<i>'In May 1994, while I was going through pre - selection for the seat of Williamstown, I sat down at my desk at home and I wrote a note. I was thirty - nine years old and in that note I mapped out what I hoped would happen in my life.'</i> By the time he was forty - eight, Steve Bracks had achieved the goal he'd set himself nine years earlier. He was premier of Victoria. In <i>A Premier's State</i> he reflects on his ambition to make a difference, and how he reached his goal. He talks about his early childhood growing up in a conservative but impassioned family that supported the Democratic Labor Party, and about his gradual evolution from left - wing university radical to pragmatic centre - left premier. He reveals for the first time the background to his decision to take the party's leadership from his friend John Brumby in 1999 - then to hand it back to John in 2007 when he sensationally resigned from office. He gives insights into how to run a successful government and how to manage the factions, and talks about everything from the impact of public life on his family, to forming minority government with independents.