Scott Morrison with Dominic Perrottet (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

It took just three days for NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet to lay down his marker. With locked-down Sydneysiders on the brink of getting a first taste of (relative) freedom in months, Perrottet decided to tinker with former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s roadmap.

From Monday, household gathering limits will double to 10 people, with caps on outdoor gatherings, weddings and funerals raised. Once the state reaches 80% double-dosed, indoor masks won’t be required in offices, and nightclubs will reopen without dancing.

Depending on who you ask, the changes are either relatively minor adjustments which will have little impact, or big changes likely to cause a dangerous rise in cases. Either way, it’s an unsurprising move for long-time lockdown sceptic Perrottet, and a clear sign of his government’s shifting priorities. Chief health officer Kerry Chant, absent from yesterday’s press conference, reportedly did not approve the revised roadmap, although Deputy Premier Paul Toole denies this. 

“It’s not just a health crisis, it’s an economic crisis too,” Perrottet told reporters yesterday.

The premier’s decision only makes sense if viewed purely through the prism of a more libertarian-minded conservative wanting to quickly take ownership of the top job, and signal his firm support for the business community. 

But politically it’s a high-risk move. The Berejiklian reopening plan already had broad public support. Now, if the more pessimistic projections about case numbers and hospitalisations do — for once — come true, Perrottet will shoulder the blame. It’s even more risky given his government holds a single-seat majority and faces three byelections, likely in December (albeit in electorates it should retain). 

And beyond the early, turbulent months of the reopening lies a federal election, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison is betting on a feeling of relaxed and comfortable post-COVID normal in NSW to convince voters to give him another term. Despite their differences, Morrison probably wanted Berejiklian in charge when he went to the polls, with the former premier’s popularity a big asset.

Instead he needs Perrottet to maintain voter goodwill toward the Liberal brand. The campaign will also stress-test the relationship between the two men. Much has been made of the prime minister swearing at Perrottet over the phone, and the new premier claiming he didn’t want national cabinet to be a “kumbaya session”.

On paper, Morrison and Perrottet seem very similar: both deeply religious men who have spent decades knowing nothing other than the machinery of the Liberal Party. But that history has meant they fall on different sides of arcane, simmering factional divides in the right of the NSW Liberals.

One of Morrison’s key lieutenants is immigration minister and recent cabinet appointee Alex Hawke, who helped run numbers for the PM during the 2018 Liberal leadership spill. Hawke’s own factional history is key. In the mid-2000s he helped the Christian right wrestle control over the NSW Liberals from the moderates, backed by his mentor David Clarke, a deeply socially conservative MLC. Once Hawke won preselection for Mitchell, in Sydney’s north-western Bible belt, he and Clarke had a very public falling out, which saw Hawke carve out a third faction: the centre right.

Perrottet, from the old hard right, would become Clarke’s next protégé. Perrottet’s own preselection in 2010 for the safe seat of Castle Hill (which overlaps Hawke’s electorate) became a proxy war in the battle between the two factions. When Perrottet tried to jump seats again in 2018, he lost a battle with Hawke’s man Ray Williams. 

Morrison historically tried to play the hard right and the moderates off, once famously attending both hard right and moderate factional dinners in 2009. Now, Morrison and Hawke are leaders of the centre right, a faction that only formally exists in NSW. While the Morrison-Hawke right is powerful in Canberra, they’re a marginalised force on Macquarie Street. In 2018, Perrottet and Treasurer Matt Kean, leader of the moderates, made a deal to squeeze out the centre right.

None of this means Morrison and Perrottet won’t get on. They’re conservative, Christian Liberals after all. But there’s history and layers to the relationship.

If Perrottet botches the reopening and leaves Morrison to fight an election against the backdrop of a groaning hospital system, rolling restrictions, and a further fractured federation, it might start to unravel.