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FASCINATING POLITICAL BATTLE OF LIBERALS' POWER PLAYERS
The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
April 17, 2014 Thursday
by MIRANDA DEVINE
Mike Baird, the man most likely to succeed Barry O'Farrell as premier,
started the work day at 7.30am yesterday at a high powered business
breakfast at the Shangri-La Hotel with his friend the Prime Minister.
Affable and smiling, the NSW Treasurer was there to concentrate on
youth employment, but some of the well-wishers around him were more
interested in his employment.
"Barry could be in trouble," said one sage, inadvertently predicting
the bombshell to come less than three hours later.
"Are you ready to step up?" Baird, 46, just smiled.
By the end of the day, despite the private endorsement of John Howard,
Baird was no closer to -answering that question, his office saying
only: "He's certainly not campaigning to become premier." Across town
the ambitious Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian, 43, was all
action. Within two hours of O'Farrell's resignation, his protégé
had called a meeting in her office, begun to take soundings from the
back bench, and advice from influential supporters such as Joe Hockey.
While Baird counts Gladys as his closest friend in Cabinet, the two
-rivals couldn't be more different.
Baird, 46, is Liberal party royalty, the blond, sporty, first-born
son of former state Liberal minister Bruce Baird and wife Judy. He
has been happily married for 25 years to Kerryn, with three children,
Laura, 17, Cate, 15, and Luke, 11, and a dog, Moses.
Baird grew up in Canberra and Bonn, Germany, where his father was
assistant trade commissioner. He attended the British Embassy School
where he developed a "very posh accent", according to his father.
When Baird was nine his father was posted to New York, and the family
settled in bucolic Rye, in Westchester County, where young Mike became
a star baseballer who was popular with the girls.
Back in Australia he attended the Kings School, where he hated the
uniform and was teased for his American accent. He played rugby union
in the second row, surfed and played tennis. He became involved in
Anglican church fellowship, where he met his wife, Kerryn, whom he
married at age 21.
After finishing an economics arts degree at Sydney University,
he joined the National Australia Bank on a graduate program and
specialised in corporate finance.
His investment banking career was flourishing at Deutsche Bank when
he began to wonder: "Is that all there is? Should I be just about
accumulating money?" So in 1994 he told Kerryn he wanted to go to Bible
college and within a year they were in Vancouver at Regent College,
a graduate school of Christian studies. Ironically it was there he
realised his true calling was politics. He went back to investment
banking and was posted to London with his young family, and then to
Hong Kong.
But in 2007 he gave it all up for politics, winning a bruising
preselection for Manly, where he forged a friendship with his federal
counterpart Tony Abbott. The pair run, surf and bike together. One
local says Baird always makes sure he allows the older man to win.
A year later Baird was NSW shadow treasurer and touted as leader.
Sensing a potential rival, O'Farrell split the Treasury portfolio
in two when the Coalition took office in 2011, relegating Baird to
a lowly 10th spot in the cabinet hierarchy. If the ploy was meant to
damage Baird, it backfired.
He worked hard and formed a formidable partnership with NSW Treasury
secretary Phil Gaetjens. Within three years the pair had turned around
the state economy, adding 127,000 jobs and taking NSW from the slowest
economic and jobs growth to the strongest.
"He said he wasn't in politics for a long time. He was there to make
a difference," one business leader says.
Berejiklian, too, has won plaudits for her handling of the tough
transport portfolio. Hard working, single-minded, shy and well-liked,
the biggest strike against her may be her link to Michael Photios,
ICAC's favourite Liberal lobbyist.
The eldest of three daughters of Armenian migrants, Krikor, a welder,
and Arsha, a nurse, she was school captain of North Ryde High and
lived at home until she was almost 30 and has never married.
She did a bachelor of arts at Sydney University, and a master of
commerce, while working part-time for Peter Collins, then Liberal
state treasurer. A Liberal Party member from the age of 21, she worked
at the Commonwealth Bank before winning preselection for Collins'
old seat of Willoughby in 2003.NSW is spoiled for choice. Both are
capable, clever, hard working and genuinely nice.
