• The absence of any sense of fiscal rectitude (witness the billion dollar blowout in the vanity project that was the city tram);
• The up-and-leave leadership, with three premiers and counting, two of whom left the building in bizarre or unexplained circumstances;
• The persistence of promoted mates without a scintilla of ability in the cabinet (Don Harwin and Gareth Ward will suffice, but they have plenty of competition);
• The willingness to trash the NSW economy in the pursuit of green ideology, courtesy of the politician described by David Flint as the most dangerous in Australia (Matt Kean);
• The bungling incompetence of shameless about-faces over policy (did someone say greyhound racing, or Powerhouse Museum?);
• The stench of corruption (Darryl Maguire and ICAC);
• The secrecy (keeping Victor Dominello’s totalitarian Service New South Wales App out of view is best-in-show);
• The gall of calling yourself a Liberal Government (with 13 out 17 Cabinet ministers from the left);
• Having a government run by people not even in parliament (lobbyists, with caps).

But, notwithstanding this record of shame, bewilderingly, some among the chattering classes have persisted long after it was wise to do so in believing that the NSW government was “good at COVID”.

They also seemed to believe that the Gladys government was “liberal” about COVID.

When your competition is the lunatic in MelDanistan with his praetorian guard of thug police, the no-name from Tassie, Mr Lockdown-over-one-case in Adelaide, the other unspellable spinster in Brisvegas and the separatist in Perth, well, there might be thought to be a case for praising the mob in Macquarie Street.

But no, this is a temptation that should be resisted by anyone with his or her mind on the job.

CONTRADICTIONS

I would sincerely hope that, at least since June 2021, there would be no one left thinking that the NSW government was good at COVID. Or remotely liberal. The citizens of NSW are living in a police State. It is as simple as that.

But the last week has seen a total collapse of anything resembling good governance in the premier State. Time again for a new number plate. “NSW – the Keystone Cops State”, or “NSW – the Inspector Clouseau State”, would work.

And the issue on which the whole show was exposed is, unsurprisingly, that of vaccines. Once politicians bought the big lie and on-sold it to the voters – that vaccines would mean freedom – there was bound to be trouble.

As the Marxists would say, the contradictions have simply become too great.

First, we had Gladys implying that the unvaccinated might obtain some freedoms.

Then we had the deputy premier saying it out loud. Then we had Gladys saying that the deputy premier was wrong to have said what she herself had implied.

Finally (or perhaps there is still more to come), we had Gladys saying that everyone will be free on December 1, whether or not you have had the clot shot.

This third position within a week suggests that the reward for submitting to the magic jab – the one that doesn’t stop you getting COVID, doesn’t stop you getting sick from COVID, doesn’t stop you dying from COVID and doesn’t stop you transmitting COVID, but still might kill you – is actually that you get a few piddling “freedoms” a month or so before everyone else.

This includes the right of the unvaccinated to go to church, despite the health Hazzard’s early firm statement to the contrary.

Second, we have the issue of who would be policing the government’s absurd and vicious vaccine apartheid regime.

Many of us have been contemplating whether the cops would actually be going into people’s homes – say, on the hunch of a neighbour, perhaps named Karen – to demand the vaccine papers of those inside. Or how they would even know if someone entering a house to visit the people living there had the correct, up-to-date with the fifth or whatever jab vaccine status.

This week the NSW police commissioner stated: “The role of police in terms of vaccine passports, we will not be walking through restaurants, cafes and pubs checking if people are double vaccinated,” he said.

“[But] we will certainly be assisting restaurant owners and shop owners if they are refusing entry to someone – we’ll certainly respond to assist those people.”

So, no, the cops would not be policing vaccine status in public places, so, one presumes, not in private homes either. Thank you for that, officer Fuller.

But then we had the health Hazzard, speaking on the same day: “If the law says you have to be double vaccinated, then of course the police will enforce that, they have no choice but to enforce that,” he said.

PENALTY

Hazzard also indicated venues wouldn’t face fines if an unvaccinated person was allowed entry.

Asked why businesses would bother to argue with unvaccinated people if they are not to face a penalty, Hazzard criticised the media for obsessing over minutiae.

Obsessing over minutiae? I think not. Once the great unvaccinated masses realise that they won’t be policed, they are highly unlikely to rein in their behaviour or remotely likely to be cajoled into getting the jab.

The health Hazzard is said to be now nearing retirement. A relief to us all, no doubt, but a disappointment to those of us who might have pencilled in March 2023 for some verbal abuse to be sent his way.

Then we had the minister for imposing digital fascism on NSW weighing in on the policing matter, doing his bit for policy clarity.

Here was the media headline: “NSW threatens ‘jail time’ for unvaccinated people entering businesses without passport.”

Dominello stated, to the ABC: “If people want to do the wrong thing, if they get found out, as I said, it could be jail time there…”

That was Monday morning. Since then, Victor has clarified his position, saying it was “fraudsters” could go to jail, not the unvaccinated simply exercising their right of freedom of movement and slipping into a shop without signing in: “… a spokesman for Mr Dominello said the ABC comment was “out of context” and was only in reference to fake vaccine passports.”

Next was Victor’s third position, or perhaps a different version of his first position: Speaking to Nine’s Today on Monday morning, Mr Dominello reiterated that those who refuse to show their vaccine status when entering shops, restaurants and other venues should be reported to the police.

DOBBING

But, next, this: Businesses, particularly small businesses, should not be de facto police officers.

So, if not shop staff, who, then, is to do the dobbing? Perhaps volunteers from the Karen class, suitably recruited through seek.com.au, hovering with intent?

Only the vaccinated should apply for this job. Would they get to wear one of those idiot “COVID marshal” fluoro vests?

Not jail time, but fines, provided a suitable dobber is to hand to do the dirty on someone who is no threat to anyone.

But only ’til 1 December 1, when everything changes for the unvaccinated yet again. A policy for six weeks or so.

Finally, this from Victor: “What we need to do is make sure that the responsibility is primarily on the individual.”

So, self-policing, meaning no policing of the policy, after all. Just so long as we are clear on all this.

This man is in charge of the State’s embrace of our digital future. It is patently clear that Gladys’s senior ministers are simply not up to the job.

Their vaccine passports policy, always a shambles as well as being immoral, is now in utter disarray. The gaps in it do not merely suggest Swiss cheese, but holes and trucks.

Then there is the question of what in God’s name is going to happen in regional, currently non-locked down NSW, at each stage of the roadmap.

This week, an unvaccinated person – nearly 70 per cent of the population where I live – can go to the local Best & Less. (Best & Less has gotten ahead of the pack in stating, corporately, that the unvaccinated will not be welcome in its stores.)

After October 11, or whenever the magic modellers are currently saying we will get Freedom Day at 70 per cent, an unvaccinated person will be refused entry at Best & Less.