Perrottet's election as Leader of the New South Wales Parliamentary Liberal Party, and therefore as Premier of New South Wales on Tuesday is likely, but not certain.
He may not be a perfect candidate but I do believe he's the best we're going to get.
I have seen some posts here on Freerepublic which to me, seem to have come from people who may have been mislead about who this man is. This is not the post to go into all the complexities about the situation in New South Wales relating to COVID but they are quite a bit different from some of what has been shared among the press in the United States. While I think it's absolutely fair to criticise Gladys Berejiklian for her handling of COVID since June this year, up until that point, she had the one state leader in Australia who was doing the most to keep her state open and as free as possible. Unlike other Premiers who have been locking their states down repeatedly and savagely at the tiniest sign of COVID, she resorted to a strict lockdown only after her state was facing the worst outbreak that had occurred in Australia which was driving infection across the rest of the country. She was roundly and brutally criticised by both the left wing media in Australia, and by the Labor state Premiers (especially lockdown-happy Daniel Andrews of Victoria) for 'waiting too long' - and it's still Andrews constant tactic to blame New South Wales for infecting Victoria, rather than accept any responsibility for the fact that his most recent lockdown doesn't seem to have done anything to protect anybody. She was also trying to reopen her state far faster than anybody else - New South Wales is due to come out of heavy lockdown next week, weeks before Victoria. As I say, you can criticise her for her recent response, but she was the best of the Premiers, even if you don't think that's saying all that much. And contrary to what some people seem to have been told, her resignation had nothing to do with COVID or any lockdowns. She's accused of being complicit in corruptly directing two government grants, one of which went to a gun club, and the other to a music school. I don't know if she's guilty or not - I do know that the last two conservative NSW Premiers who were accused of corruption by ICAC were eventually cleared, so a bit of healthy scepticism would seem in order - and certainly the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. And while she may not be corrupt, I do think she definitely showed very poor judgement - she's compromised because she had an affair with a married colleague, who was also a Liberal MP and therefore her subordinate - and he is definitely corrupt (he's confessed). Corrupt or not, I think she was right to resign for that poor judgement alone.
I digress - my point is, I've seen some posts on Freerepublic already and I'm worried I'll see some more that I believe misrepresent who Dominic Perrottet is - and I'd like people to look at him with an open mind and wait and see what he actually does in New South Wales.
In 2016, Perrottet was one of the relatively small number of Australian politicians to clearly and openly welcome the election of Donald Trump as US President.
The following has been edited from a couple of comments I put on another post earlier today.
I honestly don’t have a clue what Perrottet is going to do in terms of the COVID situation in New South Wales.
But he deserves to be given the chance to do it before he’s judged.
I also think he should be judged in the appropriate context - Australia has a national plan that has involved months of painstaking negotiation to achieve.
If he does something to derail that by going ‘too far’ as the plan is concerned, it could make things worse. People like Daniel Andrews in Victoria and Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland are looking for excuses to back away from than plan (Mark McGowan in Western Australia probably doesn’t feel like he needs an excuse). And definitely looking for excuses to keep people from New South Wales out of their states for even longer - he needs to consider the impact of any decisions he takes on things like that as well. That plan is really where the idea of mass vaccination comes from - I agree the Liberal/National coalition hasn’t done the best job of resisting, but they are outnumbered five to three in terms of control of Australia’s various jurisdictions - they’ve had to negotiate from a position of relative weakness and getting concessions out of the socialist states meant some compromises needed to be made.
I also think it's important to understand that in Australia, voluntary vaccination really isn't all that controversial. The great majority of Australians are perfectly willing to get vaccinated. I'm one of them. Maybe we're all wrong, but it seems to be a very different context from the US.
Remember because we haven't had large outbreaks here (comparatively) only a very small number of people have any protection from COVID from actually had COVID. To me, that does change the equation when it comes to vaccination.
Personally I think it's fine for Australians and Americans to have different opinions on things like this. But a politician supporting vaccination in Australia is not facing the same level of grass roots opposition as I'm inclined to think a politician in America would be.
So I don't think it should be viewed in the same way.
That's different from the idea of mandatory vaccinations. There is considerably more opposition to that here, and I certainly do not support forcing people to get vaccinated, except maybe in a small number of high risk roles, like medical care - I certainly do not support the very wide mandates that are starting to appear (like in my state of Victoria where basically if you want to work at the moment you need to be vaccinated or in the process of getting vaccinated). Part of the reason I don't support it, is I don't think it's necessary because Australians mostly support getting vaccinated - we're going to get to over 80% without any need for any sort of mandating, maybe close to 90% so I can't see there's any reason to be pushing for mandatory vaccination - it's not going to make much difference in the end.
But the general support of the idea for vaccination means that I think linking policy settings to vaccine targets that we know will be achieved is defensible. NSW is already due to open a lot more next week - if he is elected Perrottet might speed that up, but I could also see him taking a position - it's going to happen in six days anyway, why spend political capital on that - note, I'm not saying that's what he will do - he might speed things up - but in the circumstances I wouldn't be too worried if he didn't.
I'd be more interested in what he might do with the next target. I can see more value in him bringing that forward. But if he does go too fast, I do wonder what that will do to the Labor controlled states - South Australia doesn't worry me too much (they've actually been more reasonable than the other Labor states). Western Australia - I think they'll just do what they do. But Queensland and Victoria have given some ground - not much, especially for Victoria, but some - in negotiations, and giving them, especially Daniel Andrews right now, any excuse to go back on their plan is problematic.