O’Farrell resigns

A thread for discussion of today’s shock resignation of New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell.

New South Wales will shortly have its fifth Premier in seven years following the bombshell resignation of Barry O’Farrell, who was today embarrassed by the emergence of a card in which he thanked Australian Water Holdings boss Nick Di Girolamo for a $3000 bottle of wine he yesterday denied having received. O’Farrell is the state’s second Liberal Premier to have been brought down by the exertions of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, Nick Greiner having fallen foul of an adverse ruling in 1992 involving a job offer to Liberal-turned-independent MP Terry Metherell. It now falls to the Liberal Party to find a replacement: without being too aware of the daily machinations of New South Wales politics, my immediate presumption was that the Treasurer, Mike Baird, would be the front-runner. However, I am seeing Gladys Berejiklian, Andrew Constance, Brad Hazzard and Jillian Skinner mentioned around the place.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

721 comments on “O’Farrell resigns”

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  1. Gerry Henderson has become really unhinged. It’s painful to watch such a supposedly “intelligent” man,,acting like a total fruitloop.

  2. “@seanparnell: Gerard Henderson just described journalism (and @Kate_McClymont journalism at that) as “fun & games” whereas he is very serious… #lateline”

  5. “@MayneReport: There’s been a lot of male Libs monstering female journos today. First Abbott, then Greiner to Sarah and now Henderson hectoring McClymont.”

  7. My sleeper call for Premier is Anthony Roberts who’s 43 years old, 10 years in Parliament, a fellow college alum of Greiner’s from Riverview, Army Reserve Captain with extensive experience in community government on Lane Cove Council, including Mayor for two terms. His drawback might be that, allegedly, Crikey had dubbed him PM Howard’s “Minister for Alan Jones”.

  8. guytaur@655

    “@MayneReport: There’s been a lot of male Libs monstering female journos today. First Abbott, then Greiner to Sarah and now Henderson hectoring McClymont.”

    No one does bully boy thug as well as these pathetic Middle aged liberal party men.

  9. YB

    Henderson intelligent lol

    I’ll tell you something, intelligence shouldn’t be judged by how many pieces of paper you might have 😎

  10. “@SimonThomsen: That @Kate_McClymont is SO rude. She keeps trying to speak about the facts while Gerard is hectoring and shouting at her. #Lateline”

  15. I agree with the Bludgers, each one more intelligent than Henderson, well with the exception of Mod Lib 😆 are you there Everything 🙂

    Yes, more to come 😯

    *night

  17. Lateline tonite …

    Henderson, maybe he spat the wine out…. Ye Gerard

    He’s had a memory failure… Ye Gerard

    This obsession… Ye Gerard

    Poor Gerard, his world is collapsing.

    And kudos to Katy Mclymont for sticking to her guns and basic reportage.

  19. Ex-Tas journo Angus Livingston reckons, re Tassie’s at times rough and ready political culture:

    “This bottle of wine thing wouldn’t even rank in the top 10 of #politas scandals that no one resigned over”

    Also saw Possum making bemused comments about the Queensland response to this sort of thing.

  21. The funniest thing about Gerard’s ranting in my opinion was how outraged he was at Kate describing O’Farrell as being “untruthful” in his testimony on Tuesday.

    Given O’Farrell today acknowledged that he hadn’t told the truth (due to memory failure according to him) … that would make what he said “untruthful” by anyone’s definition, surely?

    I think Gerard kept translating “untruthful” to “lied” in his own mind and reacted accordingly.

  24. There is nothing wrong with receiving the gift. Neglecting to declare the gift is problematic but not terminal. The big problems are the association between AWH and the gift and the failure to tell the truth to ICAC in the first instance.

    Any association with AWH and Obeid will have political implications regardless of whether there is anything improper or not in the association. That’s the result of the revelations from ICAC.

    The way to deal with this is to have very clear rules in relation to lobbying, access to government ministers, political donations and gifts. Currently things are just to vague.

  26. Gerard Hendersom
    He seemed almost out of control on Lateline and quite menacing to the Journo/ woman from the SMH

    Not too happy with the ICAC and it’s works,and obviously grieving for his buddy O’Farrell….≥ who is almost a saint if you believe Henderson…who should know about saints… because of his early work for Santamaria…being a senior member of the National Civic Council for years ,until he joined Howard’s staff…but he is of course VERY,VERY impartial despite all that !

    Great stuff and she/ McClymont…was very calm and stood up under his passionate /agressive statements….as he pushed acrosas to her….They Libs really are worried

  27. 672

    Griener does not understand the definition of lying. Lying is saying something you know to be false. O`Farrel still says he does not remember. Griener said O`Farrel lied but did not mean to.

  28. Yesterday, BOF said he’d recall a $3k bottle of wine. Today, even when his handwritten not alluding to it was produced, it didn’t, according to him, jog his memory.

    These two claims can’t both be true. I’d like BOF to specify which is true. If he is now saying that he can hand write thank-you notes without recalling either the cause of the thank you or writing the note then he’s conceding that there may be other gifts he has received that he can’t recall and that are not on his register of Pecuniary Interest.

  30. Fran he is not likely to say much now for fear of any potential perjury charges. It will all be “I can’t recall” from now on. He has paid the political price but I’m sure his legal advice will be not to pay a more personal price.

