It came as senior government members,led by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday,ramped up calls for Ms Berejiklian to enter federal politics. Mr Morrison said she was a person of “great integrity” and had been the victim of a shameful “pile on” courtesy of the Independent Commission Against Corruption and the media.
Earlier,Finance Minister and senior moderate faction member Simon Birmingham had told the ABC:“It’s pretty sad when ICACs go out and destroy reputations,do so in pretty murky ways,looking into relationships and other things”.
Meanwhile,Jason Falinski,Liberal MP for the neighbouring northern beaches seat of Mackellar,said the party was “putting Gladys forward” because she had good ideas about jobs,housing affordability and net zero - and they were not concerned about repercussions from a possible adverse finding by the ICAC.
“Most people in NSW have discounted the ICAC,” he said. “Our focus is on the people of Australia,not side games about whether[the ICAC] has discredited itself - it did that years ago. The only people who seem to give the ICAC any credibility are the media who enjoy the front page stories.”
Mr Abbott,a conservative Liberal who lost the formerly blue ribbon Sydney seat of Warringah in 2019 to independent Zali Steggall,told theHerald on Monday night that Ms Berejiklian’s management of COVID-19 in NSW made her a good candidate for federal politics.
“Gladys did a fine job as premier and was by far the best of them at resisting virus panic and calls for lockdowns,” he said. “We certainly need more people in Canberra with an instinct for freedom and a feel for small business and it would be good to keep Gladys in our public life.”