The coming NSW ICAC hearings are only part of a deeper problem. Entrenched factional power, gambling interests and political cowardice are corroding trust in Australia’s institutions.

I cannot pretend to be terribly surprised or shocked to learn that the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is soon to hold public hearings into NSW Liberal Party factional branch stacking, pre-selection rorts and receipt of prohibited donations, primarily from the real estate industry.

It’s been coming for years. Most of the primary allegations are on the public record, which is to say the Hansard of the NSW Parliament. ICAC does not, as such, deal in matters of guilt or innocence or make findings about breaking the criminal law, but every man, woman and dog knows that there’s an awful lot of smoke within this fire.

Most of it involves machinations of the conservative right-wing faction of the Liberal party, active members of which, in recent years, have included Tony Abbott, Angus Taylor, Dominic Perrottet and John Howard.

None of these will be directly fingered, other than by association (in Dominic’s case embarrassingly close to home). Each will claim to be above the fray. It will be said, not necessarily wrongly, that they have been so engaged in open, legitimate, activities on behalf of their faction and their party that they would simply have not had the time for the sort of skullduggery alleged. But all are hardened factional warriors who have closely engaged in the struggle for ideas and power within the Liberal Party over the years, at organisational as much as representational level.

It has been said that that the mark of the hardened factional is of being more fond (and experienced) at sinking a shiv in the back of a rival factional warrior of the same party than in the front breast of a representative of the other side of politics. Those I have mentioned have been accused, in their time, of being factional assassins.

I have disclosed before that Dominic Perrottet is a cousin of mine, though not one with whom I have ever had any dealings. I knew and was fond of his grandparents, sometime visitors to my home. The Perrottets, like a good many of my relatives, were a very fertile lot (Dominic and his wife, with seven kids, still are) meaning that a single family of them is quite capable of forming a Liberal or Country Party branch. Dominic’s brothers and sisters seem to have made playing in Liberal Party factional politics the family business in recent years. That and being involved in right-wing Catholic affairs and schools, and in conjunction with several reactionary Australian bishops who are well out of favour in Rome, plotting schism against the manner, style and content of the church promoted by recent Popes.

People used to say that my grandfather, Ned O’Brien, who had 11 kids, 9 sons-in-law and 76 grandchildren) had a powerful voice in local National Party affairs, including an effective veto over which Protestant would represent us in parliament because of the way he wielded the family vote. Even local member Ralph Hunt, who seemed to know every member of my family, treated me with genial respect, though he knew what I thought. The NSW Country Party was thoroughly Protestant until an invasion led by Tim Fischer from Victoria.

The ICAC inquiry can be expected to be long and protracted. Its odour of corruption, chicanery and villainy may well extend into the next NSW and the next federal election. This is a coincidence, not a part of some partisan ICAC........

© Pearls and Irritations