Circling the wagons for Gladys

With the NSW Government, where exactly do you start and stop?

The onus is on those who claim Gladys's superior policy making record to make the case. They never do, because it isn't there. Her record has been somewhere between mediocre and disastrous. It looks good to some partly because we in New South Wales are so used to having simply awful governments. None was worse than that of the recently and sadly departed John Fahey, a good man leading a rotten and mercifully short lived government.

Even the normally excellent Henry Ergas spoke of Berejiklian's "previously untarnished reputation".

He has got to be joking. This might be her first brush with ICAC, but untarnished? Not tarnished by the secret deals with baby killing greens and the payoffs to them? By the bullying by her offsiders of Barilaro? By the under the counter saving of the career of the creepy Don Harwin? By the backflips without explanation? By her frittering away money on expensive and unwanted light rail systems while city businesses went bankrupt? By her privatisation deals with greenie energy companies? By her allowing Michael Photios to keep running the state from the safe distance of his lucrative consulting practice, built solely on the back of his privileged access to NSW ministers? Plenty of tarnish there, I would think.

She has patently breached her own Ministerial Code of Conduct. (As Caroline Overington noted, the real October surprise is that New South Wales has one). I suspect the Premier lied under oath, but the proof of that, if it comes, must wait for another day. She knew about her boyfriend – she even kicked him out of the building in August 2018. Then kept sharing his bed. And still keeping it from colleagues.

Speaking of keeping the relationship secret, this was a workplace. The right thing to do when you take up with a colleague should be for one of you to get another job, or at least to bring the relationship into the open so that everyone in the office knows the new circs. Not exactly teamwork. And, of course, she has perpetuated the political culture of a state where people routinely pay other people to get access to ministers, to get them to decide things in their favour. Not just perpetuated the culture of sleaze, but participated in it. This is all on the record.

As reported by the ABC, in State Parliament, Opposition Leader Jodi McKay moved a motion of no confidence based on four points:

• She failed to report her knowledge of Mr Maguire's business dealings;
• She failed to report discussions she had with Mr Maguire, including his commissions on business;
• She failed under the ICAC rules to report corrupt conduct;
• She failed to "uphold any standard of propriety" across her government.

All fair questions to be asking in the bear pit that is the NSW Parliament.

Really, Henry Ergas. The "good person hard done by" line will not work, I am afraid.

Gladys only looks good because there is a lunatic (Andrews) south of the southern border, and another not far off lunacy (Palaszczuk) north of the northern border. This comparative exoneration argument might be true but certainly is irrelevant.

The lead in line to the Ergas article stated: