(I think it was John Cleese who made that phrase his own)
Governments come and governments go. And in my now long memory most of them haven't done as well as they might have. But to be fair, the voting public and in particular the pressure groups, be they from business, labour or all the plethora of interest groups, don't make it easy for them. And thus they always have their eyes on the clock....how far are we from the next election is the driver of much of their actions. Should there be longer terms? An impossible question to answer. There we are caught in the horns of dilemna.
But having survived generations of governments ( and fully expecting, contrary to how I've chosen to do all the health-adverse things in my life, to survive a few more) I would just like to say this. And it's not something I would have expected to find myself saying. I am absolutely and totally gobsmacked to find myself, yet again, feeling obliged to acknowledge the present government of NSW, led by Mr Minns, a gentleman, by any standard, and a most modest and self-deprecatory person for a politician. Put him against, say, that present headline-grabber from the USA, Mr Tim Walz, and it would be a cheese and chalk comparison. But we are fortunately not the USA and long may we remain what we are instead.
What brings me to heap encomiums upon the NSW govt led by Mr Minns is the apology I heard today from the relevant Minister and the Police Commissioner of NSW following the Gay Hate Enquiry. It was something that needed to be said on the one hand while on the other it probably doesn't mean much in real terms. I am not.myself gay (and I have the heterosexual scars to prove it) but I grew up in an era when being homosexual had not been decriminalised and mixing in the milieu that I did or even just looking at the newspapers, it was impossible not to know the horrible crimes and abuses that were committed against easy targets by the police and by the media.
It is to their great credit that the Minns government has finalised this enquiry.(I don't know if they started it) and delivered the findings and the apologies that needed to come from it.
