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August 28, 2009
Does it really matter who is the Premier of NSW? Who care if Rees goes or stays? The Labor Government gives all the signs of being in a death throes, the incumbent political machine is dysfunctional with daily media cycle taken up with leaks, damaging stories and white-anting, and the public service has a debased and demoralised culture.
As Beverley Kingston points out in the Sydney Ideas Quarterly NSW has structural problems:
NSW is in a particularly bad position economically and structurally because of our historic dependence on coal, both as the basis of much of what industry we have left, and as an export. With coal under threat because of climate change, the NSW economy has nowhere to go. Indeed, there is a sense that a push has developed to get as much coal as possible out of the ground and sold before it is banned. ....NSW still has to recognise the implications of its historic dependence on coal.
The NSW government has run out of ideas. They are desperate.
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The remarkable thing about NSW Labor is that they've managed to put together the most unattractive collection of individuals you could possibly imagine. It really makes you wonder what kind of people run the show and whether they are entirely blind to the impact their preferred MPs have on the public.
Perish the thought that politics should be a beauty contest but most of the blokes and some of the women in NSW Labor come across as narrow-minded unintelligent thugs. Rees is a union official out of his depth but the ones lurking in the wings - Sartor, Della Bosca, Robertson, Tripodi - are straight from the cast of The Sopranos, or at least that is their public persona.
They should have been kicked out two years ago. At least Rudd would then have had more acceptable reasons for using a bit of biff in reforming federal state relations.