Mike Baird retirement: Family really does come first for NSW Premier
IT is the oldest cliche in the political resignation playbook but NSW Premier Mike Baird really does appear to be quitting for his family writes Andrew Clennell.
NSW
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IT is the oldest cliche in the political resignation playbook but Mike Baird really does appear to be quitting for his family.
His mother now requires 24-hour care, his father just had open heart surgery, his sister, the journalist Julia, has cancer again and young children.
Mike Baird is quitting for his family — but in doing so he risks being seen as a successful premier who cut and ran — on the state and the Liberal Party.
There must surely be another element of looking down the road at this year on January holidays and saying: “this is all too hard”, with a reshuffle, possible by-elections and splits in government — and managing a six-year-old government.
He will leave that for his successor.
Instead, HE is causing a by-election.
Whoever replaces him — whether it be the frontrunner Gladys Berejiklian or another contender like Rob Stokes or Andrew Constance — NSW politics has been turned on its head.
Labor is now in with a real show at the 2019 election — despite the strong economy and all the infrastructure being built.
And we have a seventh premier in eleven-and-a-half years. It will be a hard act to follow to mirror Baird’s integrity and his can-do approach.
There were strong rumours Baird would go this year and even talk that he could go as early as January. But the denials were so adamant about the January timing that few really suspected he would go.
Even his closest supporters did not know until the last day or two.
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