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Dear Gladys

By John Haly  

Dear Gladys,

Our relationship has curdled, and I am concerned about your mixed messages. Despite maintaining it was finished between us (the voters, not Daryl), you remain in the house. Using our joint account to pay $10,000 a day for your expensive addiction to lawyers. When lovers tell each other it is over, they separate as soon as possible. We have moved on to Dom “Opus Dei” Perrottet. Our heart has changed allegiances; once we realised you were representing Daryl, and not us.

Obviously, we need to rethink this, adding a little candour to how our relationship has transpired. Yes, we (NSW) voted for you in high hopes you would be better for our economy (as you always promise but don’t deliver). You’d think we’d learn that, but like Charlie Brown, we want to hope Lucy isn’t lying to us, and we have another punt at that ball. Your words were beguiling, and we always fell for it. Some friends warned us, but we are all too forgiving in 2019. Just look at how heartbroken we were in 2021 when you said you were leaving us. Then you didn’t leave, toying with our feelings.

Deep down, we know it hasn’t been working well for years. Some of us had misgivings only a year ago. Both Bernard Keane and I expressed our doubts in October last year, three days apart from one another. OK, I admit I was a lot harsher than Bernard, as he seemed to think your most prominent sin was cheating on us with Daryl Maguire. But, even lately, Bernard has not been as tough or honest with you as he should be. Instead, Bernard sugarcoats it as “two remarkable misjudgments” as though they were your only ones, which “until 2020, was a glittering career”.

Are we dating the same woman?

#Koalakiller tag burnt into our memory.

Bernard and I must be “dating” different women named “Gladys”. I don’t want to dwell too long on matters raised before, so I will be quick. I thought we both loved koalas, but instead, others gave you the tag #koalakiller because of your environmental policies on logging forests. You promised me public transport but gave us tragically built ferries not designed for our bridges and trains not made fit for our tunnels. You said you valued our cousins in the public service. But you spent all our money on pay rises for 65 coalition politicians and a police commissioner and refused to fund public service workers. You said you were good with money, but there were overpayments for some properties and underpayments for others. Was it just empty promises when light railsstadiums and museums were under-costed or facing undisclosed financial discrepancies?

Your cuts to Rural and Urban fire services and de-staffing fire management officers and National Parkes and Wildlife, all before the most extensive bushfire in NSW. All despite having been predicted a decade earlier. The dodgy water tradingfracking and conservation failures, all while you hid MP’s water interests and were not straight with us. You switched on the desalination plant in Kurnell when water ran out in country towns and Dams were contaminated and then made us pay the subsequent price rises. Westconnex did well, while we saw the prospect of rising toll road costs and lost properties to compulsory acquisition. So, Gladys, you just needed to do a little planning. Then you put our lives at risk via the Ruby Princess and Aged care deaths under the management of Aspen Medical despite the fraud associated with them. But Bernard thinks you made only “two remarkable misjudgments”. Really Bernard, how could you overlook all this? Love, really is blind!

Her “glittering career”!

 

Climate Chaos is now unavoidable, but NSW corruption, unnecessary!

 

Look, Gladys, I was really hoping we could all move on to “a glittering career”. But the end of 2020 and 2021 hasn’t been covered in glory, have they? Barely had I finished talking about our relationship concerns in October 2020, then the “Stronger Communities Fund” pork-barrelling to coalition local councils showed up. You tried to hide your infidelity by shredding documents relating to those councils’ $252 million grants scheme. Even Scotty from Marketing could have told you that you don’t go on TV and refer to pork barrelling as the “common parlance” and at least try to look a little contrite.

Before the month was out, we discovered you’d previously given Wagga Wagga $40K worth of Grants out of a discretionary fund and to nobody’s surprise, it was Daryl’s electorate. (You’re our representative, not his.) True, the Premier’s fund was at your sole discretion, but you were not very discrete (as ICAC has the tapes). Daryl got millions for projects without business plans or discussions of substance. You seemed to “just throw money at Wagga” to benefit him. In November, the Upper house voted to refer you to ICAC for failing to disclose your relationship with Maguire.

