“On this particular morning I got there late. They’d already gone through all the questions. They said we’ve got these genuine documents, we’ve checked them all out. That was as long as it took, three minutes – five minutes max. Then I went to another meeting.”

But April 28 was no ordinary day. Williams had missed the committee’s most important meeting. It was to take Hamilton-Smith to the edge of a precipice and deputy leader Vickie Chapman over the precipice, and leave the Liberal Party demoralised, disgraced and defeated.

But Kevin Naughton wasn’t to know that – yet. He was still grinding knives at the whetstone, honing.

On any ordinary parliamentary sitting day, all lower house Liberal MPs meet just before question time to be briefed on that afternoon’s live-to-air show. But this was no ordinary day. The Liberal leadership team sent an SMS saying the briefing would not be held. Opposition shadow ministers and backbenchers trooped into the chamber, blissful and ignorant. For them, ignorance was bliss.

At a quarter past three, David Pisoni rose to his feet to ask the first question. He addressed it to the Minister for Correctional Services, Tom Koutsantonis.

“What discussions or involvement has the Minister for Correctional Services had with the prison education program Criminon or its associated organisation, Applied Scholastics?” Pisoni asked. Koutsantonis looked around the chamber, mystified, searching for clues as to what this was about.

“I have no recollection of any conversa¬tion, but I will check and get back to the house as soon as possible with an answer,” he said blankly.

“I could tell from his face that he didn’t know,” Mitch Williams recounted this week. “He’s been in the ministry just a short time and doesn’t know how to fake reactions yet. That’s when my suspicions were first aroused.”

Hamilton-Smith went at Rann next. “Did the Premier, at the instigation of the member for West Torrens and former senator Nick Bolkus, have discussions with repre¬sentatives of the prison education program Criminon or its associated organisation Applied Scholastics on 16 March this year? In an email from ALP state secretary Michael Brown to ALP fundraiser and lobbyist Nick Bolkus, dated 6 March 2009, with the subject heading ‘Melbourne visit’, Mr Brown refers Mr Bolkus to a conversation he had with a ‘man called Tom’ regarding prison education programs.

“Sources from within the Labor Party have advised the Opposition that the ‘man called Tom’ is the Minister for Correctional Services. The email states: ‘Mike has asked me if there is anyone worth visiting while he is in Melbourne next week. Are they worth special treatment?’”

“I have no recollection of visiting anyone called Criminon. It might not be this Mike,” Rann replied.

But there were no “sources from within the Labor Party”. That was Hamilton-Smith’s fantasy. Smarter, wiser men than Hamilton-Smith may at that stage have sat down and had a quiet think. Smarter, wiser men than Kevin Naughton might have put their head into a bucket of water and wished the world would stop. This wasn’t going where it was supposed to go.

Parliament House attendants are a friendly bunch, good at their job, and April 27 had been just another day as they delivered mail, as usual, to David Pisoni’s office. It contained a strange, anonymous missal. It seemed to Pisoni to be a series of emails between Labor officials, and Pisoni felt his heart aflutter. From the look of it, there were copied invoices as well. They suggested all sorts of nefariousness. Pisoni, sometimes called Hamilton-Smith’s “attack dog”, trotted into the leader’s offices about 30 steps away.

Like The Man Who Never Was, a corpse with fake documents planted by the British to deceive war-time Germany, Pisoni’s role was complete. It was now up to the Opposition Leader’s office to decide what to do next, and what it did next was to fail spectacularly.

Hamilton-Smith’s communications director, Kevin Naughton, is an experienced Adelaide reporter with a long stint at News Ltd and the ABC. He understands the media’s needs and responsibilities and that there’s nothing gained, and a lot to be lost, by freezing out political scribes even when they’re regarded as pro-government. He’s affable, approachable, generally diligent and almost always helpful.

It’s part of journalists’ culture and training to know that anonymous information needs scrupulous checking, re-checking, and then critical scepticism followed by verification. In this case it appears that Naughton failed the test.

