You’d think if you were coming off the back of an ICAC grilling you’d tread lightly elsewhere. Not so with this week’s Crikey Clown of the Week.
It’s a measure of quite a few things — the state of New South Wales’ politics, 2020’s relentlessly crowded news schedule and, perhaps most of all, what we will now put up with — that Crikey‘s Clown of the Week Gladys Berejiklian seems to be at no greater risk of resigning now than she was two months ago.
A quick recap. Back in mid-October Berejiklian — for so long the only NSW premier untainted by scandal — revealed at the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) that she had for years been in a “close personal relationship” with disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire. She risked it all for a bloke called Daryl, whose alleged corruption appeared to be redeemed only by his apparent incompetence.
Her default stance in the scrutiny that followed has been long stretches of insouciance punctuated with bouts of public self-pity. The relationship had “insufficient status” to tell anyone about, she told ICAC, and a week later she was telling The Daily Telegraph‘s gossip columnist of her bitter tears and lost hope from the break up with the man called Daryl she had planned to marry.
