Somebody must've leaked to the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) that something was going down in Macquarie Street yesterday, as he announced a snap press conference and in the process, made several changes to the Morrison Cabinet.
In many respects, this was like the band on RMS Titanic playing "Abide With Me" while the ship was taking on water because elsewhere on the good ship Liberal Party, there were more leaks taking place than on the HMAS Colander.
At around about 12:47 it was announced that the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is currently investigating whether or not the Premier Gladys Berejiklian breached public trust and parliamentary regulations when she awarded grants to several community organisations between 2012 and 2018. These grants if they were tied to circumstances surrounding a relationship that she was having at the time, may or may not be a conflict of interest and a breach of the law.
Mr Morrison at 12:45 attempted to get ahead of the news cycle by making his series of announcements but it was increasingly obvious that he was likely trying to play screen for what was happening in Macquarie Street and I think that it looked like he was trying to filibuster reality itself. Again as the good ship Liberal Party sailed ever closer to the second bell of the afternoon watch (1pm), Mr Morrison's attempt to filibuster worked out about as well as trying to put a salt pork barrel in front of an ocean liner.
At 1:01pm, the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian made her announcement that she would resign not only as Premier of NSW but also as the Member for Willoughby due to the ICAC investigation into her conduct.
In her press conference she went on to say "categorically, I have always acted with the highest level of integrity ... for the benefit of the people of NSW" and that "attacks by political opponents” means “scrutiny of my ethics and behaviour by mechanisms of democratic accountability."
She went on to iterate that resigning at such a time wasn't something that she wanted to do but she felt it necessary considering the circumstances.
Sitting here as one of the people who Francis De Groot called the "decent and respectable people of New South Wales" while he slashed the ribbon while on horseback during the official opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932, cutting the tape before the New South Wales Premier Jack Lang could, I can't help but wonder why NSW not only elects and returns governments which lurch from side to side but why it does so with such alarming regularity.
Of the Premiers that New South Wales has had this century...
Bob Carr: resigned
Morris Iemma: resigned
Nathan Rees: resigned
Kristina Keneally: lost election
Barry O'Farrell: resigned
Mike Baird: resigned
Gladys Berejiklian: resigned
The evidence this century says that someone is far more likely to leave the office of NSW Premier by the car park downstairs, than through the front doors on Macquarie Street after having suffered electoral defeat.
On reflection, I am a little bit sad for Ms Berejiklian. Even though she refused multiple requests to meet with the Mayors of the 12 Local Government Areas of Concern, even though her decisions as Transport Minister means that the 2222m gap between Tallawong and Schofields stations will very likely never be completed in my lifetime, and even though her Government's direct response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been demonstrably partisan and punitive on occasion, she at least seemed to want to do a competent job as Premier in the middle of the 7th worst pandemic in human history.
If ICAC does find sufficient grounds to warrant further action then fair enough, it is just and proper that she resign; but given that she at least gave the impression that she wanted to do what was good for the people of New South Wales (and in fact succeeded given that only 391 people have died out of 8 and a bit million) then she's also proven comprehensively that she was in fact a competent Premier. Put it this way, this is a job which I could absolutely not do well at all.
If what I assume will come to pass actually does happen then Treasurer Dominic Perrottet will become the next Premier of New South Wales. If this is true, then the Liberal Party of NSW will move a little further to the religious right. Nothing much will happen beyond that because the Liberal Government retains all but one of the member that it had before the second bell of the afternoon watch yesterday; changing captains mid-voyage doesn't really do all that much in changing the course of the ship in politics.
Yesterday was not a dark day in NSW politics in the way that the desires of the thirsty knife seems to arrive on Federal politics every so often. Yesterday was not the result of ambition but the machinery of accountability slowly turning to protect the decent and respectable people of New South Wales from that greatest of all threats to democracy: corruption.
Aside:
The Madden Curse, states that whoever appears on the cover artwork for EA Sports' American Football video game series Madden NFL, will suffer either an injury or a series of shockingly poor performances in the season which follows. This has also been applied to the FIFA football game, various editions of NASCAR games; as well as Tennis.
This was the front cover for the Australian Financial Review's magazine for Friday 1st October, 2021.
This would have hit newsagents by about 7am and had I been in the office (because I am still in lockdown) then by the time I would have read the magazine at about 2pm, it would have all been for naught.
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