Barry O'Farrell - Premier of New South Wales

Premier of New South Wales

See also: O'Farrell Ministry

O'Farrell was sworn in as Premier by the Governor of New South Wales, Marie Bashir on 28 March 2011. Although O'Farrell's victory was beyond doubt, counting was still underway in a few seats at the time. For this reason, O'Farrell and NSW Nationals leader Andrew Stoner were sworn in as a two-man government—a move similar to how Gough Whitlam took office after winning the 1972 federal election. The full ministry was sworn in on 3 April 2011 at a formal ceremony at Government House by the Lieutenant Governor, James Spigelman. Upon taking office, O'Farrell, in a gesture of financial accountability and efficiency, reduced the size of the Premier's personal staff and moved the office from Governor Macquarie Tower back to the historic Premier's office within Parliament House.

Following the swearing in of cabinet, on 4 April O'Farrell announced a "100 Day Action Plan", outlining the agenda of his government for his first one hundred days in office. One of O'Farrell's first moves was to rein in public expenditure by capping public service wage increases at 2.5% a year and by abolishing the 'unattached list' for public servants that had been set up by the Carr Government that paid wages to staff with no permanent position because they would not allow forced redundancies. The new Government also enshrined the independence of the public service by the establishing of an independent Public Service Commission, to implement structural reform, chaired by former federal department head Dr. Peter Shergold.

O'Farrell also fulfilled his election promise to repeal the controversial powers granted under part 3A of the Planning and Assessment Act that allowed the government to over-ride decisions by local councils about major developments. Another aspect was the creation of Infrastructure NSW, which is to decide upon which infrastructure projects take precedence, funding requirements and overall delivery. O'Farrell then appointed former Liberal Premier Nick Greiner as its Chairman.

On 13 May 2011 the O'Farrell Government moved to retrospectively change commercial contracts relating to the NSW Solar Rebate scheme that saw households paid a gross feed in tariff of 60 cents a kilowatt hour following revelations the Labor-introduced scheme had blown out in cost from $400M to $1.9B. Without compensation, the rebate tariff would have been reduced by 33% to 40 cents a kilowatt hour from 1 July 2011 through to the conclusion of the scheme in 2016. However, when the Legislative Council made it clear that they would not agree to roll the bonus back, the government conceded, but announced that the scheme would close and not take any new entrants.

On 7 October 2011 O'Farrell announced the Governor of New South Wales Marie Bashir would live in Government House, fifteen years after Bob Carr's decision to not have the Governor live there, arguing "that's what it was built for".

During a trade visit to Lebanon and the UNited Arab Emirates in May 2012, O'Farrell was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Lebanese Maronite Order (LMO) USEK : Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik. In receiving the honour, O'Farrell said: "

"“This Honorary Doctorate from a renowned university honours the relationship between the people of NSW and the people of Lebanon, as much as it does any individual. It is therefore particularly humbling to receive it. I sincerely hope that my current visit to Lebanon conveys the high esteem in which the Government and people of NSW hold the Lebanese community, and reflects my desire to foster an even closer and more productive relationship, including in the field of education.

On 21 September 2012, O'Farrell announced that there would be sweeping changes to Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in New South Wales. These changes sought to focus resources on vocational courses in areas of skills shortages. Controversially, the changes mean that fine arts courses would no longer be subsidised, instead being offered on fee-for-service basis from 1 January 2013.

At the December 2012 COAG meeting, O'Farrell reached agreement with Prime Minister Julia Gillard for NSW to become the first state or territory to secure funding for the full rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. When fully operational in 2018/19, the Federal Government will commit $3.3 billion and the NSW Government $3.1 billion to provide individualised care and support to an estimated 140,000 people with disabilities across the State. At a jont media conference with Gillard, O'Farrell praised the efforts of his Ageing and Disbailities Minister Andrew Constance in helping to finalise the deal.