Everything you need to know about new NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet

Gladys Berejiklian’s replacement as NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is a proud social conservative who questions climate change, loves Donald Trump and abstains from masturbation.

The 39-year-old devout Catholic father-of-six is on Tuesday morning making history as the state’s youngest ever leader.

While his predecessor came from the Liberal Party’s moderate faction and was unmarried with no children, Perrottet is the complete opposite and hails from the right of the party.

Perrottet has overwhelmingly won the Liberal party room vote 39 to five, defeating Rob Stokes to become the next premier of New South Wales, thanks to the support of the socially-progressive moderate faction.

This is despite him voting in 2019 against a bill to decriminalise abortion declaring he could not support laws that stopped ‘the beating heart of an unborn child’.

The Liberal Party’s new leader in November 2016 laid out his conservative views in a lengthy Facebook post after Republican Donald Trump unexpectedly beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election.

He used the occasion to paraphrase Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies and disgraced US president Richard Nixon.

‘There is a silent majority, a forgotten people, who feel like the values they hold dear are no longer being represented by the political class,’ he said.

‘In fact these values and the people who hold them are looked upon with contempt.’

Perrottet also questioned the science of climate change, even though his likely treasurer Matt Kean from the moderate faction is a fierce advocate for renewable energy.

‘If you question man-made climate change, you are not a sceptic,’ he said.

Intriguingly, former Labor senator Sam Dastyari who studied law two decades ago with Perrottet at the University of Sydney recalled the future premier as a hard drinker who abstained from masturbation and didn’t believe in using contraception.

‘He didn’t believe in contraception, he does not believe in contraception,’ Dastyari told Kyle and Jackie O on KIIS FM in June 2018.

‘He doesn’t believe or he didn’t at the time believe in masturbation.

Intriguingly, former Labor senator Sam Dastyari who studied law two decades ago with Perrottet at the University of Sydney recalled the future premier as a hard drinker who abstained from masturbation and didn’t believe in using contraception

‘Dom was an old drinking buddy of mine back in my uni days , we used to get blind drunk together at Sydney uni, just horrible, and he was like this hardcore, Catholic, religious, but a big drinker.’ 

Dastyari recalled Perrottet even as a young man at university being opposed to gay marriage, which at the time was opposed by both sides of politics, and the idea of abortion.

‘The bit I remember him telling me at uni was – he was always a bit religious, he didn’t support marriage equality, didn’t support a woman’s right to choose,’ he said.

Like Dastyari, Perrottet also led the young wing of his political party. 

Before becoming a junior solicitor, Perrottet was the leader of the NSW Young Liberals, taking over in 2005 three years after future cabinet minister Alex Hawke, who now holds the immigration portfolio, spearheaded a right-wing takeover of the youth movement. 

Hawke later split from the right, forming a breakaway centre-right faction which Prime Minister Scott Morrison belongs to and he is no longer close with Perrottet.

In July Perrottet, as NSW Treasurer, clashed with Mr Morrison after he called on the federal government to reinstate JobKeeper wage subsidies during the early stage of Sydney’s three-month lockdown.

Perrottet is himself one of 12 children, with his father John a director of the World Bank.

The Liberal Party’s new leader in November 2016 laid out his conservative views in a lengthy Facebook post after Republican Donald Trump unexpectedly beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election