Perrottet farewells politics, but he shouldn’t be lost to public life

Dominic Perrottet has bowed out of state politics. A fascinating political figure, genuinely dynamic, surprising, and smart; the people of NSW will miss his ideas and energy.

When Perrottet became NSW’s youngest-ever premier at 39 in October 2021, the task ahead of him was considerable. He not only had to oversee the state’s exit from the COVID-19-induced lockdown but also faced the daunting task of managing the $100 billion in debt incurred as a result of the pandemic.

In a 13-year parliamentary career, he had been the treasurer under Gladys Berejiklian for four years, and her downfall, courtesy of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, haunted his premiership. Like most who take the reins of leadership of a tired government amid controversy, Perrottet failed to retain office at the first election and after 18 months, he stepped down in March 2023 when Labor won.

A self-styled economic rationalist, Perrottet showed enormous enthusiasm and energy for economic reform, but his record is not unblemished. In 2017, he was forced to abandon reform of the emergency services levy, and his partial privatisation of the state workers’ compensation scheme, icare, was faulted for hurting the vulnerable and rewarding consultants.

Perrottet combined laudable leadership, moral courage and political bravery – particularly against the gambling industry – with a decency unusual in politics that saw moderate sit jauntily alongside conservative.

Those attributes were on display in a valedictory speech charged with humour, grace and bright ideas to a packed parliament on Tuesday when he bid goodbye to politics to take up a Washington appointment as US head of corporate and external relations at the mining company BHP.

It included nods to his mentor John Howard for encouraging him to focus on middle Australia and to Paul Keating for alerting him to the shared problems of making Labor care for money and making the Liberals care for people: “This may sound strange because John and Paul are so different – but I sometimes feel I’m their political love child.”

Pointing to his bipartisan relationship with former Victorian premier Dan Andrews during the pandemic and on preschool education and health care, Perrottet lamented the absence of a similar relationship with Canberra at the federal level. He proposed harmonising election cycles – four-year fixed terms for both federal and state and territory governments – to allow premiers and treasurers to work together and collaborate across party lines to improve financial and service delivery. An excellent and much-needed reform.