  32. Henderson was getting really personal with his attack on McClyntoch, and he never let her finish her statements. Watch it with the sound turned down the same with the Abbott presser where he thugged that female reporter today.

    Watch the body language (with no sound) especially Abbott’s. It is quite disturbing.

  33. Almost never watch Lateline or Henderson, but had a look tonight.

    What a disaster for Henderson. Simply had no defence against reality at all, and had to eat a king-size shit sandwich. Looked absolutely crushed. A real Willy Loman moment.

  34. The BBC is reporting that in the Eastern Ukraine soldiers in armoured Ukrainian vehicles appears to have changed and are now flying the Russian flag after being urged not to shoot by the locals

    This article and pics shows the events
    This might confirm the stories that the Ukrainian soldiers are loathe to accept the orders of the Kiev regime

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27045534#

  35. @Davidwh/674

    There needs to be more than that, AWH is being used to fund the Liberal Party.

    NSW Liberals need a total revamp (and perhaps Federally) of their polices of where and who can receive funding and it’s associated companies, clients etc.

  37. dwh

    [Fran he is not likely to say much now for fear of any potential perjury charges. It will all be “I can’t recall” from now on. He has paid the political price but I’m sure his legal advice will be not to pay a more personal price.]

    That will be a fitting end for him. He came in promising high standards and that he wouldn’t let the voters down. Even today, he said lying to ICAC would be against everything he stood for. Well we will see. Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

    I recall seeing BOF wearing a red T-shirt saying “water not coal” and standing with similarly garbed Wallerah activists. What he stands for would appear to be fairly flexible.

  39. Funnily enough at the start of March many people were predicting that we would shortly have two new Liberal Premiers. Indeed the Liberals were almost boasting about it. It looks like their wish did come through after all.

  40. My only comment on this is that any politician stupid enough to accept a $3000 bottle of wine from anybody, on any pretext, under any circumstances, deserves all they get.

  41. Psephos

    [My only comment on this is that any politician stupid enough to accept a $3000 bottle of wine from anybody, on any pretext, under any circumstances, deserves all they get.]

    I now seriously doubt that the bottle of wine lie is the last we will hear of BOF’s malfeasance.

  43. Rossmore

    [The sad choice for NSW electors is which party is least corrupt?]

    Finding out which party is least corrupt is something currently of interest to a lot less than half the voters, IMO. AIUI about 60% always vote for one of the major parties.

    We Greens aren’t even a little bit corrupt. While I’d like to say that this entirely reflected our political and cultural integrity, it helps a great deal that the spivs of the world see us as offering them nothing tradable.

    If we ever do get within spitting distance of office in a major jurisdiction, we are absolutely going to have to be cautious about the probity of our candidate selection processes.

  44. Hartcher’s nonsense:

    And instead the ICAC got the wrong man. NSW needs a dedicated and competent anti-corruption body, but the ICAC has set back its own cause by seeming diverted by trivial pursuit when it should be uprooting serious corruption.

    Totally ignoring, as McClymont pointed out, that ICAC didn’t get O’Farrell – O’Farrell got O’Farrell.

    If O’Farrell had taken a more cautious approach to ICAC and the media on Tuesday, his political career wouldn’t have been over on Wednesday.

    ICAC wasn’t looking at O’Farrell, and ICAC didn’t ‘get’ O’Farrell.

    This Liberal party ‘fear and anger’ lashing out at ICAC is unjustifiable, and I hope that if the Liberal party attack ICAC that they will suffer in the public’s eyes.

    The last thing we want in this State or this country is a less wide-ranging and less feared anti-corruption commission.

    I’d go so far as to say that if it takes some collateral damage to expose the corruption within the system then so be it. But I reiterate that if O’Farrell had been a little bit less strident in his denials (‘I did not have relations with that bottle of wine’), he would still be premier today and has only himself to blame.

  45. NSW voters have been grappling with the question of who is least corrupt for over twenty years.

    The Greens have not had the opportunity to become corrupt. As Meg Lees demonstrated, the real test of who will sell out only comes when you have power to sell. There are people in every party who will fail the test (the 80/20 rule seems reversed in NSW). The real question is whether it is exposed and if the corrupt are removed quickly. That is the test of good governance.

    That being said, I agree there must be more to BOF resigning than one bottle of wine. He sounds too guilty. As Xanthippe said, “surely there is more to it than that?”

  47. Socrates –

    As Meg Lees demonstrated

    I fail to see how Meg Lees deserves to get mentioned in a post about corruption (and corruption in NSW specifically).

    There’s no suggestion that Meg Lees acted corruptly.

    That various people didn’t like Meg Lees negotiating the Democrats’ Senate votes doesn’t make the bargain she struck “corrupt”, so I don’t see how it’s useful to include Meg Lees in a discussion as an example of wielding power improperly or whatever.

  48. Pom

    [Even with all the political back lash I think the libs will still make a valiant effort to get BOF to reconsider]

    I certainly hope so.

  50. Jackol

    [If O’Farrell had taken a more cautious approach to ICAC and the media on Tuesday, his political career wouldn’t have been over on Wednesday.]

    I’m not so sure. Even if the bottle of Grange really was the alpha and omega of this, BOF was tainted irreparably. It would have taken longer, but sooner or later, he’d have begun dragging down the regime as every other deal was reassessed in that light. There would have been quite a few backbenchers worried they’d become collateral damage if a move weren’t made.

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