Amid sliding polls, a parliamentary expenses scandal, another ministerial reshuffle, perception of drift, and sniping by former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, the consensus is that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will lose, yet again, when NSW's action-man Premier Mike Baird vacates the political stage next week.
But Turnbull will, in fact, gain an ally if, as expected, Baird's deputy leader and NSW Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian emerges from the planned Liberal Party meeting as the new premier.
The media consensus argues that Baird is, like Turnbull, a NSW Liberal moderate, and therefore a close ally of the man who lives on the other side of Sydney Harbour.
But things are not always as they seem, evidenced by the shock at Baird's abrupt departure.
The voracious demands of the social-media driven news agenda cheapens the sheer drama involved when a major public figure such as Baird makes a sudden exit.
At a highly charged press conference on Thursday Baird cited the need, as he put it, for a "refresh" on state issues and for a strong family man to spend more time with his ill parents and his ill sister, and of course with his wife, Kerryn, and three children.
Professionals and amateurs
Responding to Baird's resignation, Nick Greiner, who was Liberal premier of NSW from 1988 to 1992, drew a distinction between the approach of "professional" politicians – figures such as former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr and former Liberal prime minister John Howard – and so-called amateurs.
The latter are people like Greiner and Baird, who both entered politics after achieving success in business. Greiner and Baird were also reforming Liberal premiers who hailed from the moderate wing of the NSW Party.
"It is clearly harder as politics becomes more professional. You get the occasional non-professional such as Donald Trump, Mike Baird and [former Queensland LNP premier] Campbell Newman," Greiner said. "They tend to stay for a shorter time because it's hard because they don't enjoy playing the politics."
On the other hand, he said: "What happens almost inevitably is that people whose whole life is about politics stay too long. It is harder for a politician like NSW's Mike Baird to run a 'reform' government in contrast to professional politician-run governments often pre-occupied with winning the next election.
"It's not just the media and the personal scrutiny. Reform is harder [to achieve]."
By comparison a "business as usual government" – one that "just worries about what's on the news" – tended to experience "longer periods of Government", Greiner said.
Greiner is currently on a ski holiday in the mountain resort of Whistler in Canada. On hearing about Baird's resignation, he sent him a tongue-in-cheek email, saying Baird knew how to "spoil" a day on the slopes.
The mirror test
Reviewing Baird's resignation, Geoff Gallop, Labor premier of West Australia from 2001 to 2006, who left office to seek treatment for depression, pointed to a method for a politician such as Baird to assess if they should opt for early resignation.
"The late Peter Drucker [a US management guru] spoke of a mirror test each of us should undergo. We should ask of ourselves: are we being true to what we are, what we believe, and what we seek?" said Gallop, who is an emeritus professor of politics at the University of Sydney.
"To avoid that, or to ignore the answers it delivers, can have a serious or detrimental effect on performance.
"Only Mike Baird knows what the mirror test is telling him. We should applaud him for undertaking his own mirror test. We should respect his decision, and thank him for his dignified service.
"There is the personal and there is the political and, in this case, you put the personal first and so you should."
Efficient manager
But the caravan moves on, fast. Baird's replacement when the NSW parliamentary Liberal Party meets next week seems destined to be Berejiklian.
Regarded as an efficient manager of the state's purse strings, Berejiklian, 46, has presided over a growing state surplus, largely resulting from the $16 billion windfall from the Baird-generated sale of half the state's electricity assets, and a property boom driving up stamp duty receipts.
Hard-working, disciplined, socially low key and an opera buff, she has a reputation as someone who sets targets and achieves them. She is strategic, has sensitive political antenna and gets things done.
Berejiklian is also a leading player in the moderate group that controls the NSW Liberal Party. This group is headed by former NSW Liberal minister and commercial lobbyist Michael Photios.
The moderates, or The Group as they are sometimes called, often act in concert with a centre-right faction that peeled away from the NSW hard-right in a highly factionalised NSW Liberal Party nearly seven years ago.
Berejiklian's factional roots date back to her student days and the early '90s when she worked on the staff of then NSW Liberal treasurer Peter Collins with another budding Liberal figure of Armenian descent, Joe Hockey.
Socially liberal
Even back in those days as a young graduate, she had a reputation of someone who followed up letters, policy submissions and advice, and ensured relations between the minister's office, his department and business operated smoothly.
Those who talk with her outside of her work report she is a good conversationalist, interested in issues. She is, like Turnbull, socially liberal, compared with the more socially conservative Baird. The latter is a good, decent man whose social conservatism is influenced by deep Christian faith more than any instinctive rejection of "the other".
This contrast may make Berejiklian a potentially more compatible, if not amenable, political partner in NSW for a beleaguered Turnbull.
Meanwhile, NSW, and Australia, have lost a genuine reform politician in Mike Baird.
