Neville Wran is the most electorally successful Labor premier in the history of NSW. In nearly 13 years leading the Australian Labor Party in Australia’s most-populated state, Wran did not lose an election or lose a seat at a byelection. His approval rating in polls at times exceeded 80 per cent, a stratospheric level for political leaders. Such was his electoral dominance that Labor’s share of the two-party preferred vote, under NSW’s preferential voting system, reached 60.7 per cent at the 1978 election and 58.7 per cent at the 1981 poll.

Despite this impressive record, if Wran’s name is referenced these days it is more likely to be in the context of an allegation of corruption. Journalists have openly claimed that Wran, as well as leading a corrupt administration, was also personally corrupt. One journalist has written: “The NSW Premier Neville Wran, whose administration later became a byword for graft …” Another described the more recent Berejiklian Coalition government in NSW as “the most corrupt government since the Wran years” and wrote the Wran government was “riddled with corruption”.