Gladys Berejiklian’s slip-ups are showing

Another TV apology is not going to absolve Gladys Berejiklian of arrogance.

Voters may remember the premier’s missteps next year — if she hangs on until then. Picture: Getty Images

Perhaps readers of this column can remember the recent remark by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian directed at Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s border closure decision: “They are making stuff up as they go. They keep changing the rules.” Which rules was Berejiklian referring to? Were they the rules that apply to all of us but don’t apply to her? She went on to say, “They keep espousing advice I never heard of … I can only make my position clear.” What position was that, Premier? Obviously not the position of an “ordinary person”, as she put it in one press conference.

The clarity of her position became even more muddied when she tried explaining her failure to self-isolate after a COVID-19 test. She had a sore throat, wasn’t symptomatic, but had the test anyway. So why have the test? Then she went into parliament before she got the results. Her explanations went around in circles, ending in the now pred­ictable apology before television cameras while behind the scenes her office was threatening this newspaper’s reporter if her latest mistake and circuitous attempts to cover it up were reported.

There are those who might say this was a relatively venial sin compared with some of the bigger sins of omission that caused Victoria to go into lockdown for four months and the harsh attitude of the Queensland government to border control, which we should remember had a devastating effect on some families in crisis. They are right. Perhaps Berejiklian was just busy and confused, but so are the rest of us because this is not the first time the NSW Premier has, as she likes to say, “stuffed up”. Her halo of righteousness is slipping. With downcast eyes she appears as a penitential Byzantine Madonna, though more Byzantine than Madonna, trying to wriggle out of a situation of her own making. It is becoming a pattern.

She has been presented, especially by right-wing commentary, as a shining light in the time of pandemic. However, whatever success NSW has had in contact tracing is not Berejiklian’s doing. These systems were put into place in NSW more than 30 years ago by public health professor George Rubin, who recently gave evidence to the Victorian government inquiry into contact tracing.

Yet despite her carefully crafted image as the successful face of the pandemic, Berejiklian presided as Premier over the second biggest catastrophe of the pandemic, the Ruby Princess fiasco.

After the Ruby Princess it was no wonder NSW lifted its game. Even so, Berejiklian and NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard tried to shift the blame on to border control and the federal government, although it was the state authorities that gave the go-ahead for passengers to leave the ship. Berejiklian has never answered for the Ruby Princess, and that was just one of the first times we heard a TV apology.

The next memorable occasion was over her involvement with Daryl Maguire, who had been kicked out of parliament because of evidence of wrongdoing over a visa program in his electorate. Some women have come roaring to Berejiklian’s defence. She just had a sleazy boyfriend or she “stuffed up” in her private life. I’ll say. Her explanations for her knowledge of Maguire’s business affairs were familiarly circuitous. First in an interview in Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph she said she thought they might get married, although he was already married. Then, when quizzed on TV, she claimed it wasn’t an important relationship, it wasn’t “going anywhere”, so no, she never knew anything about Maguire’s financial situation.

Except she did not break off this unimportant relationship until a month before she gave evidence to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, when it became known that he had a key to her place. Then we heard recordings of telephone conversations, with Berejiklian coyly reminding Maguire she did not need “to know about that” regarding his business dealings. Despite her vociferous feminist cheer squad, the ICAC report due next year presumably will clarify Berejiklian’s opaque explanations in relation to that episode.

But why do women accept the explanation that she just had a sleazy boyfriend? Why does Bere­jiklian segue from strong female leader to poor put-upon Gladys overnight? One reason is despite her carefully manipulated conservative image as the daughter of hardworking immigrants (a background I am familiar with) Berejiklian delib­erately has aligned herself with the feminist-green push in NSW.

Remember the debacle over decriminalising abortion? This was her first “stuff-up”, which she characterised as supporting women; in fact she was keeping the feminists happy. Meanwhile her conservative supporters, including most of the Liberals in NSW parliament, voted against it. Now her conservative supporters are furious at her attempts to water down “Zoe’s law”, which would criminalise the destruction of an unborn child, which she promised to put into law before the election, and despite the reaction of Zoe’s mother who called her watered-down law a “cop-out”. Members of her fan club who think she is such a consummate politician may remember that she was prepared to break up the Coalition over the fate of NSW’s koalas, but apparently could not bring herself to support unborn humans.

Berejiklian’s image is the face of the successful handling of the pandemic, which is a mighty superficial reading of her role as premier. Her heroine status among many rusted-on Liberals ignores the army of people doing the real work of the pandemic but, worse, her premiership has been littered with inefficiency, mistakes and errors, which she seems to think are all “forgivable” if she “owns up” in a string of televised apologies. All politicians make mistakes, some minor, some like the Maguire affair questionable. But some like the Ruby Princess were serious, indeed fatal. The public is not stupid. There are more than a few dents in that image of the saviour of NSW, which the electorate may remember next year — if Berejiklian hangs on until then.