Dominic Perrottet says “the book should be thrown at” bad actors who have infiltrated the NSW Liberal Party, as one of his most senior federal counterparts says “bully boys” are derailing his election campaign.
“If anyone has done anything wrong, appropriate action should be taken and the book should be thrown at them,” the premier told reporters on Tuesday.
It comes after an upper house inquiry heard allegations Christian Ellis, a Liberal Party powerbroker, sought to branch stack federal Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer in late 2020, in an attempt to take the seat for himself.
On Tuesday, Ms Ley called for Mr Ellis to be expelled from the party.
“It’s incredibly damaging to the NSW Liberal Party,” Ms Ley told 2GB on Tuesday.
“The premier is trying to win this state election.
“These factional bully boys are just making it tougher for him.”
She said she felt there were no options but for Mr Ellis to be thrown out of the party.
The premier said the allegations made in the upper house inquiry were being investigated by the NSW Liberal Party’s state director.
“The Liberal Party will look at those matters, as they do, and any wrongdoing that is found, if any, appropriate action will be taken,” Mr Perrottet said.
The premier’s younger brother, Jean-Claude Perrottet, was the subject of an international search for a month as the same inquiry sought to call him for questioning about allegations of misconduct on the Hills Shire Council.
The inquiry engaged professional process servers in a failed bid to locate missing witnesses, including the premier’s brother.
However, Nine News published a photo of Jean-Claude on Tuesday, saying their journalists had found him in Sydney.
The upper house inquiry concluded last week as the NSW parliament entered caretaker mode ahead of the March 25 election.
It found various witnesses, including Jean-Claude and Mr Ellis, had gone to unprecedented efforts to avoid giving evidence, and had stifled their investigation.
When asked where Jean-Claude had been during the inquiry’s search, the premier deferred, saying, “That’s a matter for him”.
The premier was in the key seat of East Hills to push forward the coalition’s landmark offer to introduce a year of universal pre kindergarten.
The government now says it bring forward $1 billion in spending with an aim to build 500 new preschools on the grounds of existing schools,
The announcement means 50,000 students will be able to access five days of free pre kinder in the next four years, the government says.
The program comes at a cost of $5.8 billion, with a completion date of 2030.
Meanwhile, Labor Leader Chris Minns says a wage freeze on senior government executives, along with a 15 per cent reduction on senior public servant positions, would enable him to invest a further $500 million into essential services.
“I want every dollar available to go into fixing our schools and our hospitals and paying our paramedics, teachers, nurses, police officers and other frontline staff that we so desperately need,” he said on Tuesday.
“That’s why I’m committing to a two-year pay freeze on politicians’ pay and we’ll cut the excessive spending on senior bureaucrats.”
Under the coalition government NSW senior executive public servant positions had grown almost three times faster than the number of nurses, he said.
The annual wages bill for senior executives across NSW government agencies, departments and state-owned corporations was about $1 billion a year, and many top bureaucrats now earned in excess of $600,000 – nearly six times the wage of the average nurse, he said.
There were more than 3600 senior executives across the NSW government, earning on average $272,000, a 34 per cent blowout since the last term of government, Mr Minns said.
– AAP
