….is the Premier of New South Wales.  No small matter, or easy job.  He succeeded Gladys Berejiklian, whom I admired.  She went out in a way that was sad – even by our suburban standards. 

Dom lacked charm.  He looked more like a Baptist than a Mick, but then I decided to send those prejudices back to the 50’s.  My daughters wouldn’t know the difference between a Mick or a Prot, and could not care less.  That’s as it should be.  There are few relics of that old hate left – although they’re up and about just now.

And then Dom started doing things that made sense.  And then a guy who knows all about this, Paul Keating, said Dom was OK and was actually doing something. 

He and Andrews form a coalition.  I am probably less worried about the former than the latter.  (If anyone can spot a policy difference between the two, you get a smiley koala stamp and a box of Jaffas to roll down the aisle at the flicks.)

Now it appears that Dom put on a Nazi uniform when he was 21.

That was bloody silly.  It’s what we call a faux pas.

But you don’t get sacked for a faux pas. 

Life would not be worth living if you did.  You might as well hand yourself over to the Moral Police of the Persians.

Just look at that bloody idiot in the royal family who gets bathed in lucre for washing his family’s dirty linen in public.

But people are writing to the press screaming for Dom’s blood. 

What mistakes didn’t they make at that age?  What is it about our psyche that makes our minds so small and our hearts so hard that we move to strike as soon as someone better than us stumbles?

Well, one thing we do know.  These stone-throwers do not subscribe to the teaching of the son of a carpenter, who consorted with the fallen and the rejects among us.  Rather, they adhere to that school of political divinity that says as soon as you can see money, politics, or blood on the table, the Sermon on the Mount goes clean out the window.

Has the person been born who believes that by that silly act, Dom Perrottet, the good Catholic family man that he is, endorsed Adolf Hitler?

It is very sad.  Boys mature later than girls.  We all did silly things at that age – shocking even. 

I managed to spend a night in the slammer at Prahran for being D and D (drunk and disorderly) after giving the wallopers some cheek after some boozy university function. 

It was OK.  Mac and Norma were away, and the dog didn’t tell tales.  The sergeant on the desk at dawn said the ten bob I had would go the bail, and I assumed that went into his pocket.  Until some years later, when I had to disclose any priors to the Supreme Court on admission.  I got Robert Heathcote of ABL to phone the court.  He nearly wet himself laughing.  Convicted and fined one pound.  I still owe His Majesty ten bob. 

So, I disclosed that to the court, and that was that.

(I was lucky.  That station had a very bad name then.  Especially if the window you accidentally fell from was the one above the fire hydrant.)

Are the vigilantes so clean that they are merely pains in the arse?

And now, some real rats are coming out. 

According to the internet, Jim Chalmers went to Catholic schools before university, at one of which he wrote a thesis ‘Brawler Statesman: Paul Keating…’ 

Will Jim give it to Dom down the front, as was the wont of the subject of his thesis (the man who endorsed Dom)?  Not on your bloody Nelly, Mate.  Jim holds his nose, and slips the stiletto in right in the middle of Dom’s back.

For all of the rest of us who want our communities to be more tolerant and more inclusive … I think this will be a factor that people will weigh up … in March.

That’s really gutless on a few different counts.  I can just about hear my late friend Jack Hedigan, QC, as real and fruity a Mick silk as I have known, asseverating from between grinding pursed lips, with a little bubble on one corner – ‘Just look at yourself ….!  Willing to wound, but afraid to strike….!’

Mr Chalmers is not just any Minister of the Crown.  He is the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia.  He must be a man of impeccable integrity and clear of the dirt that besmirches what passes for politics here.  Caesar’s wife country.  And he just falls flat on his face in the gutter in what the NRL and he know as a cheap shot.  And what the AFL calls a coat-hanger.  From behind.

He should be ashamed of himself.

But these things don’t change.  Our greatest poet wrote of kings deposed.  One king might fairly be said to have asked for it, but the usurper was shiftiness personified.

Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands,
Showing an outward pity, yet you Pilates
Have here delivered me to my sour cross,
And water cannot wash away your sin.

That brings us to the real story.  Judas. 

Someone in the party ratted on the leader.  This was not some casual faux pas.  This was a deliberate and malicious kick to the head given for private political gain on someone who was down.  There you have a true ratbag at work.

And it brings me to my favourite anecdote from our politics.  Billy Hughes was a street fighter.  But face to face.  He handed it out in spades to that nice, decent man from Melbourne Grammar, Alfred Deakin. ‘Then I heard the word Judas.  That wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair to Judas!’ 

The speaker then reminded the House that Judas handed the money back – or threw it away – and then he at least had the courtesy to hang himself.

Politics – ALP – Liberal Party – Chalmers – Prince Harry.