A brief history of Liberal Party scandals

By sheer number of resignations, the NSW Coalition government goes to next weekend’s election as one of the most scandal prone in history.

Steve Cansdell was the first. Less than six months after Barry O’farrell led the biggest election victory in New South Wales history, the Nationals MP announced he was resigning.

In 2005, after a speeding offence, he had someone falsify a statutory declaration. Now, as parliamentary secretary to the minister for police, he was being asked to step down.

O’farrell’s win had been built largely on the promise of integrity in government, especially following the appalling corruption of the Eddie Obeid and Labor era.

Twelve years down the track that promise has been shredded. Dozens of Coalition politicians have been driven out in disgrace.

Measured by the sheer number and variety of incidents of misbehaviour and malpractice, and the number of resignations, the current Coalition government is truly exceptional.

Two premiers – O’farrell and Gladys Berejiklian – and a host of lesser figures have left politics as a consequence of investigations by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Many more have fallen to scandals of various kinds: financial, sexual, factional and other.

For all of O’farrell’s promises to reform politics, a significant number of Coalition

MPS were tainted by malfeasance from the day they won office. Indeed, even before they won office.

Despite the fact everyone knew long before the 2011 election that it was going to be a “bloodbath” for Labor, says former counsel assisting ICAC, Geoffrey Watson, SC, a cohort of people in the Liberal Party cheated anyway.

“Those Liberal Party guys … weren’t prepared to leave it in the hands of the voters,” he says. “So, they organised schemes where