https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/09/04/icac-nsw-liberals-reformers-victoria-labor/
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It’s hard not to be deeply depressed about the future of New South Wales, with the state’s Liberal Party being comprehensively demolished by the extended farce on show at the Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings.
The NSW Liberals were the one mainland branch of the party that had its act together. The WA and SA Liberals have been wiped out. The “Liberal” in “Liberal National Party” in Queensland is there purely ironically. The Victorian Liberals spent the best part of a quarter-century tearing themselves apart, with much of the past decade given over to Christian fundamentalist entryists trying to seize control and turn the state into Alabama on the Yarra.
But in NSW, where actual liberals retained power and worked in an occasionally uneasy but effective alliance with various sections of the right, the party delivered three terms of better-than-average government — for all its terrible baggage of pork-barrelling and jobs for mates, it was still fiscally disciplined, socially progressive, pro-transparency and climate-friendly when it faced the voters in 2023.
Next March, the same party will limp to the polls wondering if One Nation — once it finishes wiping out the Nationals in the regions — will come for them in the outer suburbs, too. No wonder senior figures are already bailing out. All that voters will remember about the Liberals by then is a succession of seemingly interchangeable Perrottets, parliamentary committees undermined by their own members, factory-reset phones, “I don’t recall” elevated to mantra status and barely pubescent man-children parading as Jesus’ personal hit squad.
Are they laughably incompetent liars, or possessed of Alan Bond-level amnesia? Either way, you wouldn’t let them run a chook raffle. And all this is in service of a religious war aimed not at Labor, and not even at the despised moderates within their party, but at the “traitors” of the centre-right. Mrs Nassif, you like?
It’s not the whole story, but the destabilising factional conflicts launched by Christian zealots — people dedicated to smashing their own party colleagues — are key to understanding where Victoria went off the rails. With the Victorian Liberals neutered by the disruption serially inflicted by the sort of Christians who think the New Testament is too woke, Victoria was reduced to a one-party state in which Victorian Labor could do — and spend — what it liked. The result was an outfit that even Labor figures now describe as “a morally bankrupt and corrupt government”.
Don’t think the wrecking of the NSW Liberals could lead to the same outcome in that state under NSW Labor? Obeid. Macdonald. Tripodi. Kelly. Still think it can’t happen? The risibly named “Reformers”, perched on the far right of the NSW Liberals, seem to have looked at the mayhem caused by a generation of reactionary activists among their Victorian colleagues and, rather than seeing it as a guarantee of electoral oblivion to be avoided like an appropriately biblical plague, instead thought: “Hold my beer.”
In both cases and in both states, the hollowed-out nature of the major party branches leaves them prey to entryists, self-aggrandisers and the outright corrupt. But simply throwing around money in defiance of electoral laws and basic good sense tends only to get you a visit from your local anti-corruption body. Smart operators understand how to embed themselves in the entire worldview of politicians so that anything harmful to their interests becomes unthinkable.
In agendas, there is minimal difference between Jean Nassif and, say, Clubs NSW or the NSW branch of the Australian Hotels Association — nobbling regulators and preventing tighter regulation is core business for them, no matter what trail of lost savings and ruined lives they leave in their wake.
Nassif’s amateurish efforts and $2 million, however, got him nothing. Meanwhile, over the past decade in political donations, Clubs NSW’s $1.58 million and the NSW Australian Hotels Association’s $2.5 million have — a brief lapse under the Perrottet government aside — won them virtual immunity from meaningful regulation, and all without the inconvenience of an ICAC appearance or extended stay in Lebanon.
Only federal regulator AUSTRAC, with its annoying insistence on following the fragrant smell of freshly laundered money, poses a significant threat to the pokies palaces in NSW, as it did to the Crown and Star casino chains. The latter, teetering on the edge of oblivion despite the best efforts of the Minns government, is currently begging for mercy and a $300 million discount on the money-laundering fine AUSTRAC is seeking.
An invidious choice for NSW voters next March, then: a party that has formalised corruption into business as usual, or an outfit where factional meetings require a factory reset on your phone. What chance that late 2030s will see a reluctantly convened royal commission running a ruler over the excesses of the late 2020s?
Bernard Keane is Crikey’s politics editor. Before that he was Crikey’s Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics"
#auspol #vicpol #nswpol #HahahahaLiebs 
