Dominic Perrottet

Dominic Francis Perrottet (born 21 September 1982) is an Australian politician who served as the 46th premier of New South Wales from 2021 to 2023.

He held office as leader of the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party of Australia, and assumed the position following the resignation of Gladys Berejiklian.

Perrottet was born in 1982, and raised in West Pennant Hills, Sydney.

He is the third oldest of 12 children.

His father, John Perrottet, works for the World Bank as the Global Lead for Tourism at the International Finance Corporation, in Washington, D.C. Perrottet's family were members of the Catholic prelature, Opus Dei.

Perrottet was educated at private schools Oakhill College in Castle Hill and Redfield College in Dural.

Perrottet was active in student politics while studying commerce and law at the University of Sydney and campaigned for voluntary student unionism.

He went on to work as a commercial lawyer for Henry Davis York in the areas of banking restructuring and insolvency law.

Perrottet was the President of the NSW Young Liberals Movement in 2005 and served on the NSW State Executive of the Liberal Party from 2008 to 2011.

Following the resignation of sitting Liberal MP Michael Richardson, Perrottet won Liberal preselection for the very safe Liberal seat of Castle Hill in November 2010, with the backing of right-wing power broker David Clarke.

Clarke battled against Alex Hawke, Federal Member for Mitchell, to gain control of preselections.

He represented Castle Hill from 2011 to 2015 and Hawkesbury from 2015 to 2019.

Perrottet served as Minister for Industrial Relations in the first Berejiklian ministry and as Minister for Finance, Services and Property in the first and second Baird ministries.

After the resignation of Berejiklian in October 2021, Perrottet won a leadership election to become the new premier and leader of the Liberal Party.

He would lose power 18 months later in the 2023 state election, and resigned as leader shortly thereafter.

At the 2011 state election, Perrottet was elected with a swing of 12.2 points, winning 80.8 per cent of the two-party vote.

With the resignation of Barry O'Farrell as premier, and the subsequent ministerial reshuffle by Mike Baird, the new Liberal leader, Perrottet was appointed as Minister for Finance and Services in April 2014.

Following a redistribution of electoral boundaries, Perrottet traded seats with fellow Liberal Ray Williams for the 2015 state election.

Perrottet handed Castle Hill to Williams to run in Williams' equally safe seat of Hawkesbury.

Perrottet was elected with 68 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.

After the resignation of Baird as Premier, the main factions of the NSW Liberals agreed to support his deputy, Gladys Berejiklian, as his successor, with Perrottet as her deputy.

Berejiklian is from the party's moderate wing, while Perrottet is from the conservative wing.

The Information and Privacy Commission NSW found that icare had not publicly registered 422 contracts since 2015, each worth more than $150,000.

These contracts include some being awarded without a competitive tender to companies associated with Liberal Party figures, such as marketing firm IVE Group being awarded millions of dollars in contracts.

IVE Group is run by former NSW Liberal party president Geoff Selig.

Perrottet previously served as treasurer of New South Wales and deputy leader of the New South Wales Liberal Party from January 2017 to October 2021, and is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing the seat of Epping since the 2019 state election.

Accordingly, on 23 January 2017, Berejiklian and Perrottet were unanimously elected as leader and deputy leader of the NSW Liberal Party.

Later that day, Berejiklian was sworn in as New South Wales' second female Premier.

When Berejiklian reshuffled her ministry, Perrottet took over her former ministerial roles as Treasurer and Minister for Industrial Relations, with effect from 30 January 2017.

An internal note among senior figures in the NSW Treasury in 2018 raised a concern that "a direct line to [Perrottet] means icare often bypasses Treasury".

In the lead up to the 2019 state election, Perrottet attempted to wrest Castle Hill back from Williams, citing work-life balance as Hawkesbury was too far for him to travel.

This was unsuccessful, with Williams retaining the Liberal preselection, and resulted in media reports of significant party infighting and Perrottet publicly apologising.

Eventually, Perrottet abandoned the Hawkesbury preselection, and he settled on his second-choice, the equally safe seat of Epping.

At the 2019 state election Perrottet was elected as Member for Epping and reappointed as Treasurer in the second Berejiklian ministry.

Perrottet's record as NSW Treasurer was marred by allegations that his department mismanaged the state's workers compensation scheme, icare.

A combined investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC TV's Four Corners found that icare had underpaid as many as 52,000 injured workers by up to $80 million and that the organisation was close to collapse.

Following the investigation, NSW's workers' compensation regulator State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) announced in August 2020 that it would be applying increased scrutiny to icare's 2020 financial audit.

icare was also accused of improperly handling private sector contracts.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the note in 2020 and noted that other concerns raised included icare's non-compliance with recruitment policies and limited disclosures of capital expenditures.

Scrutiny of Perrottet's close relationship with icare prompted him to direct Treasury Secretary Michael Pratt to audit the Treasurer's staffing arrangements, which the NSW Labor Party criticised as a "sham" as the Secretary was a former deputy chairman of icare.