![]() Ah, the colony of NSW. Bound to serve at the Queen’s pleasure since 1788, it has a long rich history of free-trade barbarism and territories won and lost. With bloodied battles, treachery, deal making and women and wine, it would make a great HBO series. The script reads: Within two years in office and after 16 years of Labor, the coalition led by lord Baz has proved it too is a victim of the dark forces against democracy: lobbyists. Lord Baz throws himself on his sword after being ICACked and while the blood still flows, his round table must quickly regroup to an- nounce nervously that it will restore honesty and trust in government. Ha! Regardless of the myth of political integrity, just who are these loose rabble of coalition shark bait in the NSW lower house ? (The lower house is the Legislative Assembly; the upper house is the Legislative Council and can veto the lower house.) Mike Baird (Liberal) Premier Newby Mike is a big fan of God, particularly Henry VIII’s interpretation, Anglicanism. So much so that young Baird trained for a year at a bible school in the USA after an economics degree. And after a short stint as an investment banker, he followed daddy Lib MP Bruce into politics. An early blunder as treasurer saw him misplace but then find a billion dollars, but since then he’s been a typical neo-con economic ‘manager’. Expect $19 billion of cuts from the public sector and public assets in years to come. Is this a result of Labor’s previous mismanagement or a big neo-con job so the top one per cent can continue to squeeze the middle class? Regardless, this flat-earth regressive with a limited range of empathy has voted against embryonic stem research, euthanasia and does not support same-sex marriage. His Abbott-like attributes should cause some alarm – they are apparently chums. Unenlightenment aside, Baird’s big battle is to bullshit us into believing there is such a thing as political integrity. Case in point is his questionable decision to give Lord Baz’s killer, Di Girolamo, a board role on State Water Corporation in mid-2012. Apparently Girolamo had no experience doing such things. Additionally there’s the $200,000 a year appointment to a government board of businessman Roger Massy-Greene, whose company had also donated to Mike Baird’s election campaigns. To top off the lobbyist connection, Baird’s former chief of staff, Stephen Galilee, now runs the Minerals Council of NSW. Business is back, baby. Andrew Stoner (Nationals) Sir Stone-alot let a microhydro business sink in his Oxley electorate last year. It was appalling to witness the fossil fuel industry and his governance ruin the hopes and dreams of innova- tion and best practice for the nation and state. Pelena Energy, based in Dorrigo, manufactured small-scale hydro engines which generated free energy from running streams and creeks. There was no dam needed for it to operate, which is funny because it reflected Sir Stone-alot’s ‘giving no damn’ policy. To be fair, Pelena Energy’s Peter Lynch told The Echo it was a bipartisan effort by both sides of politics that ruined him, along with the Clean Energy Council which is run by fossil fuel goons. As typical of Nationals Illuminati, Sir Stone-alot must support fossil fuel expansion. This means being against farmers, agriculture, the outback, the big scrub, the natural environment, regional NSW and anything with wide open spaces. Did nothing as Crown Lands minister over cost-shifting revenue from Byron Shire caravan parks and reserves to NSW govcorp. Jillian Skinner (Liberal) Young Liberal spawn are tested for allegiances to deregulation (cutting red tape) and privatisation (sale of public assets and services). Skinner, 70, represents Sydney north shore elites and has been a long-term Lib since 1988. As minister for health and medical research, she propagates Liberal party spawn in pH balanced water with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potas- sium. There, she hatches perfectly formed Young Liberals. Gladys Berejiklian (Liberal) Dame Gladys Berejiklian is the perpetual winner of the most unpronounceable last name in politics. Could it be the orthodox Armenian heritage? Spent her youth with a commerce degree and then financial institutional work. As a young Liberal, the Skinner laboratory spawned Gladys from fungi. Her press releases as minister for transport have not included anything for regional NSW and last year she handed down a towering edifice of excrement to north coast residents entitled Casino to Murwillumbah Transport Study. It was highly flawed as it failed to address light rail, only examined a small portion of the railway, inexplicably inflated previous figures on costings and gave the answers Macquarie Street wanted. Bravo, whatever. Anthony Roberts (Liberal) Recently replaced the disgraced and odious Chris Hartcher as mining minister and seems to have fitted right in – his recent visit to the northern rivers last week was entirely insulting as he tried to paint Bentley residents next to a proposed drilling operation as ‘extremists’. Since when was Mining MP Anthony Roberts pictured with John Winston Howard’s other advisers protecting your home against invasion ‘extreme?’ Nobody likes to be labelled but Roberts is an ex-John Howard advi- sor/suckhole clown. Brad Hazzard (Liberal) It’s a big gig, planning. Perhaps the biggest in gov- ernment as it entails asking the mining industry and Jamie Packer what they would like. But we were told we needed a planning reform, so off with it! Expect meaningless words to follow, such as ‘putting community first’. As a long-serving Lib and lawyer on the NSW front bench, Hazzard’s DNA is also carefully extracted for propagation in the Skinner laboratory. Don Page (Nationals) Member for Ballina, minister for local government and the north coast. Lives in Byron Bay. Katrina Hodgkinson (Nationals) As minister for primary industries and small business, the Hodge presides over the disastrous local land services (LLS) where around five per cent of rural landowners recently voted on a board election. The newly branded and bloated bureaucratic department provides landowners ‘services’ and landowners must pay the state special lev- ied rates which may or may not be consitutional. Pru Goward (Liberal) As minister for family and community services, Pru was asked to resign recently because her department could not manage around 75,000 cases of reported child abuse, according to a report by the NSW Ombudsman. She was also under fire to resign last year for lying, according to Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph. She told Parliament there were 2,068 caseworkers looking after vulnerable children, despite ‘a leaked Ernst and Young report saying instead staffing levels never reached that figure.’ Others Fatigue, disgust and a lack of space prevent more; however, the show rolls on at www. parliament.nsw.gov.au. The portfolios published here will no doubt change as Lord Baird marks his territory. ![]()
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