With Premier Denis Napthine in China building relationships for the future, Liberal attack dog Matthew Guy is cutting chunks off Labor and Mr Andrews.

The timing of the scandal could not be worse for Labor, just as the party was looking solid in the opinion polls and was beginning to dare to believe that it might have a chance of winning the state election in November.

Unless Mr Andrews can sort this issue out quickly, that is unlikely to happen.

Mr Andrews claims he does not know who released the tape containing an off-the-record conversation between a Fairfax journalist and former premier Ted Ballieu to the Liberals, but he does not sound convincing.

It looks very much like there is someone inside Labor who is not willing to put their hand up and take the fall for the benefit of the party.

Because that is precisely what needs to happen if Mr Andrews wants this thorny matter to disappear.

We know that Labor staffers listened to the journalist’s tape and copied the contents but we don’t know how those contents then got passed to the Liberals in order to cause tension in their ranks.

That’s the sticking point. Someone has done it and that someone needs to have the courage to admit it.

It might, and should, lead to the loss of their job but it will save Mr Andrews’ skin at a critical time four months before a state election.

Labor brought this mess upon itself by not handing back the tape to Fairfax immediately after it was discovered lying on a seat at the party’s state conference in May.

Party officials then made the matter a lot worse by listening to the tape and copying it, but the real damage was done when the Liberals were given a copy by an unknown person.

That person must be outed and Mr Andrews knows it.