By December, the ABC was reporting your involvement in the project for new headquarters for the Australian Clay Target Association Daryl Maguire championed. You have to admit Gladys he always one with an eye for a profit which ICAC tapes revealed you knew, despite seeking to maintain plausible deniability coyly with, “I don’t need to know about that bit“.

While the NSW government defunded it, the people clamoured for it.

In March 2021, ICAC confirmed they were still investigating Daryl. The highway running past his properties in his electorate came under scrutiny, as did your meeting over it with him. His Airbnb plans for his Ivanhoe properties didn’t strike you as a conflict of interest issue? Really, Gladys, really?

By May, when the upper house voted to provide for ICAC’s $7.2 million budget shortfall due to their declaration that its annual funding had been below inflation for most of the 30 years since its inception, but your friends in the lower house voted it down. It doesn’t help sell the image of integrity for someone for whom all proper processes were followed” to underfund the very organisation that could establish that. If you have done nothing wrong”, why undermine the one organisation that could prove it?

Daryl resigned from the party in July of 2018 over those scandals, and despite this entire sordid history, he remained on the crossbench. Does either of you understand the concept of “resignation”? Despite “quitting”, he stayed till August of 2018. Despite that, did it never occur to you to break it off with him and serve your constituents? Why wait till September of 2020 when the further announcement of ICAC investigations transpired?

Meanwhile, Wagga Wagga was doing very well, from their $12m cycling complex to their Australian Clay Target Association. Wagga Wagga seems to be the epicentre of sport in NSW. No surprise that more people in Wagga Wagga voted for the Liberal Candidate than for the Independent that won via preferencesPork Barrelling works because the public is gullible and shallow.

Corrosive Covid

But enough of corruption charges, let’s look to your handling the pandemic and how you developed your competencies following the early mistakes of the “Ruby Princess”.

By June 2021, our attention moved on, as had yours. Your new beau, Arthur Moses, stepped up, being one of many who offered support. The AMA advised you to lock Sydney down when the Delta Variant made its way to Sydney. But you didn’t take the help they prescribed and relied on “business advice” for matters related to a virulent disease that had killed millions in India by June. Your own report coinciding with the Bondi cluster starting June 16 mentions “business” 21 times and “health” three times. Although “businesses” were still upset! You knew what happened when Dan delayed locking down the first time, yet you waited for School holidays to start a soft lockdown? Afterwards, you listened to medical advice. Who suggested that was a great idea, given you locked down the Northern Beaches during the previous Christmas over similar numbers? You waited another four weeks after the school holidays to get serious about a lockdown for what reason? How did this demonstrate your competence? Indeed, the 408 people who died from the virus before you resigned will never know.

So our infection rate rose over 1500 a day, Nurses and Doctors ran themselves ragged, and even though Morrison offered you the lion’s share of vaccines, NSW struggled to serve communities from the beginning.

 

The legacy of Gladys.

 

The other Eastern States provided their resources for contact tracing because you weren’t coping independently, but the public was told your State was the “Gold Standard”. You even needed help from the military to enforce lockdowns. Still, some people believed you were better than a Premier that had to break his back before he stopped doing public briefings. Whereas you stopped doing so because you needed time to run the State? To do what exactly? To open up around August/October when we still had hundreds of cases which seems a little contrary to the idea you expressed that “the number of positive coronavirus cases infectious in the community must drop to “as close to zero as possible” for the shutdown to be lifted”. But, of course, our new Premier, Dominic Perrottet, disagreed with that as a policy as the State recorded 477 new COVID-19 infections and six deaths on the weekend before restrictions were eased the following Monday. That was October 11, and you had resigned nearly two weeks before but were (and are, as of writing this) still a fully paid member of Parliament.

When are you leaving us?

So now I am writing the letter we should have written earlier if only we’d had the gumption and realised just how dysfunctional this relationship was. Instead, the media and public mourned your departure like it was a Shakespearian tragedy. I have never witnessed so significant a case of Stockholm Syndrome. Like the victimised battered wife who excused everything he did, outsiders are left wondering, why we didn’t leave long ago? All the indicators were there even from a year ago, yet too few remembered or noted.

 

Onset of Memory Loss upon exposure to ICAC.

