“The Liberal Party has always sought to deny the existence of factions within the party because it is a key point of differentiation from the ALP…However, by the mid-1980s, groupings within the Liberal Party, both nationally and within some state branches, started to form that went beyond personality cliques…
At the NSW level, Baume was a member of the inner circle of the powerful faction known prosaically at the time as the Liberal Forum Group (‘the Group’), which coalesced into a political force in New South Wales in 1984. Baume was also a founding member of the Liberal Forum at the federal level…The Federal Liberal Forum, originally a clandestine group within the broad church of the larger Liberal Party, was officially formed in February 1985 and was irreverently named by its members the ‘Black Hand’.”
