In 1966, one of the most famous rock and roll stars of the time, Rolling Stones guitarist the late Brian Jones, posed for a Munich magazine in an authentic Waffen-SS uniform with his jackbooted heel stomping on a female doll.
Even for the free-wheeling ’60s it was a controversial move, and many, but not all, contemporary musicians and commentators condemned him.
Almost 40 years later, in 2003, a young, aspiring NSW Liberal was planning to celebrate his 21st birthday. Dominic Perrottet and his party planners decided a uniform theme would be fun. Some chose the firefighter look, while others dressed as police officers, nurses or in Australian military garb. Perrottet went military too, but he was more Brian Jones than Mel Gibson in Gallipoli.
It’s doubtful Perrottet’s then-naive political worldview would have realised the significance of the timing of his Nazi dress-ups — 2003 was 70 years since the National Socialists took power in Germany, Adolf Hitler having assumed office on January 30 in 1933.
This piece of incendiary political trivia is now gnawing at Perrottet’s future, already under pressure with the election set for 10 weeks away on Saturday, March 25.
Perrottet assumed the premiership after Gladys Berejiklian resigned following a still-unresolved scandal of her own: the ICAC inquiry fallout of her close relationship with Daryl Maguire, a former Liberal MP who has been charged with criminal conspiracy over alleged visa fraud.
It was a fraught time, and the hardline, somewhat awkward, Perrottet was meant to be a fresh start for a trouble-prone administration whose biggest asset was the limp nature of its Labor opposition.
In the following months, the premier went some way to right a listing political ship. Most recent polling had Coalition support on a steady climb, from 30% about four months ago to 37% just before Christmas. This is still down almost five points from the March 2019 election.
Labor’s vote held 35% — up by two points from 2019 — and the Greens plus a group of centre-left others had more than 21%. All this turns around the 52-48 preferred-vote victory for the Coalition to a four-point winning advantage for Labor.
With the Coalition still suffering from brand damage in the wake of the Morrison era, Perrottet and his colleagues always had a hard row to hoe. The Nationals have been on a downward trend, with regional insurgents such as the Shooters and Fishers eating into its vote, while the Liberals haven’t been able to marshal support in the suburbs to compensate for any loss of votes in aspirational middle-class teal seats.
This all gets interesting when viewed through a few political prisms.
The most critical question is how badly the Liberal brand has been damaged after Morrison’s three years of blokey, boof-headed, lie-soaked, oafish-narcissist-tinged swagger with split-screen, multi-ministerial play. Probably more than a bit.
Many LNP politicians think they have a long road to recovery, and polling throughout the first seven months of Anthony Albanese’s government confirms this assessment.
While some NSW Liberals might want to blame Morrison for any loss — as locals did in Victoria last November when Dan Andrews’ administration was elected for a third term — homegrown issues will play a big part. Perrottet’s lapses and internal divisions will be primary among them.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that a likely cause for this embarrassing revelation was Perrottet’s forlorn intervention before Christmas to get more women preselected. The right faction hated it and this was part of its revenge.
To have any real hope of avoiding defeat, the LNP will need to push back against growing support for those centre-left others — measured at about 10% to 12% in the polls. There is backing for Animal Justice, Legalise Cannabis Australia and other niche left-leaning parties, but the bulk of this new vote is for teal independents in those first ring of inner-urban seats similar to the electorates lost by the Liberals federally last year.
In Sydney, these seats are Lane Cove (with a margin of 14.7%), Manly (13.1%), North Shore (11.1%), Pittwater (20.8%), and Wakehurst (21.8%). There’s a Far North Coast Nationals seat, Oxley (15.4%), also on the Climate 200 radar.
Most of these would be seen as too safe to be considered in danger, but the anti-incumbent mood could produce change. After all, when Berejiklian resigned in 2021, the byelection in her well-heeled seat of Willoughby resulted in a loss of 13.5% of the preferred Liberal vote and support for the independent candidate Larissa Penn of 19.5%.
The teals in Victoria might have failed to win any seats from Matthew Guy’s Liberal Party last November, but climate action-backed candidates went within a point of victory in suburban Hawthorn and the regional seat of Mornington.
One theory in political circles is that teal candidates perform better when they are running in a poll with an incumbent Labor government. This will be tested in NSW, along with whether or not the driving force of their success last May was a visceral dislike of Morrison and all he stood for.
Another factor in NSW is optional preferential voting — introduced by Neville Wran’s government 42 years ago — which might deprive teal independents of those last few votes needed to get to a preferred win.
So far, most other politicians are steering away from the Nazi uniform scandal, with the state’s Labor Leader Chris Minns and Albanese saying it’s a matter for voters. They also add they would not have pulled on a Nazi suit on the way out to a birthday bash.
The only hits came from NSW Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Leader Robert Borsak, who says Perrottet broke the law by not disclosing his foolishness (he didn’t), and former premier Bob Carr, who threw in some class warfare by saying Perrottet, with private schooling and privilege, should have known better.
This messy start to an election year for Perrottet probably sealed his fate as a very temporary premier. That he was taken down by an internal hit from a self-loathing Liberal Party says all we need to know about the state of conservative politics in Australia right now.