 

But you are still in Parliament, you are still charging the State taxpayer for your legal fees, and you haven’t left yet. As a result, most days lately, we hear about your memory loss, despite a previous reputation for maintaining a detailed memory with meticulous focus on every minor policy detail “.

You said you were going, Gladys. Put the money back you have taken from the State coffers and leave! There is only so much corruption, pork barrelling and taking advantage of us that we can stomach.

Curiously wondering for how much longer before you pick up your toothbrush and go!

Regretfully,

The NSW Public.

 

This article was originally published on Australia Awaken – Ignite your Torches.

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17 comments

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  1. New England Cocky

    Gladbags and the Liarbal Nazional$ COAlition misgovernment is/was a self-inflicted wound for Australian voters and clearly demonstrates that being disinterested in politics allows grifters to exploit the situation for their own personal pecuniary interests, especially when the elected politicians are dim-witted, self-serving, corrupt individuals.

    Perhaps the optimal solution is for the NSW Labor Party to discover their political spine, stand up and be counted for Australian voters who deserve, indeed demand credible representatives of the people rather than puppets of the foreign owned multinational corporations NOT paying taxation in Australia.

  2. BB

    Excellent summation and links of all the rorting & scandals, and it’s a disgrace that Gladys is still able to claim expenses..

  3. Harry Lime

    Heartwarming summary John,and oh, so accurate.Why
    aren’t all the cuckolded people running up and down the streets with their pitchforks and clubs?Too busy managing their investment properties? Totally concentrated on the guest list for their next soiree? Or too busy trying to just get through the next day?As Charlie Brown once said to Lucy “Id like to get into your pants”..’Why?” said Lucy..”Because I just pooped in mine”,only in this case, the reverse is relevant.

  4. Michael Taylor

    Well-researched and well-written, John.

  5. Josephus

    Very good list of misdeeds far worse than I realised . How can she continue? Send the article if permitted with supporting references to a newspaper please. Headline:Gladys and ex boyfriend refund all your lives your dishonest waste of public money.

  6. John Haly

    New England Cocky: “Self-inflicted wound” seems terrible appropriate as a term. I must remember that analogy. Even so, Labour’s complicity with corruption is what killed them as a political force in NSW, the instigators of which have only recently gone to jail. Corporations not paying tax is a federal agenda that the States have little enough say in.

    BB: Well, precisely. It was that discovery that was the impetus for me writing the “Dear Gladys” letter.

    Harry Lime: “heartwarming” was not exactly was I was aiming for, but I will settle for “people running up and down the streets with their pitchforks and clubs”.

    Michael Taylor: Thank you for publishing it.

    Josephus: I have tried sending articles to other alternative media before, and they don’t even reply. AIMN and IA are the only ones that do. And this article is too long for IA and the Guardian’s freelance word limits on submissions. I have never gotten an article over 1600 words into IA, so I don’t even try nowadays.

  7. BB

    John Haly.

    Thanks for the article, yep AIMN do a great job..
    It’s a pity that other websites limit what you can say, maybe you can do an article on exactly why that is. (who’s in control?).

    Yeah the gravy train and public purse are milked to the max by the Liberals. Corruption, thy name is L/NP….

    Anyway, whilst the Labor party had it’s problems with a few nasties, like Obied.. It all pales when compared to the L/NP..
    I hope the “sleeping voters” are waking up to what a nasty bunch of crooks the Liberal and National parties really are!

    Yep it’s taken a while for Obied & co to get their comeuppance, seems to me a convenient timing so the L/NP can gloat eh.
    Seeing as there is an election soon…

    PS…In Australia it’s the Labor party..
    The party adopted the formal name Australian Labour Party in 1908, but changed the spelling of Labour to Labor in 1912.
    (In the UK it’s Labour)

  8. Henry Rodrigues

    Yes Gladys is proving to be very dear for the citizens of NSW, such sangfroid, still dipping her prominent snout in the trough, even after conceding that she could no longer continue after her misdeeds were exposed. True to form as all coalition pollies, concede guilt but continue to bleed the state’s finances as if it were their birthright.

    She has betrayed even her most fervent admirers, those ethnic women who were so ‘proud’ that one of their own, who looked like them, had finally made it to the top.

    Being a paid up committed member of the Liberals, corrupts, absolutely.

