Premier Mike Baird is spinning out of control

SPIN. One of the biggest dangers to the Baird government is if it becomes known as a government of spin, says Andrew Clennell.

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SPIN. Politicians often use it to their benefit but it can equally turn out to be their undoing. For a government to be tarred with the term is a political curse — as even successful leaders such as Tony Blair and Bob Carr discovered.

One of the biggest dangers to the Baird government is if it becomes known as a government of spin.

There were a couple of occasions this week where spin threatened to unravel the Premier.

The first was the issue around East Hills MP Glenn Brookes.

Premier Mike Baird / Picture: Justin Lloyd

Baird has been keen to criticise Labor leader Luke Foley as being all about “smear” for going after Brookes.

But the Premier was exposed when Brookes’ campaign manager Jim Daniel was charged over alleged breaches of the Electoral Act amid ­accusations 300 posters were defaced wrongly calling Brookes’ opponent a “paedophile lover”.

In public, Baird was hairy-chested, saying “if these allegations are proven, they are disgusting” and “if there’s any member of my party proven to be involved in these events, they’re out”.

But in the Coalition party room, Baird indicated that MPs should “reach out” to Brookes while he was sitting suspended on the crossbench.

On the same day, Monday, Baird was trotting out an Iraqi family to show that his dream of having more than 10,000 refugees from the Syrian crisis come to Australia was becoming reality. With Baird and federal minister Christian Porter saying only 80 refugees had been resettled in NSW so far, you had to wonder whether this was not just another exercise in spin.

I mean talk about a slow rollout. Come back to us when 1000 are out here, Premier.

Then there was the situation around ethanol. Six upper house Liberal MPs came in to see Baird on Monday and were spun by him.

Baird said he would take the legislation away for another look. But yesterday morning the Premier brought the laws on, causing much consternation and the resignation of government whip Peter Phelps.

That’s the other problem with spin — if people do not think they can ­believe you, they don’t trust you.

In a sense Baird is just experiencing the beginning of the end of an extraordinarily long honeymoon. Alan Jones has lost faith in him, young people are going at him over lockout laws. He is facing what any other leader does after this length of time.

Meanwhile, he is doing the state’s biggest infrastructure build after his brave decision to flog off half the state’s electricity networks. And he is a clean politician. But whatever you do Mike, don’t spin us.

East Hills MP Glenn Brookes.