In doing so she has also come dangerously close to being caught out in a lie, with statements issued by her minders deploying ample trickery to suggest she remained walled within her office until the results became clear. We now know this is completely false.
While awaiting those results, the Premier not only held a meeting with some of her most senior cabinet ministers, she was captured on film swanning into parliament for a legislative vote, even touching a colleague’s arm as she strode into the chamber.
This fact alone stands to harm her credibility, while her defence — that her test was precautionary in nature, and therefore did not warrant any need to self-isolate — is equally impoverished. In addition to being completely made up, it relies on a flawed method of self-diagnosis and a type of vranyo so craven that even the Russians I know would refuse to believe it.
But even worse than all of this has been the attempted cover-up by her office. As The Australian prepared to publish details of this incident we encountered members of the Premier’s staff engaging in what can only be described as a cos-play of mafia thuggery, replete with threats to enact “grief” and “action” on this newspaper if we dared to print “wildly inaccurate” details. These details, of course, have since been proven to be accurate, which brings into question other claims directed at the Premier to which she just as quickly dismissed as false.
Just last month Berejiklian told parliament it would be “factually inaccurate” to suggest she ever gave a house key to her former lover, Daryl Maguire, a fact drawn from transcripts of a private ICAC hearing.
The public have accepted her word on this matter, and many others, based on generous levels of credit amassed during the pandemic, even if this oversimplifies her role as leader and overlooks the monumental work of contact tracers, epidemiologists, senior health officials and, most importantly, members of the public who, unlike the Premier, followed the health guidelines. The bottom line? Berejiklian’s credibility was already waning following her appearance at ICAC. This latest episode stands to harm it even further, perhaps irreparably.
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Gladys Berejiklian broke no law by neglecting to self-isolate following a test last week for COVID-19, but she did break something far more hallowed — a social contract and honour code that the people of NSW have grudgingly and fastidiously upheld since the pandemic started.