  9. Jack sprat

    Forgot to mention that when Gladys was treasurer she gave away Liddel power station to Agl for free and for less than the price of a house in Sydney sold Vales Point power station to former national party hack Trevor Saint Baker for one million dollars making him a multi millionaire overnight as power prices soared soon after as both parties who struck the deal knew that Hazelwood power station in Victoria was to be closed down which would cause a huge spike in demand . Gladys took crony capitalism to a new level by agreeing as part of the deal with Baker that Nsw’s tax payers foot the bill for most of the clean up of the Vales Point site after the station’s eventual decommissioning .

  10. John Haly

    BB again: It isn’t the websites that limit how much one can write. It is the readers. In other words, you. Media sites like IA and the Guardian track their analytics very carefully. When she worked for Dave at IA, Sandi told me that articles too far above 1200 words tend to be abandoned by readers. In short, they don’t finish the article. So their limits sit around a word limit where abandonment is minimal. The Guardian has an 800 word limit for freelancers. IA has published pieces by me at 1400 words because they like the content, but at 1600 I get a straight rejection. It is all about what you are prepared to read. Micheal gives me a little more leeway, which is nice, but I suspect people don’t read as carefully.

    This leads me to jump to …
    Jack Sprat: Case in point. Jack thinks I haven’t mentioned “Liddel” and “Vales Point power station,” and technically, he is correct in terms of those words specifically and Liddel, but not “Vale” or “Trevor St Baker”. As long as you don’t check out the embedded links in the sentence: “You said you were good with money, but there were overpayments for some properties and underpayments for others. ”

    That whole paragraph is a quick summary of my article in AIMN from last year, for which I have provided at least three embedded links to the article. In https://theaimn.com/ruby-faced-gladys/ where I mention it specifically in the sentence “She got one million dollars for Vales Point Station.” “Trevor St Baker” story was in the link in the sentence “Not her fault that it was valued at $730M.” This article is, in fact, a “PART TWO” assessment of Gladys’ performance, to which I alluded a number of times. And I know you have read that article – because you commented on it on the 17th of October last year.

    BB: Sorry to use you as an example, Jack, but to demonstrate my point to BB, your comment exemplifies how people don’t spend a lot of time on an article and often skim through it, not realising what Jack is concerned about that I missed, I may not have.

    Henry Rodrigues: I had not forgotten you. It is just those two comments align to a theme. There is an assumption of privilege inherent in the conservative mindset. Born to rule, and all that. They don’t even honestly understand that what they are doing is corrupt. I wrote a piece a while back where I spoke of my wife’s presentation of her research paper on the NSW ICAC at Sydney Uni. If I may quote myself:
    “Also in attendance was Elizabeth Kirby, the longest-serving State Democrat MLC (now retired). While asking questions afterwards, Elizabeth pondered why both parties avoid a Federal ICAC. Dr Knox-Haly speculated that the differentiation for corruption between our primary two parties, was while the Liberal’s entitled mentality has little insight into their own corruption, “The difference is, that Labor actually has some insight that what they are doing, might be corrupt“.”

  11. BB

    Jack,

    Thanks for your info. I learn each day how little I know.. Well it’s a bleak picture of/for the future.
    Media sites like IA and the Guardian track their analytics very carefully. Mmmm… Appalling….!
    No wonder I am not keen on those sites anymore, I used to be but the flavour went out for me a long time ago..
    I despise all kinds of censorship, that is what it amounts to, such sites are asleep at the wheel of generating knowledge.
    They are part of the problem and will never be part of genuine solutions while they sell themselves for 30 pieces of brass.
    No wonder so many “Quiet Australians” still vote against their better interests… Real information is being dumbed down!
    The shitfuckery is deep in society. People remain dumbed down.
    I’ve always known, suspected that such hypocrisy existed, about these news outlets that suggest they are genuine..
    It’s all basically bullshit, it’s not about news but just another saleable “product” to generate profits.

    A couple of my favourite quotes.

    “I love humanity … it’s just people I can’t stand!!”

    “Two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.”

  12. BB

    John..
    I have just noticed my last comment is addressed to Jack, it is meant to be to you, John Haly… Oh well.. woops..😁
    (Time for some shut eye I think)….