The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
April 17, 2014 Thursday
by MIRANDA DEVINE
Mike Baird, the man most likely to succeed Barry O'Farrell as premier,
started the work day at 7.30am yesterday at a high powered business
breakfast at the Shangri-La Hotel with his friend the Prime Minister.
Affable and smiling, the NSW Treasurer was there to concentrate on
youth employment, but some of the well-wishers around him were more
interested in his employment.
"Barry could be in trouble," said one sage, inadvertently predicting
the bombshell to come less than three hours later.
"Are you ready to step up?" Baird, 46, just smiled.
By the end of the day, despite the private endorsement of John Howard,
Baird was no closer to -answering that question, his office saying
only: "He's certainly not campaigning to become premier." Across town
the ambitious Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian, 43, was all
action. Within two hours of O'Farrell's resignation, his protégé
had called a meeting in her office, begun to take soundings from the
back bench, and advice from influential supporters such as Joe Hockey.
While Baird counts Gladys as his closest friend in Cabinet, the two
-rivals couldn't be more different.
Baird, 46, is Liberal party royalty, the blond, sporty, first-born
son of former state Liberal minister Bruce Baird and wife Judy. He
has been happily married for 25 years to Kerryn, with three children,
Laura, 17, Cate, 15, and Luke, 11, and a dog, Moses.
Baird grew up in Canberra and Bonn, Germany, where his father was
assistant trade commissioner. He attended the British Embassy School
where he developed a "very posh accent", according to his father.
When Baird was nine his father was posted to New York, and the family
settled in bucolic Rye, in Westchester County, where young Mike became
a star baseballer who was popular with the girls.
Back in Australia he attended the Kings School, where he hated the
uniform and was teased for his American accent. He played rugby union
in the second row, surfed and played tennis. He became involved in
Anglican church fellowship, where he met his wife, Kerryn, whom he
married at age 21.
After finishing an economics arts degree at Sydney University,
he joined the National Australia Bank on a graduate program and
specialised in corporate finance.
His investment banking career was flourishing at Deutsche Bank when
he began to wonder: "Is that all there is? Should I be just about
accumulating money?" So in 1994 he told Kerryn he wanted to go to Bible
college and within a year they were in Vancouver at Regent College,
a graduate school of Christian studies. Ironically it was there he
realised his true calling was politics. He went back to investment
banking and was posted to London with his young family, and then to
Hong Kong.
But in 2007 he gave it all up for politics, winning a bruising
preselection for Manly, where he forged a friendship with his federal
counterpart Tony Abbott. The pair run, surf and bike together. One
local says Baird always makes sure he allows the older man to win.
A year later Baird was NSW shadow treasurer and touted as leader.
Sensing a potential rival, O'Farrell split the Treasury portfolio
in two when the Coalition took office in 2011, relegating Baird to
a lowly 10th spot in the cabinet hierarchy. If the ploy was meant to
damage Baird, it backfired.
He worked hard and formed a formidable partnership with NSW Treasury
secretary Phil Gaetjens. Within three years the pair had turned around
the state economy, adding 127,000 jobs and taking NSW from the slowest
economic and jobs growth to the strongest.
"He said he wasn't in politics for a long time. He was there to make
a difference," one business leader says.
Berejiklian, too, has won plaudits for her handling of the tough
transport portfolio. Hard working, single-minded, shy and well-liked,
the biggest strike against her may be her link to Michael Photios,
ICAC's favourite Liberal lobbyist.
The eldest of three daughters of Armenian migrants, Krikor, a welder,
and Arsha, a nurse, she was school captain of North Ryde High and
lived at home until she was almost 30 and has never married.
She did a bachelor of arts at Sydney University, and a master of
commerce, while working part-time for Peter Collins, then Liberal
state treasurer. A Liberal Party member from the age of 21, she worked
at the Commonwealth Bank before winning preselection for Collins'
old seat of Willoughby in 2003.NSW is spoiled for choice. Both are
capable, clever, hard working and genuinely nice.