Verity I say unto you

The NSW education minister Verity Firth seems like a personable egg.
She is a member of that endangered Labor party species, the NSW Labor left. They enjoy no real power and perform the role of a pinata for the spivs and urgers who run the NSW Labor Party, hereafter known as Sussex Street.
This mob ritually slaughter the left once a year at the annual conference. They also run party hit squads who go out to put down any sign of a leftist uprisings in the branches.
Bob Carr, Stephen Loosley, Richo are all members of this bunch. Carr and Loosley are a tedious pair. Carr acted as Premier of NSW for years and managed to do very little except brush up on his German and bore people spitless with his knowledge of obscure facts about American politics. Improving the lot of the common man, aka traditional Labor supporters, is seen as an affectation of the left.

Few lefties make it through in NSW Labor. Jeff Shaw, the late, lamented Attorney General in the first Carr Government was a notable exception. Jeff thought he was in power to do things and he did.
Verity's ministry is a sop to the left. She seems to be an education minister in name only.
Real policy making such as stopping pupils being gassed by unflued heaters is handled by Sussex Street who seem to think a little collateral damage is ok as the pupils aren’t in Labor seats. Mind you, when you look at the forthcoming election who is in a safe Labor seat?
Anyway I digress. Firth has been seriously embarrassed by her hubby, a member of the bigger Labor family who suck on the government teat down in Macquarie Street. He has the Blackberry, the car and the cushy job as chief of staff of the roads minister I think it is. I suppose I should find out but I couldn't be bothered.
Hubby, it seems, was out in the street one Friday night buying a drug – one tablet. He was pinged by the plod. How they managed to pick him among the thousands of drug deals that go down in Sydney on a Friday night is a mystery.
A question: What is a 40 year old man doing out on the street buying drugs?
Doesn't he know that is why you have children? I know maybe he and Verity are late starters in the family stakes and the kids may not be teenagers but I am sure they could have done the deal better than this hapless water buffalo.
And poor fellow, if he had just been out getting shitfaced at a legal safe injecting room known as a pub and got into a push and shove with the wallopers, he probably would have been hailed a hero, There would have been editorials on the rise of wowserism among the coppers.
And his crime? One ecstasy tablet. Just one. A friend with knowledge of these things thinks that just one for a bloke on his own on a Friday night means he doesn't have many friends. And if he did, he doesn't have any now. Well none who would own up to it.
Our Verity in true political Good Wife tradition, stands by her man, in public anyway.
A few days later she fronts a press conference where she is promptly monstered by the self-important hacks.
She is asked about her personal drug use . The questions seemed to be alleging that it was Bogota central down at the chez Firth
She had bit of a Tony Abbott moment and froze for a few seconds but then pointed out she had done nothing wrong. Nice try Verity --- the sentiment was right, the wording wrong.
The answer should have been “this isn't about me and I will now go round and ask each of you about your use of drugs. You can deny or confirm what you use or have used.”
That would have silenced the crowd as their only answer would have been “This isn't about me.”
Exactly.
The paradox here is that Verity is in the seat of Balmain which she will probably lose to the Greens.
Now at the risk of stereotyping a suburb, I would observe that attitudes to the use of party drugs would be benign to say the least. In the streets of Balmain news of the hubby's arrest would have had a lot of people thinking “there but for the grace of (whatever god it is they pray to over there), go I.”
If the media asking their shrill self-righteous questions of Ms Firth had been honest with themselves, I am sure they would have been thinking the same thing.
Maybe it is time they had sniffer dogs at press conferences, especially those fruity ones where pollies are being attacked for being soft on drugs, not on the podium but in the audience so that hypocrisy can be put to bed once and for all.

Alan Kennedy