‘Love is blind’: Shakespeare’s plays could have helped Gladys Berejiklian

Political disaster could have been avoided if Gladys Berejiklian had listened to the Bard, writes Piers Akerman.

Gladys Berejiklian’s has spent the past 12 months living with the knowledge ICAC’s investigation into her relationship with disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire wasn’t going to go away.

It was more than a ticking time bomb and now she has fallen on her sword as public hearings into her knowledge of his activities are to reopen. Maybe she should have taken leave of absence a year ago when ICAC began asking about her entanglement with Maguire and questioning his pork barrelling schemes for his electorate

Maybe she was preoccupied dealing with the devastating Wuhan flu and there can be no doubt that she has led the nation’s premiers in urging they keep the borders open – as constitutionally required – and dump dead end notions of total elimination of the virus.

Gladys Berejiklian at her final media conference as NSW Premier. Picture: Getty

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As I wrote here last October, Berejiklian both as “Treasurer and now Premier … was subject as all MPs are to a code of conduct and strict protocols, as was Mr Maguire when he was still the MP for Wagga Wagga.

“While Mr Maguire blatantly ignored the rules and forfeited his membership of the Liberal Party and vacated his seat for his actions in August, 2018, Ms Berejiklian led the return of the Coalition government at the 2019 election.” She was the heroine, a role model for girls and women and proof that Australia provided opportunity unlimited to migrants prepared to work hard.

The Premier pictured with Daryl Maguire.

The NSW Liberals will meet on Tuesday to elect another leader who will have the unenviable task of rebuilding the shattered economy.

Treasurer Dominic Perrottet should be the party’s first choice but internal politics have foisted the dark green Environment Minister Matt Kean upon him as his putative deputy and that choice – and the fact that the long-time party puppeteer Michael Photios is involved in urging support for this ticket – should ring alarm bells.

While Perrottet is the most conservative member of the ministry and is without doubt the best equipped to deal with the massive challenges posed by the economic catastrophe, Kean is the worst possible choice as deputy bringing with him ludicrous notions of controlling the weather through the destruction of the economy. Outside the green-tinged urban electorates and the tree-sea change seats, there is no appetite for Kean’s black armband view of the environment and his election would see the Nationals question support for the expensive subsidies needed to underpin the unreliable renewable solar and wind projects he advocates.

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet among the contenders vying to be the next NSW Premier. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Perrottet’s right faction is wooing the Kean-supporting left-wing
so-called moderate faction but at the expense of support from the centre-right which believes that Perrottet’s brother, Charlie Perrottet, has been working against its members in local government elections around the state.

The centre-right, with 10 members in the 40-seat parliamentary party, does not have a quarter of the ministerial positions and felt dudded after being left out when Berejiklian rewarded her moderate supporters.

The party has three days to sort out this mess but if Kean becomes deputy, the Nationals will spend from now until the next election on March 23, 2023, attacking the deputy leader of the Liberal Party.

The alternate compromise candidates, moderates’ Planning Minister Rob Stokes, or left-wingers Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres, Transport Minister Andrew Constance or Attorney-General Mark Speakman could achieve a Steven Bradbury-style win if Perrottet can’t strike a deal with the centre-right. Olympic speed skater Bradbury won the 1000m medal after all his opponents crashed out on the last corner at the 2002 Games.

Berejiklian is the third Liberal premier to fall foul of ICAC following Nick Greiner (who established the investigative body), and Barry O’Farrell. Greiner was cleared of any impropriety on appeal and O’Farrell, who forgot he had been given a $3000 bottle of Grange Hermitage, accepted he had erred. We don’t know whether ICAC will find against Berejiklian but Shakespeare reliably wrote in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The course of true love never did run smooth,” and “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind”, as well as “Cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make females mad”.

Or, as all know, from The Merchant of Venice: “Love is blind, and lovers cannot see, The pretty follies that themselves commit”.