This business with Barry O’Farrell is one more example that the only way to keep government corruption down is by electing governments that journalists, and the media generally, don’t like.

I would venture to say that virtually none of the scandals related to the R-G-R governments has entered common consciousness across the country, not in any deep and enduring way. They are reported to the most minimal extent and explained away at every turn. Labor Members of Parliament and party executives have gone to jail for heaven’s sake, and a former leader is heading for a potential rendezvous with the court system for involvement in a SLUSH FUND, but who has been forced to notice?

Both the MYKI card and the Desal plant down here in Victoria ought to have been worth an ocean of printer’s ink and hours of media time but only we old hands even bother to notice and who within the community even remembers or understands how their living standards are being reduced because of such decisions. The NBN is potentially the most expensive but also potentially provides the lowest return on the dollar of any major infrastructure project in the history of this country. Literally billions have been wasted on projects that were never going to return a positive financial outcome but you won’t read about it in The Age or see it on the ABC, and certainly they won’t tell you the effect on our living standards, assuming they even understand this themselves.

Meanwhile a $3000 bottle of grange will undoubtedly remain headline material until the next election, and not just the election in NSW but federally as well.