Isn’t there a fail-safe? Doesn’t a package of e-mails, a political bomb, require a council of war? Wouldn’t the strategy of how to deal with such explosive information be discussed around the leader’s inner circle? In most political offices such decisions are ultimately made by the chief-of-staff, who in this case is John Lewis. In this case, there is no evidence Lewis was consulted.

“Naughton has enormous influence and sway,” says a prominent Liberal. “He is the de facto chief-of-staff. Lewis is actually doing a law degree part-time. Have you ever heard of a chief-of-staff who has so much free time that he can study law?”

“We should have been consulted,” a second Liberal front-bencher said ruefully this week. “We would have defused it. We’d have needed to be convinced of its veracity before we recommended it be used like that.”

“Martin’s not a great one to share information,” said another.

But Hamilton-Smith was already in Parliament, on his feet again.

“My question is to the Premier,” he ploughed on. “What discussions did the Premier have with ALP officials about ‘special treatment’ for representatives of Criminon or Applied Scholastics at the 16 March meeting?... In a later email from Nick Bolkus to Michael Brown, dated Tuesday 17 March 2009, Mr Bolkus refers to the Melbourne visit—the one he (Rann) cannot remember—and states, ‘As discussed, they were happy with their discussions with Mike. Worth the trip.’”

“They did not have discussions with me, sunshine, let me just tell you that,” answered Rann adamantly.

Even at that stage a smarter wiser man than Hamilton-Smith may have sat down and shut up, and a smarter wiser man than Kevin Naughton might put his head into a blender. Anything would have been better than what was to come next, because what came next was another question.

Again it referenced the supposed e-mail between Bolkus and Brown. “It adds: ‘Happy to give up to $20,000 as a start but want to do it under the radar. If this is okay, their address is: Applied Scholastics 1/89 Jones St Ultimo NSW 2007, Nick.’ A series of searches reveals that the organisation Applied Scholastics is one of four key organisations operated by the Church of Scientology,” accused Hamilton-Smith.

Once again Rann got up. “Can I just tell you this: I would never do a favour for the Church of Scientology who, in my view, are beneath contempt.” Rann then lashed out at Scientology, long, hard and unequivocally. “Quite frankly, I think they are barking mad.”

It must have been obvious to 46 of the 47 members of the House of Assembly that Hamilton-Smith was barking down the wrong rabbit-hole. Still he persisted, this time virtually accusing Labor of breaking the electoral act. He claimed that in an e-mail, Brown had told the ALP’s state treasurer to send separate invoices in an attempt to hide the payments from the electoral commission.

“I just looked at my diary. This day that I was supposed to be in Melbourne, I was in Adelaide,” Rann responded. The bomb had gone off, but in Hamilton-Smith’s and Naughton’s faces. The day had suddenly turned terribly bad and it was to get even worse. Hamilton-Smith repeated the allegations outside parliament, meaning he could be sued for defamation.

For several days he floundered before he realised to his horror that he had been duped. Apologies followed, in and outside parliament, but by now the affair had a life of its own. Reporters asked about it at almost every media conference for the following month.

Still it got worse. During a packed business lunch at the Sebel Playford on June 11, when Hamilton-Smith was hoping to drive the agenda with his response to the state budget, Liberal Party treasurer Graham Ingerson stole the headlines by announcing the party was too broke to fight a winning election campaign.

“Even if we only raise a couple of million dollars, we are still a couple of million behind,” Ingerson said, and the media went wild. The evening’s news had Hamilton-Smith looking, if not broke himself, then at least broken.

Ingerson is the former Liberal member for Bragg, now held by deputy leader Vickie Chapman. Chapman consulted colleagues about a leadership challenge. Publicly she refused to back her leader. Mitch Williams consulted Hamilton-Smith and advised him to resign, and when that didn’t happen, resigned from the shadow ministry himself. Frontbencher Isobel Redmond said she would grab the leadership “with both hands” if available. The blood-lust had become a carnivorous frenzy.

