Getting elected leader of the Victorian Liberals is rather like receiving a participation award in grade 1 at a state school: everyone gets one.

As the current class of Victorian Lib MPs filed into their latest Hunger Games ceremony on Tuesday, how embarrassing it must have been for a very few of them to reflect that somehow, they had not yet participated in the brief pleasure of leadership.

Why, you’re a Liberal nobody in Victoria if you haven’t been leader at some point.

Brad Battin, the latest to make it before (naturally) being discarded, gets a special award for brevity, having failed to reach a year in the merry-go-round office.

His 320 days wobbling around at what might loosely be called “the top” is, in truth, deserving less of a participation award than a tick for each muttere

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