One-time NSW skills minister Tim Crakanthorp was found to have breached the public trust. His only punishment is a seat on the backbench.

The short-lived ministerial career of the Newcastle MP ended because he knowingly failed to declare a conflict of interest involving his wife’s parents and their substantial property interests. This was a breach of the public’s trust, according to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).

While it did not amount to corruption, the ICAC concluded, Crakanthorp – who commands much power in the branches of Labor heartland – breached the ministerial code of conduct.

Tim Crakanthorp and Chris Minns pose together shortly after last year’s election.Credit: Instagram/@timcrakanthorp

He was already sidelined from cabinet and Premier Chris Minns on Thursday confirmed that Crakanthorp will never return to the frontbench. But a breach of the public’s trust – surely a fundamental failing of any elected member of parliament – is not enough for him to be ousted from the Labor party room.

To do so, Labor insiders argue, would be to set a low bar for other transgressions. A corruption finding would have resulted in him being removed, but not a finding that he knew turning up to meetings that could affect his family’s property empire could be problematic, but he did so anyway.

Minns acted swiftly in removing Crakanthorp from his cabinet last July once he became aware that Crakanthorp’s behaviour as a minister could amount to corruption. At the very least, Minns held strong suspicions that Crakanthorp had breached the ministerial code.

The ICAC did not make a corruption finding, but Crakanthorp was not cleared. The ICAC made it clear that he was in “a privileged position responsible for maintaining the public trust placed in him”. He broke that trust.

The actions of Crakanthorp could not be more problematic for the Minns government. NSW Labor spent more than a decade in the political wilderness trying to shake the stench of corruption that enveloped it thanks to the likes of jailed former ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald.