Reminding voters of the “bad old days” of the New South Wales Labor party was once a favourite pastime for the Coalition government, including the premier, Dominic Perrottet.
But the news this week that Eddie Obeid and two other former Labor ministers – Joe Tripodi and Tony Kelly – face criminal charges flowing from a corruption investigation did not seem to spark joy like it once did.
Senior ministers have also been strangely muted on the subject. On all subjects, really.
Perrottet’s only press conference this week was on Monday, for an announcement about “major tunnelling excavation” on Sydney’s Rozelle interchange. Literally, digging a hole. The deputy Liberal leader, Stuart Ayres, hasn’t faced a press pack all month. Matt Kean, the treasurer who released a pre-election budget in May, is in incognito mode.
It isn’t hard to guess why. After 12 years and a roll-call of Independent Commission Against Corruption scalps that reaches into the double figures, the old lines don’t hit the way they used to.
Icac’s finding on Wednesday that the former minister John Sidoti engaged in “serious corrupt conduct” in order to benefit his family’s property interests over a rezoning in his local electorate is the latest example of a government that now finds itself residing in a glass house.
Whether it’s Gladys Berejiklian’s secret relationship with the disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire or Barry O’Farrell’s “massive memory fail” over a bottle of Grange, there have been numerous run-ins with the watchdog.
All of these cases had different details and in some cases, such as that of O’Farrell, the MPs were later cleared of any wrongdoing. Icac has yet to hand down any findings on Berejiklian, and Sidoti says he will fight the findings made against him.
Labor will have ample ammunition when it goes to the polls: it can tell voters that after more than a decade in power the NSW government has big last-days-of-Rome energy.
Lately the stones have been coming thick and fast. The John Barilaro saga, which has been referred to Icac but is not subject to an inquiry, is a slow-moving car crash from which the government cannot extricate itself.
The evidence from Barilaro’s former chief of staff Mark Connell that the then deputy premier told him in April 2019 that the lucrative New York trade position was “the job for when I get the fuck out of this place” is the kind of news that headline writers go a bit weak at the knees over.
Barilaro immediately denied Connell’s evidence, labelling it “false” and “fictitious”. Last month he quit the trade role, saying it was “now not tenable with the amount of media attention this appointment has gained”.
He said he “maintained that I followed the process and look forward to the results of the review”.
But as long as the drip feed of information from the upper house inquiry into the post continues – and you can bet Labor is keen for it to continue for some time – this won’t go away.
On Wednesday night Perrottet will fly out on a 10-day trade trip to Japan, South Korea and India. It should be a series of photo opportunities with the premier signing MOUs.
No points for guessing what the travelling media will want to talk about instead.
Connell’s submission raises a whole new list of questions the government would very much prefer not to answer. He claims, for example, that Barilaro said he would “get” the job moved to New York from California, where NSW’s existing trade office was based.
At the moment, it’s impossible to confirm whether or not that is true. But the details of the conversation, which Connell says took place after a meeting with Perrottet and Ayres, throw a different light on the timeline of the appointment.
As the shadow treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, said on Wednesday: “There is no way that these positions in New York could have been created without the consent of then treasurer Perrottet.”
But Perrottet said he was not aware of Barilaro making the comments: “The former deputy premier, minister Ayres and I had numerous discussions in 2019 in relation to the establishment of Global NSW, and at no point in any of those discussions was it ever raised that the former deputy premier may want to hold a position as a trade commissioner.”
Where it all ends is anyone’s guess at this point. The government has insisted that the job was a public service appointment, done at arm’s length from ministers.
That may well turn out to be true, but there is no doubt that less than a year out from the next election the Perrottet government has been spending a lot of time behind the parapet.
