VIC: Napthine gives Liberals a more compassionate face

AAP General News (Australia)
10-26-1999
VIC: Napthine gives Liberals a more compassionate face

By Leigh Murray, State Political Correspondent

MELBOURNE, Oct 26 AAP - Victoria's new Liberal leader, Denis Napthine, will offer the
party a more compassionate face, after the dominant style of former premier Jeff Kennett.

Dr Napthine is a former country vet and once operated a home for disabled children
and adults with his wife Peggy in Hamilton in western Victoria.

The father of three also has an autistic foster son, Jack, who they took in as a six-year-old
because he faced a life in institutions.

The 47-year-old, who describes himself as "an ordinary sort of person", was raised
on a farm at Winchelsea, southwest of Melbourne.

"(I was) one of 10 children, so I learnt negotiating skills at an early age," Dr Napthine
said today.

He attended Winchelsea State School until Year 8 before heading to boarding school.

After university studies, he spent 12 years as a vet with the Victorian Department
of Agriculture in Hamilton.

Dr Napthine was elected to parliament in 1988 and was parliamentary secretary to Health
Minister Marie Tehan from 1992-96 and became Community Services Minister after the 1996
election.

His rise to the leadership provides the Liberal party with a new style, away from the
way Mr Kennett operated his so-called "one-man band".

He will have a lower profile than Mr Kennett and can't see himself following the former
premier's lead by opening his own Internet web page.

Dr Napthine - who lists his heroes as former Victorian Premier Sir Henry Bolte, Martin
Luther King, Ghandi and John Kennedy - said he would quit the leadership if the party
believed he wasn't succeeding.

The party and his electorate would be his priorities.

"They're the things that drive me, not personal ambition," he said.

Dr Napthine will have to juggle his leadership commitments with tending to his electorate,
which he holds by only about 800 votes.

But he said he would "not change for the world" living in Portland for a safer seat,
because he believed there was no longer such a thing.

"I think the old concept that people voted the way their forefathers did and it becomes
ingrained that people only vote one way is an out-moded concept," he said.

Dr Napthine also describes himself as an economic rationalist, but with a strong heart.

The Liberals' new leader has faced his share of problems, including a controversy last
year when he admitted that $123,000 of taxpayers' money was issued to a Catholic order
without any tender process - in breach of government guidelines.

At the time the St John of God Service was under investigation for the alleged sexual
abuse of several of its intellectually disabled wards.

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