High-stakes gamble in NSW for Perrottet and Morrison
Opening early is both deliberate and dangerous, leaving the voters of NSW to wonder: was a stable government infected by madness, or stupidity?
Heads are still spinning after the abrupt resignation of Gladys Berejiklian as Liberal premier of NSW a week ago.
Berejiklian’s exit precipitated a daily political cascade. First, Andrew Constance, the state’s transport minister and a senior figure in her government, announced he was going too.
Then John Barilaro, deputy premier and leader of the Nationals, said he’d had enough, and quit as well.
Political leadership in Australia’s most populous state was settled quickly, with Berejiklian’s treasurer and Liberal deputy Dominic Perrottet easily winning a ballot to succeed her.
The next day, Paul Toole, barely known outside his regional area of Bathurst, won a ballot for the state’s Nationals leadership vacated by Barilaro, completing a turnover at the top.
By Thursday, Perrottet announced that the timetable for “opening up” NSW would be accelerated after 106 days of Covid-19 lockdown.
The new Premier was able to demonstrate the transition was neat and swift as he put his stamp on the leadership from the get-go.
It was noticeable, however, that not much had changed to justify a shift in policy. Vaccination targets were hitting 70 per cent, as set by Berejiklian’s crisis cabinet. Case numbers of infection were on the way down, as hoped.
So what changed in a week to justify bringing forward the “pathway” out of lockdown, including doubling the number of visitors allowed in a home, opening indoor pools and an earlier return-to-school date?
Noticeably absent from Perrottet’s media conference to announce the fast-tracked opening-up schedule was Kerry Chant, the state’s chief health officer.
She had stood by Berejiklian for daily briefings on the state’s Covid situation, and regularly provided her own interpretation. Now she was absent from the Premier’s first significant move since taking office just two days earlier.
Perrottet was asked whether the government was still listening to Chant’s advice. While Health Minister Brad Hazzard intoned that anyone suggesting cabinet’s decision wasn’t well-considered or given full support was “just playing a silly media game”, there was no new modelling to explain the changes, and there was clearly a different, more pro-business emphasis. “It’s an economic crisis too,” Perrottet said.
With Chant silent, Danielle McMullen, NSW president of the Australian Medical Association, was quoted in The Guardian saying she was happy with the previous road map.
She warned that an accelerated easing of restrictions might give the wrong signal that the crisis was over and lead to a “skyrocketing of cases”.
Another prominent voice, Professor Mary-Louise McLaws from the University of NSW, said she felt “this new road map” had not been dictated by the obvious epidemiology.
Voters in NSW and elsewhere could be excused for wondering just what happened this week. Was a stable government infected by madness, or stupidity?
Every government has its intrigues, ambitions and insecurities. The implosion of Gladys had some of these elements, but the Covid-19 crisis had kept a lid on them as government attention focused on public safety first.
Beneath the surface, Berejiklian’s demise was a year in the making. She was damaged from the moment she confirmed in the witness box at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption in October last year that she’d been in a secret relationship with the disgraced former Liberal MP for Wagga, Daryl Maguire, since 2015. While Berejiklian used some gymnastic language to suggest her relationship with Maguire was not serious, and yet she had hoped to marry him, the then premier remained protected from suggestions of a possible conflict of interest related to Maguire’s business dealings because the ICAC said she was not directly under investigation.
All that changed a week ago when the ICAC formally announced Berejiklian was the subject of a new investigation, with public hearings starting on October 18, to inquire whether there was a “conflict between her public duties and her private interest” related to funding grants in Maguire’s electorate when he was the Liberal MP.
No one in Berejiklian’s government wanted her to go as she did, and she seemed intent on staying until January, at least, when she would have notched up five years in the job. But Berejiklian was not helped by some senior government figures fuelling speculation about her likely departure by briefing some journalists. In the last fortnight before her resignation, that chatter grew louder as it was speculated the premier had been called to ICAC to give evidence in private ahead of a public hearing.
Others have stepped aside, but have not resigned, during ICAC investigations. This was an option for Berejiklian, yet there was a prospect – given the ICAC’s record of tardiness in handing down its reports – that Barilaro could have been acting premier for a long time.
Barilaro has often gone off script, even threatening to blow up the Coalition a year ago during a dispute over koala sanctuaries. Berejiklian felt she needed to go immediately.
Barilaro then quit because, as he said, he’d been thinking of leaving soon and it made sense to bring forward his exit. He said he was also distracted by defamation action he’d taken against a comedian, Jordan Shanks.
Since then, Barnaby Joyce has hit out publicly against rumours about alleged links between his daughter and Barilaro. “Basically, people (are) saying she had been in a relationship with John Barilaro, and that’s why he left, which is just total and utter rubbish,” Joyce told ABC Radio National.
As for Constance, he’d toyed with giving up his Bega state seat to go federal before changing his mind in May last year.
He has decided now to contest the federal seat of Gilmore on the NSW south coast, held by Labor with a 2.6 per cent margin.
A big challenge confronting Perrottet is to overcome the idea he leads an old government that is perhaps tired and overdue for replacement. The NSW Coalition has continuously held power for a decade: it is easy to forget this fact because of the four Liberal premiers from Barry O’Farrell to Perrottet in that time.
If Berejiklian had remained in office, the Coalition looked assured of winning another term in 2023. The best hope for Perrottet, 39, is that voters come to perceive him and his young team as a government refresh. But the risks are high: the public is likely to be unforgiving if the state is hit with another big wave of Covid infections, and more deaths, that are blamed on easing restrictions too quickly.
More cases are inevitable as the economy opens up. Perrottet needs high vaccination rates corresponding with manageable case numbers and mild symptoms for the vaxxed who are infected. The worst outcome for his government would be a surge in cases leading to hospitals filling beyond capacity, especially a shortage of ICU beds.
The NSW Labor opposition, meanwhile, is promoting a reset of its own, with recently installed leader Chris Minns seeking to take advantage of the government’s slim majority by reclaiming lost seats in western Sydney.
Scott Morrison needs Perrottet’s success to assure his own. Voters usually differentiate between governments state and federal at the ballot box – but Morrison needs to at least retain, and ideally gain more, NSW seats at the federal election due before May next year to win.
The Prime Minister faces many problems, from his handling of the vaccine rollout to a wrangle with the Nationals over climate change targets. He can’t afford alarming Covid numbers in the nation’s biggest state because the blame could rebound on him.