{"id":340935,"date":"2021-10-07T15:58:16","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T15:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/10\/nsw-premier-berejiklian-dominic-perrottet-liberal-party-right-wing\/"},"modified":"2021-10-07T15:58:16","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T15:58:16","slug":"dominic-perrottet-is-bad-news-for-new-south-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/10\/07\/dominic-perrottet-is-bad-news-for-new-south-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominic Perrottet Is Bad News for New South Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

After Gladys Berejiklian\u2019s resignation last week, New South Wales has a new premier. The rise of Dominic Perrottet \u2014 with links to Opus Dei, a raft of reactionary opinions, and close ties to big business \u2014 is bad news for Australia\u2019s most populous state.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Newly elected premier of New South Wales Dominic Perrottet speaks at his first press conference as leader on October 5, 2021, in Sydney, Australia. (Brook Mitchell \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

New South Wales (NSW), Australia\u2019s most populous state, came under new leadership on Monday. After Gladys Berejiklian\u2019s dramatic resignation<\/a> last week, a flurry of last minute wheeling and dealing<\/a> over the weekend resulted in former state treasurer Dominic Perrottet assuming the premiership after overwhelmingly winning the internal Liberal Party vote.<\/p>\n

At just thirty-nine years old, Perrottet is the youngest-ever premier of the state, and his career has seen him determinedly and swiftly rise up the ranks of the NSW Liberals, becoming president of the party\u2019s youth wing in 2005, a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly in 2011, and just six years later, state treasurer.<\/p>\n

Now, his election to the state\u2019s top job is raising eyebrows among many. A figure from the right of the \u2014 right-wing \u2014 Liberal Party and a staunch Catholic with alleged links to Opus Dei, Perrottet\u2019s election promises a new era of even deeper social and political conservatism.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Power Without Glory<\/h2>\n \n

Gladys Berejiklian had weathered countless political storms during the pandemic. Health crises aside, corruption scandals had claimed several scalps in her state government. But Berejiklian remained popular, in part due to a relentlessly fawning media that at one point declared her \u201cthe woman who saved Australia<\/a>.\u201d On the morning she resigned, the Australian Financial Review<\/em> had just crowned her the most powerful<\/a> person in Australia.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, however, Berejiklian\u2019s ministers were reportedly contemptuous of this coverage. In leaks<\/a> to the media, her ministers complained that, far from being an anti-lockdown hero, Berejiklian was trigger-happy when it came to harsh pandemic measures. It was her cabinet, they claimed, that was truly pro-business and anti-lockdown. Time and time again, they said, they had talked her down.<\/p>\n

Berejiklian\u2019s downfall was dramatic. She was publicly knifed by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) just a stone\u2019s throw from the scheduled end to Sydney\u2019s lockdown. In a bid to take ownership of the NSW \u201cFreedom Day,\u201d Premier Perrottet has sped up the state\u2019s withdrawal from lockdowns and loosened several more restrictions than originally planned.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

His Service to God Today Had Required . . .<\/h2>\n \n

A staunch Catholic, Perrottet has denied being a member of Opus Dei \u2014 an organization best known to the world as the villains from The Da Vinci Code<\/em>. Yet the fact that Opus Dei seized control<\/a> of the NSW Liberal Party\u2019s youth wing in 2004 \u00a0\u2014 just one year before Perrottet became its president \u2014 has led many to believe the link can\u2019t be denied.<\/p>\n

Whatever the truth of Perrottet\u2019s links to popish plots, he has long been open about the strength of his religious convictions. Riding on the coattails of Donald Trump\u2019s religious revival, he famously declared in 2016:<\/p>\n

If you stand for free speech, you are not a bigot. . . . If you want a plebiscite on same sex marriage, you are not a homophobe. . . . These are mainstream values that people should be free to articulate without fear of ridicule or persecution by the Left. It\u2019s time for a new political conversation that reflects the concerns of everyday people. It\u2019s time for a conservative spring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One decidedly nonmainstream aspect of this \u201cconservative spring\u201d involved Perrottet opposing laws<\/a> that would force priests to report incidents of sex abuse in the church. Indeed, Perrottet has made a name for himself championing all of the very nonmainstream preoccupations of the Liberal Party\u2019s right-wing faction at the federal level: maintaining the criminalization of abortion, catastrophizing about the tyranny of gender identity, and fighting against same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

