It looks like it’s hunting season in NSW and there’s no bag limits on politicians. Just days after the shock resignation of premier Gladys Berejiklian, NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro is quitting as well. Of course, unlike the people leaving flowers outside Berejiklian’s house, it’s not likely there’ll be too many weeping over the loss of Barilaro — not least amongst his Coalition colleagues.
Dominic Perrottet is set to become the next NSW premier after securing a deal with the Liberal Party’s moderate faction that would elevate Jobs Minister Stuart Ayres to the position of deputy leader.
Mr Perrottet, 39, hails from the party’s conservative wing and was expected to face a challenge from Planning Minister Rob Stokes for the leadership at a Tuesday vote.Supporters of Mr Perrottet, who is one of the highest-profile politicians in the country to push for a rapid relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions, said on Sunday he had secured a majority of caucus votes.
The Liberal Party leadership was thrown open on Friday when Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she would resign and leave parliament after the corruption watchdog confirmed it would investigate her for a “breach of public trust”.
The Australian
The “breach” is supposedly related to awarding grants to several community organisations between 2012 and 2018, but Berejiklian’s basic wrongdoing was rooting a dodgy fellow politician and trying to keep it secret. Which might seem fairly small potatoes in the state where the likes of Eddie Obeid ruled supreme for years, but that’s the nature of NSW’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
While many support the basic concept of ICAC, just as many are disturbed by the way its NSW version in particular operates in practice. Of the three state leaders its brought down, Nick Greiner was conceded by ICAC itself to have “not acted criminally and had not set out to be corrupt”; Barry O’Farrell was done for not declaring a bottle of wine; now comes Berejiklian.
ICAC’s critics, even those such as independent MP Helen Haines who want to establish a similar body federally, say the NSW model should not be copied. In particular, they are concerned that the nature of its public hearings means that people are too easily brought down by smear and innuendo rather than actual evidence of wrongdoing.
John Barilaro, meanwhile, has long been a bomb-thrower for the Coalition in NSW, especially with his opportunistic pandering over the alleged “threat to koalas” in NSW. Barilaro’s sudden exit carries the sniff of a cross-party deal. Barra might also have decided that discretion is the better part of valour, as his ludicrous defamation case against Jordan Shanks continues.
Mr Barilaro cited the intense scrutiny that comes with public office, as well as the strain of an on-going defamation case against YouTuber Jordan Shanks, as contributing factors to his shock resignation.
“In public office, everything is laid out to bare and in my life over this journey I’ve been quite honest with the media and the public about moments in my life, the good days, some of the tough days, even my own personal experiences,” he said.
Mr Barilaro said that it was “unbelievable” that he had had to defend himself against alleged racist attacks from Mr Shanks, which spilled into the courts earlier this year.
This alleged “vile, racial attack” consisted entirely of Shanks doing a woefully-laboured Italian accent to mock Barilaro. Like Lee Williams in New Zealand, the “impersonation” wasn’t particularly funny — but then, if lame humour were a crime, most of the late-night American TV hosts would be in jail, right now.
Mr Barilaro’s by-election leaves the NSW government, with a one-seat majority, facing three by-elections — including Ms Berejiklian’s Willoughby seat, former Transport Minister Andrew Constance in Bega — in quick succession.
The Australian
Each of those seats is a comfortable Coalition seat: from a 42% margin in Willoughby and 13.86% in Bega, for the Liberals, to 9.1% in Monaro for the Nationals.
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