And a moan went up from Liberal backbenchers as a new, though possibly suspect, newspaper poll showed that far from knocking on Rann’s electoral portal, the party was actually in danger of losing up to eight seats.

And a separate groan went down from Liberal candidates like Joe Scalzi, who’d been hoping to win back the seat he lost to Labor at the last election. “There’s only so much juice you can get out of an orange,” said Scalzi, hoping the disaster would leave the room and close the door behind itself. A good morning for the Liberals had turned into a good month for Labor. Pisoni had turned from attack dog into Huckleberry Hound.

Next the federal Liberals – perhaps to take their minds off similar troubles in Canberra – gave free advice, by definition worth nothing, to their state counterparts. Chapman supporter and Sturt MHR Christopher Pyne called for a leadership spill. Former state secretary and now senator Nick Minchin told Pyne to keep his advice to himself, prompting Pyne to say senselessly, “I said what any sensible Liberal would say”.

“Whether Nick Minchin is happy or unhappy with that is of no consequence to me,” Pyne said, ignoring the enormous consequences to the party.

Finally the pressure was too much. Presumably acting on advice from Naughton, Hamilton-Smith this week strode into a media conference and announced, in one of his strongest performances as leader, that he would call a leadership ballot for tomorrow to settle the issue and drown out his challengers.

“The so-called dodgy documents affair has been done to death,” he said. “It is a distraction from the real business.” He went on to describe, accurately, the amount of work done under his leadership on policy issues of substance, from desalination, storm¬water and the need for an independent anti-corruption commission.

“There is no such thing as an election that can’t be won. There is no such thing as an election that can’t be lost. Until recently we’ve been a tight group, well disciplined, well organised.” And then he looked around the room. “I’ve not shot the queen,” he said levelly. “I’ve not robbed the Bank of Adelaide.”

He faces just one rival in Saturday’s vote: Chapman. “She might do a Keating,” a very senior Liberal said yes¬terday. “She could go to the backbench and plot from there. The whole thing is a bloody disaster.”

Indeed the Liberals have bloody hands, disastrously. Three members – Graham Gunn, Liz Penfold and Caroline Schaefer – retire at the March election. Of the remainder, at least six MHAs – Redmond, Hamilton-Smith, Williams, Ivan Venning, Duncan McFetridge and Michael Pengilly – are now approaching or already over 60. Blood there may be spilling on the Liberal Party floor, but new blood there is not. And so, bandaged, 21 Liberals will walk into tomorrow’s 10 o’clock meeting at parliament. Rob Lawson is overseas and will vote by proxy. The first vote, by all, will be for leader, then 14 lower house MPs will vote separately for the deputy’s position. Winners and losers will then face the media, victors triumphant and losers trumped.

Meanwhile, Adelaide lawyers and SA police are still law-suiting and sleuthing. Legal actions are flying between Labor figures and Hamilton-Smith, and Naughton may also ultimately be the subject of separate or conjoined litigation. Police are wanting to track down the source of the false documents, but even if they find the forgers it’s uncertain what sort of charges, if any, could be brought against them. Among those forgeries is another e-mail, this one purporting to blame a named minister and named ministerial staff for the original scam. There is no reason to believe that it’s genuine either, but that hasn’t stopped one Liberal from divulging its contents. They learn slowly, those people on the Opposition benches.

Perhaps we’ll never learn the identity of the original tricksters, just as we don’t know how Hamilton-Smith and Naughton allowed themselves to be so easily duped.

Shakespeare wrote of good days like the morning enjoyed by the Liberals on April 28. “Salad days”, he called them, “when I was green in judgment, cold in blood”.

Green around the gills are the Liberals now, and tomorrow they will vote, cold-blooded, and yet ever hot-headed.