  13. wam

    Thanks, john, for a devastating piece.
    I loved your dom because the rabbott was opus dei and therefore was totally protected because he could not lie. What a god given gift.
    The gladys’ gold was sprayed on and you have given her a full body wash.

  14. Henry Rodrigues

    John Haly. I am grateful for your critique. Can I just add, the Liberals consider, at least judging by their behaviour, that everything they can and should do to to further their party’s principles and long term goals, is legitimate, no matter how unethical or even downright corrupt it appears to the rest of the country. For them everything is alright and therein lies the seeds of their corruption. Labor also has some problems but it is on the individual level, I refer to Eddie Obeid and Ian Armstrong.

    Corruption is systemic with the Liberals and the Nationals, after all who are their biggest backers and apologists ??? Who gets all the prime lucrative government contracts ? Who covers their foibles and their misdeeds. We moan and lament the politicization of the public service and Law enforcement and the infiltration of government statutory jobs and positions with diehard rabid ex-Coalition members and family. They have transformed themselves into an organization probably as sinister as the organized crime families in America.

  15. John Haly

    BB: Oddly, when I read your comment, I thought it was to me, and then when I read the following correction, I realised you’d written “Jack”. So no drama, I understood that from the beginning. I think though you seem to misunderstand my point about “studying analytics”. Studying the time spent on and scrolling on a website means you have an acute interest in what your customers access. I would have thought that was a good thing as they can then shape their content to their audience. There is no point in writing a lengthy article that nobody reads, so I focus on getting my point across in 1200 words (which sometimes I don’t do), but it is the desired target. Long-form papers like the Saturday Paper or the Conversation of the Monthly attract an audience that likes to read. Have a look at the end of my article https://theaimn.com/why-alternative-truths/ at point 10. A literate audience that likes reading is a limited market in Australia. Sites like IA and the Guardian provide helpful information but admittedly in smaller slices. An author who has researched a particular subject at length divides it into digestible chunks that a more significant proportion of the public will read. If you want to read about economic indicators, read a lot of Alan Austin; if you want to learn a lot about unemployment, I have written over a dozen articles in IA and AIM, but I have examined different aspects of it in each piece. You don’t have to be dumbed down, as there is plenty of valuable data to be found in the shorter articles. So I don’t think there is anything wrong with studying how people use your website. I frankly wish I had the time to do the same on the websites I manage. As for “saleable “product” to generate profits”, I think you will find neither IA nor Guardian generates a lot of profits. They compile their stories because they believe in a better quality of media. They, like a lot of alternate news media, struggle to make money. I have earned some money from my journalism in the past but if you think I am making money from these articles, let me disabuse you of that notion. It costs me more time and money to write more than I have ever earned. I earn a living in a not dissimilar industry, and the reason I don’t write as often as, say, Alan Austin, is I have to work elsewhere.

    Warn: Thank you, I wanted to be devastating as a countervailing resistance to the unwarranted worship the public and media were providing her.

    Henry: That was a nuanced critique, and I can’t think of a point at which to disagree. Corruption does exist within both main parties and, yes, at differing degrees. I have often written articles that have sought a departure from the two-party system to something like that of Europe, where small unknown parties quickly rise above the muck. For example, Podemos in Spain 🇪🇸 was founded in March 2014 and has become the 3rd largest party in 20 days, signing 100K members. It grew to 487K by May 2014. On the 25 of May, it won 7.9% of the vote in the European Parliament. On the 20th of December 2015, it received 21% of the vote and became the third-largest party in Parliament. On the 9th of May 2016, it formed a ruling coalition with United Left and minor left-wing parties. If only Australians had half a clue, then perhaps they would pick better parties, and there are half a dozen I could name off the top of my head.

  16. Jon Chesterson

    Another must read article from the AIM Network – How NSW has been taken to the cleaners by Gladys and the Liberals – Witty, factual, awesome and comprehensive.

  17. John Haly

    Thank you Jon, very kind, tell your friends on social media! If you liked the wit, then if you hadn’t read part one of this, written a year ago, go to https://theaimn.com/ruby-faced-gladys/. It was a satirical piece I wrote, and after which Gladys followed up with so many lies and gaslighting, that I wrote this one as a follow-up piece.

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