PREMIER Gladys Berejiklian has been much harsher on the people of NSW than she’s ever been towards her own government ministers.
While her citizens are groaning under the strictest police over-sight since Governor Phillip, her underperforming colleagues appear to be exempted from both scrutiny and consequence.
That Arts Minister Don Harwin was allowed to simply resign after his recent misconduct speaks volumes for the soft hand he and others have been shown.
Harwin should have been publicly sacked by the Premier for putting his personal desires ahead of the health and well-being of those he’s sworn to serve.
SUMMARILY
When a government instructs its citizens not to travel unnecessarily – and to cancel all Easter holiday plans under threat of penalty – it’s generally understood this applies to everyone.
That Harwin failed to understand this indicates he didn’t understand his job.
The Minister should have been summarily dismissed. Instead, he was handed a potential pathway back into the ministry by being allowed to resign.
Berejiklian finds herself in a bind – she’s trapped between a rock and a hard-Left faction.
Rather than being answerable to the people, the Premier has a permanent eye on the demands of the Liberal’s aggressive Left wing, which is aptly nicknamed the Gay Left Mafia. Harwin is a numbers man within this faction.
FACTION
The “Left” holds sway in the Berejiklian Party room and could easily turn on the Premier if crossed.
This faction is co-led by NSW Environment Minister Matthew Kean, whose own performance has been very much in question. Earlier this year he raised the ire of the Prime Minister himself.
In an unprecedented move the Prime Minister gave Kean public advice on how to do his job.
During the peak of the summer fires, Morrison over-rode the chain of command and directly ordered Kean to focus on fuel reduction.
Kean had been running around to a receptive media blaming climate change for the intensity of the NSW fires. What they failed to broadcast, however, was that under Kean’s watch there’d been a 16 per cent cut to staff overseeing fuel reduction burns.
CAREER
This increased fuel load was, the PM inferred, a major cause of the State’s devastation. NSW alone lost 25 lives and 3.6m hectares of land to the fires. The rest of Australia, by comparison, lost nine lives and 2.7m hectares combined. Was Kean suggesting climate change is multiple times worse in NSW than elsewhere?
It’s impossible to believe a minister could retain his portfolio after such public condemnation from the Prime Minister of Australia. But with the Premier’s hands tied, Kean’s fumbling career continues uninterrupted.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard hasn’t so much been asleep at the wheel but, according to media reports, he’s been comatose on the back seat.
His department’s Ruby Princess COVID-19 debacle has been responsible for more Coronavirus deaths in Australia than any other single source.
Before this latest health mess, however, Hazzard’s handling of NSW’s 2019 late term abortion bill was a display of arrogance rarely seen.
Watching Hazzard jumping around celebrating his “abortion win” with The Greens was nauseating for those within his own Liberal Party who were, largely due to him, in the throes of tearing the Party in two.
Closer to home, the opening and commissioning of his own Northern Beaches Hospital was a lesson on how not to open anything. It made the NBN roll-out look slick.
Again, there have been no consequences and Health Minister Hazzard remains in a portfolio that itself has become a risk to public health.
TOWEL-OFF
The Berejiklian Government hasn’t yet gone the way of the corrupted State governments of Labor’s Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally.
But poor discipline is creeping in and unless the Premier responds with strength, she will soon be facing her own “towel-off Tuesday” scandal – from which there is no return.
During one of the worst traffic jams in NSW history (the Sydney to Newcastle M1 was grid-locked for 10 hours) Labor’s then Roads & Transport Minister David Campbell couldn’t be located.
He was eventually tracked down at the renowned gay spa Kens of Kensington – the home of naked Tuesdays – blissfully unaware his portfolio and his government had just gone to seed.PC
Gladys Berejiklian is one of the best Premiers NSW has ever had!
[…] Gay Left Mafia […].
That the N.S.W. Liberal party is controlled by such people is proof enough that it long ago passed the point of no return.
Well said. It is clearly time that true Democratic Reform, which was hobbled by self interested factions a few years ago, is revisited by rank and file Party members.