By Josh Gordon
When Denis Napthine took over from Ted Baillieu in a bloodless regime change, there was a palpable sense of nervousness within Coalition ranks about how the voting public might react.
The jitters were understandable: the most obvious case study was Labor's ultimately disastrous decision to knife Kevin Rudd in early 2010.
Illustration: John Spooner.
I was among the sceptics who questioned the wisdom of deposing Baillieu, particularly since Napthine had been unwilling or unable to provide a satisfactory explanation as to why it had been necessary to remove a popularly elected leader barely two years into a first term.
I'm now happy to admit I was wrong. Six weeks on, it is clear the transition to Napthine has dramatically improved the Coalition's prospects. So much so that the Labor Party will face an uphill battle to win the 2014 election, where previously it had looked like an odds on bet.
There are several explanations. First, the comparison to Rudd's demise is less instructive than it might first appear. Rudd was dispatched by a band of detractors in a messy display of political butchery. The Labor Party has never quite cleansed itself of the stains.
Like Rudd, Baillieu had been undermined by detractors for months. But in the end, the transition to Napthine was surgically clean: Baillieu, true to form, simply shrugged, handed the leadership to Napthine and faded to the solitude of the backbench. The decisions about the timing of his departure and his replacement were his.
A more apt parallel was the switch from Alexander Downer to John Howard in early 1995. Downer's position as opposition leader had become hopeless after a series of ill-judged remarks, including his infamous ''things that batter'' quip. He was unelectable and he knew it.
Downer sat down for dinner with John Howard at the Athenaeum Club on Collins Street and told him he wanted an orderly handover. Howard was elected unopposed. Downer even went so far as to threaten to ''kneecap'' anyone who undermined him. It was a textbook transition.
In a similar vein, Baillieu effectively engineered an orderly handover to Napthine, before putting himself out to pasture (politically speaking), ensuring the recriminations would be kept to a minimum.
Second, Napthine, a shrewd political practitioner with 25 years' experience, has used his short time as Premier effectively. Baillieu's time in office is now being dryly referred to by some Liberals as ''the Baillieu experiment''. Napthine has returned to a basic but well-tested political formula: tackle problems quickly as they arise, set a clear direction, only fight winnable battles, demonstrate results, be pragmatic with the media and use scarce resources strategically.
Early on Napthine claimed he wanted to ''build on the great work and the great foundation that Ted Baillieu and his team provided …'' The base over the past two years has now been comprehensively dismantled. Napthine restored some of the lost funding for TAFEs, he abandoned a demand for performance-based pay for teachers which had unrealistically been linked to wage negotiations, and he instigated a frontbench reshuffle that included replacing Kim Wells as treasurer with Michael O'Brien.
Napthine has also moved to assert his authority over the public service with a major departmental shake-up that, among other things, merged the environment into primary industries and planning into transport.
He has also done away with other less palatable aspects of the Baillieu government. Both he and O'Brien, for example, have freely confessed to not having read the Vertigan review of state finances. Where Baillieu and Wells described the unreleased financial blueprint - which is believed to borrow from the ''big society'' ideas of David Cameron's government in Britain - as an important working document, Napthine and O'Brien appear to have consigned it to the political dustbin, effectively acknowledging its recommendations were politically untenable.
If all that wasn't enough, Napthine has also implemented a major internal shake-up to address the breathtakingly inefficient system of central control over decision making that had become a hallmark of the Baillieu regime. This has involved greater autonomy for ministers. It is a consultative, decentralised model more akin to modern management concepts. In doing so he has removed some major bottlenecks that had been responsible for hampering the smooth operation of the government.
There have also been significant stylistic changes. As the outspoken former premier Jeff Kennett put it in a recent television interview, you get the sense Napthine ''can't believe his luck''. He seems to be enjoying his job, conveying a sense of energy that has always been an appealing trait in political leaders but was previously lacking. This sense of energy has spread throughout the government.
A lone stumble so far has been Napthine's handling of the resignation of his anti-corruption minister Andrew McIntosh from the frontbench. It has been a curious episode that was poorly executed. McIntosh admitted he leaked sensitive information to the media from the powerful privileges committee, which he chaired.
Speculation had been that the leak in question related to an article published in The Sunday Age in March, which referred to the committee's investigation into Frankston MP Geoff Shaw's misuse of his parliamentary vehicle for commercial purposes.
But as far as The Age is concerned, the article was not the catalyst for McIntosh's resignation. In a Kafka-esque display reminiscent of the Baillieu regime, Napthine has refused to discuss exactly what actually prompted McIntosh's resignation, leaving a slew of unanswered questions demanding answers. Whether this represents the end of Napthine's honeymoon remains to be seen. What is clear is that the political playing field has been dramatically reshaped. It is now game on for state Labor.
Josh Gordon is state political editor of The Age.