A leading figure in the Kroger group has opened up the batting this morning, sharing the love with the OC by revealing exclusively just how vulnerable their opponents in the Victorian division of the Liberal party are to their attack.
Stunningly they claim that they have the numbers to mount serious challenges to the Leader himself, to one of his most loyal supporters Kim "Whodat" Wells, to factional overlord David Davis and to senior shadow minister Helen Shardey.
NOT A HAPPY TEAM AT HAWTHORN
The claim by Kroger forces that they could mount a serious challenge to Baillieu in his seat of Hawthorn is a fascinating one. They say that Frydenberg was only prevented by Peter Costello from taking out Petro Georgiou in Kooyong which includes the state seat of Hawthorn. "He is well positioned to take out Ted and would almost certainly back a challenge to anyone opposing Baillieu as long as we agree to dump 'Yasser' Georgiou."
Sources sympathetic to Baillieu strongly deny that anyone has the numbers against Baillieu in Hawthorn, even taking into account Josh Frydenberg's numbers. They say he controls 1 or 2 branches in Hawthorn of the ten in the seat. Phil Gude's presence - who was aligned with Kroger - has substantially waned leaving Ted quite safe insiders say. They also express great confidence in defending David Davis to the last man and last shilling insisting his support would be "quite overwhelming."
SITTING DUCKS GO QUACK
The Baillieu camp seem much less confident about Wells and Shardey, where the Kroger forces say that parliamentary aspirants Michael Gidley and David Southwick respectively are poised for a takedown of the kind Frank Greenstein might have seen on safari.
Gidley is the titan in control of the Scoresby branch and proudly tells insiders "he has a gun at Kim's head."
While acknowledging the numbers would be "close" (noblesse oblige speak for they don't have them) claiming Wells has improved his position in recent times, Baillieu's supporters say the "party would be pretty uncomfortable dumping Shadow Ministers."
Kroger sources insist they don't care any more about the comfort of a Leader who so openly and bizarrely declared war on them.
Indeed some say that Frydenberg isn't afraid of taking on a big challenge and that he or someone supported by him could quickly build on their support to mount a very real and at least niggling threat to Baillieu, which even if unsuccessful would highlight the deep hostility felt for him by many branch members.
"We used to feel pretty restrained about sending this kind of signal because we figured we were all in this together" one explained. "Now, it's war. It's the new Liberal Party versus the Melbourne Club culture of born-to-rule complete with its anti-semitic staffers and defence of PLO supporter Petro Georgiou. The gloves are off. There'll be no deals, no swaps, no lifelines. If we can shoot a few of theirs, we will do it without hesitation this time. We're going in for the kill."
The state preselection process is expected to start in little over a year, with the only Party body capable of calling off a local preselection process being the Kroger dominated Admin Committee which shows no signs of carrying out Ted's bidding.
Baillieu's supporters say this whole threat is just another sign of the young Kroger hot-heads struggling to make the cultural shift from the nasty world of student politics to the senior party. "This is just fanciful and designed to destabilise the Leader."
And on that last point, they could probably all agree.
Game on.
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