The seamless changeover in Victoria from Bracks to Brumby, as there was in NSW in 2005 from Carr to Iemma, is a powerful reminder that the much-maligned Labor Party faction system has its not insignificant upsides.

Machine politics, which also gets a regular drubbing, can oil the wheels, and again Brumby’s frictionless elevation is the evidence.

Of course, the machine plus factions can get it wrong (as with Barrie Unsworth in NSW in 1986) but they have some spectacular successes on the board – notably Steve Bracks himself in 1998 and a bloke called Neville Wran in NSW back in 1973, a consummate politician, an unequalled premier and the best prime minster Australia never had.

The Liberals must be looking on with awe. The succession, post-Howard, is looking messier by the day, and the fact remains that the party simply cannot command an effective deal-making process. (The Michael Towke fiasco in Cook is a prime example).

For the last seamless succession in Federal Liberal politics, one has to go back to Holt succeeding Menzies in 1966; every one since has been a bunfight. (The Liberals like to say contested ballots are competitive and therefore good, but they also signal absence of consensus. The height of folly, surely, was Peacock’s inept move to dump Howard as his deputy in 1985 which had the unintended consequence of making Howard leader).

At the state level Henry Bolte in Victoria handed over to Dick Hamer in 1972 with consummate ease and the Greiner to Fahey move in NSW in 1993 has some claims for smoothness, (but was marred by the circumstances of Greiner’s anything but orderly departure).

And for political trivia buffs, John Brumby’s accession is rare on at least two counts. He becomes the fourth Victorian premier of the modern era (after Hamer, Thompson and Kirner) to have sat in the Legislative Council, which may well be a record for an upper chamber anywhere, and a rarity as premier to have sat in three legislative chambers (House of Representatives,Victorian Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly).