Gabrielle Chan, political correspondent
theguardian.com, Thursday 17 April 2014
NSW premier was a strategist with superb timing who cut his teeth tippy-toeing through the state Liberals' factional divide
Barry O'Farrell in 2007, announcing his intention to challenge for the leadership of the NSW Liberal party. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Forget philosophy. New South Wales politics is not about Labor and Liberal. It’s not about left and right. It is about power. And when you have power in the premier state, the flies gather.
As the Independent Commission Against Corruption has shown, it’s about who is inside the tent. Being premier, Barry O’Farrell was the tallest bloke in the tent.
Political obituaries centre on his image as a cleanskin in a dirty political landscape. That certainly still appears to be true. After the premier resigned, the counsel assisting Icac, Geoffrey Watson SC, underlined that O'Farrell had not acted corruptly in his dealings with Australian Water Holdings. He simply forgot the delivery of a very expensive bottle of wine.
Looking back at his career, he has always understood power. He has always had an eye to the main chance. Discipline has been the hallmark of his career, which makes his fall all the more surprising.
“I don't think you can be shown to categorically mislead Icac, and then indeed the public, and then continue,” the former premier Nick Greiner said on the ABC.
And Greiner should know. He did not mislead Icac but he was the only other premier to be brought down by Icac when he resigned in 1992 after the commission found him corrupt “in the terms of the act”.
Greiner was referred to Icac after he found a job for the Liberal-turned-independent Terry Metherell outside the hung parliament, thereby freeing up the seat for a “real” Liberal. The supreme court later overturned the Greiner finding.
Watching on was Barry O’Farrell. He joined the party at 21 and worked around politics until he became the state director of the NSW Liberal party in the year Greiner resigned. Australians will never forget now that hung parliaments are no political picnic. Just as it was for Julia Gillard and Labor in the last federal term, the 1990s was a fraught time for the state Liberals as the new premier John Fahey negotiated the hung parliament.
Yet Fahey managed to be the likable face of the NSW Liberal party, the tough guy who tackled a potential assassin as he lunged at Prince Charles and the leader who won the Olympics for Sydney.
Taking care of party business behind Fahey was O’Farrell. He was the consummate nice guy, always accessible to journalists, always ready to explain, tippy-toeing through the increasing factional divide. Captain Sensible.
At that time, the NSW organisation was parting between so-called left and right factions. The lobbyist Michael Photios was developing the left under the mentorship of senior Fahey ministers while the right was mustered by people including the upper house member David Clarke. Though not in parliament at the time, a young Tony Abbott was active in the larger right camp.
These were fierce fights, to the point that a number of Liberals used to yearn for a formal factional system such as the Labor party’s to at least set the rules of engagement. This is the environment in which O’Farrell cut his political teeth.
There was never any evidence he was anything other than a political pro. He managed that crazy world with aplomb. A series of exploding Liberal MPs including Barry Morris, Phillip Smiles and Tony Packard ensured the pressure on the Fahey government never let up yet O’Farrell never missed a beat.
Through that tumultuous time – when some believed he should have been fully concentrating on winning the election as state director – O’Farrell set his eyes on the prize of a blue-ribbon seat. Northcott in Sydney’s northern suburbs became vacant after the resignation of Mike Baird’s father, Bruce, and O’Farrell nominated.
In 1995 the Liberal government won the two-party preferred result but lost the seat count. After a nail-biting count, Fahey stood in the Royal Botanic Gardens and proclaimed: “The carnival is over.” O’Farrell won Northcott, which later became Ku-ring-gai.
No one was more shocked at the loss of the Liberals than the incoming Labor premier Bob Carr, who said as much when he transitioned to the Senate: “I pay tribute … to a political opponent, John Fahey. I fluked an election win against John Fahey, who was a formidable premier.”
From there, O’Farrell worked his way up. His timing was superb. He learned the parliamentary ropes under former leader Peter Collins and became deputy under Kerry Chikarovski. With his head for strategy, O’Farrell took key positions in opposition including leader of the house and shadow positions such as treasurer, transport and health until he took over opposition leader in 2007.
Along the way, he lost a beard and 40kg. He turned from a round-faced bespectacled political wonk to someone who could project his Captain Sensible image across the length and breadth of the state. Unlike Abbott, O’Farrell did not have to rein in the more extreme edges of his personality to win government. Barry was Barry.
As Collins said on Wednesday, when the music stopped, O’Farrell was in the chair. He became premier in 2011, declaring: “The Liberal party was formed to represent all people, not sectional interests. We won’t let you down.”
But he did. And now he has paid for it.
