certainly looks like Red Ted has got stuck. And his wheels are spinning furiously as he tries to get out of a mess of his own creation.
That's why Peter Ryan and the Nationals generally have gone missing on this issue because they don't want to be associated with a melt-down of this magnitude.
Other Coalition front-benchers on the Liberal side are also keeping their heads down, a reflection of how useless, gutless and utterly risk-averse they are. Senior Liberal strategists opposed to Ted say that it's never been more obvious that a "total clean-out and nothing less is required."
GUNNING FOR THE UMBRELLA MAN
In further developments, Liberal patriots looking over their shoulder for looming Grim Reapers in the form of Old Man Winter Dr Kemp whisper that Ted Baillieu's chief of staff Michael Kapel could also be in trouble over past statements he has made that could catch up with him. The former umbrella importer's paranoia is normally exceedingly high and is said to be "off the chart" on this day of investigation.
HAS THE PURGE REACHED ITS ILLOGICAL CONCLUSION?
We also hear that there is much private talk of compromise between the fractured cliques in the Victorian division. It is clear that all sides of this conflict have assembled a mighty arsenal aimed clearly at the heads of their opponents.
It is for that reason the OC makes a bold prediction.
There will be no expulsions from the Liberal party over this furore. Maybe some quiet resignations from branches or whatever, of the kind that Property Council executive Luke Dixon supplied yesterday.
But it seems that the process of expelling members has got all too hard, mainly because of the outrageous standard set by Baillieu's office through his mouth-piece Paul Austin and from Baillieu's own mouth.
There are legal reasons why expelling a member for their own private or anonymously expressed views will be very difficult. There are procedural reasons within the Liberal party that make it tough too, obtaining the requisite 70% majorities will not be easy, particularly now. And there are practical political reasons, it is clear that those who were early nominations for being purged are more than willing to fight to survive and to stand up bravely for principle.
One young man, John Osborn, has emerged as a lionheart who single-handedly changed the course of this war when he exposed the dark heart of anti-semitic hate in one of Ted Baillieu's own factional hacks, Susan Chandler "whose best friends are Jewish" she insists while deeming them all "greedy". She has yet to emerge from the rock she's crawled under.
The Liberals would do well to find a quick means of rehabilitation for Osborn. While many others understandably ducked and covered, he has showed a remarkable courage. We can all see the folly in running the blog he was said to be involved with from party headquarters. It was inappropriate for him to be doing it while working there even if he thought Red Ted was the menace we all see him to be.
But we can also clearly see in its content some considerable political insight.
And in recent days we can see that it's very clear that if he and others are expelled from the Liberal party for their opinions and the anonymous expression of them, that they are all in for the fight of their lives which could last well over a year as it plays out in different party decision-making bodies and probably also through the courts.
There is a rising tide of opposition to Liberal leader Ted Baillieu. It is set to engulf him. It's just a question of when. He has no one but himself to blame. But for his repeated scoring of own goals, he would have remained Liberal team captain until at least as late as early 2010, before being dumped in time for a new leader to contest the state election.
Now the born-to-rule latte-sipping toss-pot is not even going to get that. Cya.
Game on.
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