In politics, fates turn on a knife edge. We’ve seen it this week in NSW, where a government which has done a reasonable job building infrastructure and enjoying the fruits of a powering economy is looking decidedly wobbly.
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First, it was beleaguered Transport Minister Andrew Constance, caught up in the Ferry McFerryface scandal not a week after being battered by Sydney’s train network meltdown. While some South Coast commuters were caught up in the transport mess, it was still a largely Sydney problem that had put a confident government firmly on the back foot.
On Wednesday, a much more local issue had the government racing into damage control. This concerned the push by Milton-Ulladulla residents to have the government buy a school site vacated by the Anglican Schools Corporation for use as a much-needed second high school.
A former teacher at Ulladulla High School, South Coast MP Shelley Hancock had backed the push from the outset. She was fully aware of the overcrowding issues that have plagued the school for years. And she had the support of another former teacher at the school, opposition education spokesperson Jihad Dib.
Both agreed the plan was a no-brainer.
So Mrs Hancock was incandescent with rage when she was told, of a letter from Education Minister Rob Stokes saying the government had no intention of establishing a new school in the district.
Saying she had never felt more furious about an issue in her entire political career, she unloaded a tonne of anger against her own government and one of its departments. By any measure this was an extraordinary spectacle – the NSW Speaker tearing strips off her own government.
Her white-hot fury, which echoed through government circles on Thursday, was refreshing in some ways. A politician standing up for constituents and refusing to toe the party line is pretty novel.
But Mrs Hancock’s outburst does not bode well for a government reeling from its other missteps. It adds to the sense things are not quite under control.
Just a little over a year from an election, these political grass fires can quickly escalate into an inferno of discontent. If two issues are going to inflame discontent, they are transport and schools.
The clock is ticking. The government needs to get these blazes under control.