Like so many on the Right, Perrottet is fairly skilled at brushing aside criticism of his social conservatism by using the language of tolerance, positioning himself and his faith as part of Sydney\u2019s celebrated multiculturalism. \u201cDiversity should be celebrated. It shouldn’t be criticised,\u201d he declared. Perrottet did not extend the same celebration of diversity to different kinds of families during the same-sex marriage debate in 2017, when he argued very explicitly that \u201cmarriage is about every child\u2019s fundamental right to grow up with their own mum and dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perrottet\u2019s premiership is likely to serve as a megaphone for his socially conservative pet causes. On the day he assumed power, he noted that, while all previous Liberal premiers had been \u201cinfrastructure premiers,\u201d he would be a \u201cfamily premier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Obligation, Not Opportunity<\/h2>\n \n

As NSW treasurer since 2017, Perrottet was one of the most prominent political representatives of big business during the pandemic. He has consistently opposed lockdown measures, making the case for capital at every point.<\/p>\n

Asked what he thought about the idea that fundamental changes are required to make capitalism fairer, he argued that COVID-19 has created not an opportunity but an obligation<\/em> to reduce taxes and remove regulations in markets. Despite having worked with the federal government to oversee JobKeeper and COVID disaster payments \u2014 some of the biggest stimulus packages in Australian history \u2014 he argued that \u201cwe need government to be getting out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, so predictable. But Perrottet has diverged from his federal Liberal Party counterparts in the sheer scale of his tax-cut vision. He has persistently championed<\/a> large-scale reform to Australia\u2019s Goods and Services Tax (GST) that might make way for more dramatic tax cuts down the line. He\u2019s attacked other state premiers who want to keep state tax revenues the way they are, even labeling the West Australian Labor Party premier \u201cthe Gollum of Australian politics. You can just picture him over there in his cave with his \u2018little precious.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

His stance on tax cuts and deregulation \u2014 harder than that of the federal government \u2014 has earned him the loyalty<\/a> of lobby groups like the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia. Despite the Scott Morrison government\u2019s promise of far-reaching anti-worker legislation<\/a>, the tax cuts and labor market deregulation these groups were hoping for have simply not materialized. Perrottet seems to be positioning himself as a more ambitious figure. The nation\u2019s financial press has well and truly fallen in behind his agenda: Even before he assumed the premiership, he was being touted<\/a> as \u201cthe right man for the job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Struggle for Survival, Not a Pay Raise!<\/h2>\n \n

Perhaps most worryingly, Perrottet has been using the pandemic as an opportunity to sell workers a pay cut. As treasurer, he froze the wages of NSW public sector workers: paramedics, nurses, and other hospital workers fighting COVID-19. He maintained that public health and education workers were squeezing private sector employees by refusing pay freezes. Unionized workers with good conditions, he implied, were holding hardworking private sector workers with bad conditions for ransom:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think there\u2019s many people across NSW right now who\u2019d be knocking on their boss\u2019s door asking for a pay rise in this environment. The 90 percent of people [in the private sector] aren\u2019t fighting for a pay rise \u2014 they\u2019re fighting for survival. And we stand with them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But far from robbing unionized Peter to pay non-unionized Paul, Perrottet has spent the pandemic enthusiastically trying to rob them both. The new premier knows full well that public sector wages have a hugely beneficial impact on the economy, and that the legacy of pay freezes \u2014 always excused as temporary, no matter the context \u2014 is to shift income from workers to business<\/a>. He also knows that the new jobs being created are mostly precarious<\/a>, and that he helped to win the new right for employers to unilaterally deem any new employee a casual worker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is Perrottet\u2019s true vision for New South Wales. A society where homophobia is \u201cmainstream,\u201d where business always gets its way, and where all workers are fighting for survival rather than a pay raise. Given the lean and hungry look of the young premier, it may well soon be his vision for all of Australia. Scott Morrison should watch his back.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New South Wales (NSW), Australia\u2019s most populous state, came under new leadership on Monday. After Gladys Berejiklian\u2019s dramatic resignation last week, a flurry of last minute wheeling and dealing over the weekend resulted in former state treasurer Dominic Perrottet assuming the premiership after overwhelmingly winning the internal Liberal Party vote. At just thirty-nine years old, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340936,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340935\/revisions\/340936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}