In his first major interview since taking on his new role, NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman talks about adjusting to life on the opposition benches and steadying a party used to being in power. auspol
Sitting by the window of a beachside cafe in his electorate of Cronulla, the newly mintedlaughs as he recalls a morning phone call from a young Warwick Fairfax. It was the late 1980s and Speakman, then a partner at Blake Dawson Waldron , was part of a team advising the 26-year-old on the takeover of his family’s publishing empire, John Fairfax Holdings.
“The boat started sinking,” he says. But there was an even-bigger problem. The passengers in their suits had arrived on the boat straight from the office carrying reams of documents which were essential to the deal and had to be saved from the seawater. It’s also a world away from Zimzala, a sun-drenched cafe and restaurant perched above a rockpool on South Cronulla Beach that Speakman chose for today’s lunch and his first interview since being elected as the state’s Liberal leader.arrives, Speakman, 63, who grew up nearby and still lives a couple minutes’ drive away, has already nabbed a prime table with views across the windy bay to Kurnell, the landmark where Captain Cook, the namesake of the overlaying federal electorate, landed in 1770.
Speakman, who served in the last government as attorney general and minister for the prevention of domestic violence against women, is sanguine when he talks about the election loss. “The tone of the debate between Dom [Perrottet] and Chris [Minns] was respectful and polite and courteous, but Labor still ran a big lie saying we were going to privatise [Sydney Water] … it was just completely disingenuous.”The long shadow of the pandemic and a two-speed lockdown system that imposed heavier restrictions on the city’s socially and ethnically diverse west than other parts of the city also had an impact, he says.
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