Clennell was referring to what he sees as a very close outcome this time around. In 1995, the late, storied John Fahey won 52.7 per cent of the two-Party-preferred vote and still lost.

LOSE

Despite Fahey’s impressive personal character and political skills, the Liberal Party deserved to lose. It was a woeful government.

And there are uncanny parallels to what is left of the current Liberal/National Government. In particular, both governments were characterised by incompetence and seemingly endless, seedy, whiff-of-corruption, embarrassing scandals.

Mature readers with long memories may remember those days and the characters that so besmirched the government.

The Fahey Government came into being on the back of Nick Greiner’s political implosion. Greiner had been hailed, on his landslide election win in 1988, as a fresh face, a force for sensible reform and a “competent” administrator of what the Liberal Party of the day liked to call “NSW Inc”.

Run the place like a business. Make public servants business-focused. Privatise. Outsource. Marketise.

Greiner was a student of something called New Public Management, an unfortunate fad of the time with lasting, deleterious consequences.

He went early to an election in 1991, ludicrously as it happens, butchered the campaign, ended up with a hung parliament, thereby gifting his opponents (including a clutch of chancer-independents) with an opportunity to control the political agenda for the following term.

And then Greiner allegedly tried to bribe an independent (a former Liberal Minister, Terry Metherell) to resign from Parliament and take up a senior public service job. (Sound familiar, Pork Barilaro?)

Greiner got sprung by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), modelled by the Premier himself on a Hong Kong version of the same thing, and was forced to resign. (He was later cleared by the NSW Supreme Court on the corruption charge, too late politically, of course.)

Trying to rebuild, and armed with a deal with the Independents who forced Greiner’s departure – again, does this sound familiar, independents calling the shots and premiers resigning having fallen foul of ICAC? – Fahey was confronted with a rising tide of something with which we are quite familiar in the roaring 2020s.

A curious mix of low-level corruption, sleazy escapades and bungling incompetence. The whole thing imploded.

In 1995, we had a used car salesman Liberal MP who was caught spying on his customers. Tony Packard, just up the Windsor Road, as the 1980s advert used to bellow. Let me do it right for you.

Packard was an ex-pat, Brit bank teller who found his way to Australia and his natural political home in the NSW Liberal Party.

In 1990, when State Liberal Member of Parliament Fred Caterson resigned from parliament, Packard was preselected as the Liberal candidate for the resultant by-election in Caterson’s seat of The Hills.

After winning the by-election he was re-elected in the general election the following year with 67 per cent of the vote.

CONCEALED

While an MP, Packard was charged over earlier use of concealed listening devices in his car dealership and forced to resign from Parliament in 1993.

He currently resides in Melbourne and is a highly regarded automotive sales trainer responsible of the success of numerous car dealerships across Australia.

Good to see him doing well now. Highly regarded, no less.

We also had Torpedo Ted Pickering – the then Minister for Police and titular leader of the Moderates, then called simply “The Group” – resigning after a messy dispute with the then highly respected Police Commissioner, Tony Lauer. (The words “highly respected” and “police commissioner” are seldom used in the same sentence in Australia).

We had Terry Griffiths, unkindly known as Inspector Gadget as a result of his long, gangly arms which apparently found the private parts of his staff on a regular basis.

A kind of Macquarie Street version of Joe Biden. He was done for sexual harassment with compensation paid to his victims … and he had his legal bills paid by the then government!

Then there was Neil Pickard, an Askin-era minister packed off to London (under Greiner) to solve some domestic Liberal Party problems … as Agent General! Remember agents general? They were mysteriously reinstated in 2019 by the current lot. Pork Barilaro was to get the Big Apple.

Pickard’s tenure in London was subject to an audit report, not entirely favourable to place on it the kindest interpretation.

There were odd trips to Paris for weddings and the occasional sojourn in Nice. And a little Christian fellowship to boot.

He seems to have prevaricated about the purposes of some of the trips, and was forced to repay some of the costs.

(In an obituary following Pickard’s death, the late Bob Ellicott, a Fraser Government minister, defended him strongly and asserted that his dismissal was unfair.)

Finally, there was Barry Morris, MP for the Blue Mountains. He was done – and went to prison – for issuing death threats (in an Italian accent) to a Greens councillor. Really? (I need to declare an interest here; sadly, the late Barry Morris was a distant relative of mine).

None of these low rent clowns could be described as “highly respected”, notwithstanding Packard’s late comeback to respectability as a used car sales trainer and Ellicott’s defence of Pickard.

Yet, between them, they brought down a good man in John Fahey. It was a low rent political culture then. It still is. If these alleged crimes and misdemeanours have a ring of familiarity to them, well, they should.

For Greiner, we have Berejiklian. For Pickard, we have Barilaro. For Barry Morris and Tony Packard, we have John Sidoti (public corruption charges) and Damien Tudehope (resigned after a perceived conflict of interest over shares).

For Terry Griffiths, we have Gareth Ward (currently facing charges for sexual abuse), Michael Johnsen (resigned, though not charged, following rape allegations aired in the Parliament) and Peter Poulos (sharing sex photos of a colleague).

INFEDILITY

We might even throw in Matt Green for a little colleague sexting and infidelity, though he has survived (and committed far, far greater policy sins). It seems the NSW Liberals, like the Bourbons, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

There is one man for whom comparisons with 1995 might call up feelings of unease.

This is the unelected lobbyist whose name cannot be spoken in Right-of-centre media circles – for fear of what, exactly? – who was actually a nondescript junior minister in that very same Fahey Government.