Overview
At 10am Monday morning, the NSW Liberal Party took a vote to confirm their next leader and our newest Premier, following Mike Baird's shock resignation last week. After less than half hour, media favourite Gladys Berejiklian emerged from the meeting as the 45th Premier of NSW.
Berejiklian was elected as the member for Willoughby in 2003, after a career with the Commonwealth Bank. Since her election, she has served as the Shadow Minister for Mental Health, Shadow Minister for Transport and Shadow Minister for Citizenship, before being given the Transport portfolio in 2011 following the Liberal victory in the state election in 2011. After Mike Baird's ascent to Premier in 2014, Berejiklian was named Deputy Leader and Treasurer of NSW.
The main questions, however, are regarding where Berejiklian will stand in regards to the major issues confronting NSW at the moment. Given the fact that the major transport infrastructure projects that have caused such controversy were initially Berejiklian's projects, it is unlikely that any deviation from the government's current position will arise. That is, WestConnex is probably here to stay, as she was Transport Minister in 2011, when the project got underway.
Berejiklian hasn't made her view on Sydney's controversial lockout laws publicly known, which has been the party line within the NSW Liberal Government, so it's hard to gauge how the new Premier will act on an issue that has divided Sydney since Barry O'Farrell introduced the laws. Tyson Koh, the Director of the Keep Sydney Open movement, has called the current government "out of touch", and this opinion is one that it would behoove the new Premier to change. Although, as the reported leader of the more moderate faction of the state Liberals, it's not impossible to imagine that she will approach the lockout laws with a little more diplomatic aplomb than her predecessor.
All deliberation aside, Premier Berejiklian was voted in unopposed in the Liberal party room, so it's clear that the government thinks she will do a bang-up job running the state. All that's left to see is if the public thinks the same thing.
Berejiklian will be sworn in at 2.30pm this afternoon, with Dominic Perrottet being named as her deputy.
Image: NSW Government/YouTube.