Now Mike Baird has proven himself just another politician, an everyday opportunist whose impulse to principle wilts under a few weeks' tabloid glare, who turns to mush at the opportunity to explain himself over dinner at Alan Jones' – did the butler serve your humble pie with the good silver, Premier? – there is nevertheless a new sense of opportunity around NSW politics.
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Sure, it is dispiriting the Premier is prepared to sacrifice puppies for political ease. But at least now everything should be possible.
If Baird can ditch an issue on which he staked his moral authority, many will be hoping the Premier will launch his Manly torso into a string of backflips.
Opponents of CBD lockouts, council mergers, land-clearing laws, will all be hopeful of the type of about-turn Baird has also performed on shark-netting the North Coast. And on the lockouts and bottle-shop opening hours it appears Baird will similarly budge.
But here are five other issues Baird might as well revisit while he is in this sort of a mood.
1. Stop closing rail lines to privatise them.
Some time in 2018, and for seven months after, anyone who catches a train to or past Macquarie University or Macquarie Park will be forced to instead catch a bus. The government will say this massive inconvenience is essential to "upgrade" the Epping to Chatswood line as part of the Sydney Metro NorthWest. That will be false.
Had Baird's predecessor Barry O'Farrell not broken a promise to build the line to Sydney's north west as a regular part of the city's rail system, there would be no need for this shutdown. But O'Farrell broke that promise, because of the rail bureaucracy's fetishisation of single-deck trains and, frankly, a desire to privatise rail.
A similar year-long shutdown is on the cards for the Bankstown Line early next decade. For disclosure, I live on that line and the "upgrade" should eventually benefit people who do. But it is hardly worth it for a cost of about $1 billion in unnecessary station fit-outs and a year without trains.
Run metro trains on new lines, and stop cannabilising what we've already got.
2. Give Concord and St Peters the Rozelle treatment.
If you live near planned WestConnex interchanges at Concord or St Peters, you might wonder what special influence emanates from Rozelle.
At the start of the year, all three locations were to house mammoth concrete above-ground (spaghetti) motorway spirals.
But in July, Baird announced the Rozelle interchange would be built underground, beneath reclaimed parkland. In essence, he said the government had done more work and come up with a better design. And it does look better.
So why couldn't similar revisions be done at Concord or St Peters? This has never really been answered.
3. Build Epping to Parramatta rail before Parramatta light rail.
There's $1 billion on the state government's books to build a light rail line around Parramatta, the need for which remains obscure.
On the other hand, the need for a direct rail line between Parramatta and Epping has been apparent for decades. Such a line would give people in Parramatta, Blacktown, St Marys and Penrith direct access to Macquarie University and the jobs around Macquarie Park, North Ryde and Chatswood.
The light rail line accords with the desires of developers. The train line fits the needs of western Sydney. Baird is prioritising the wrong one.
4. Quit with the cycling silliness.
Apartments are going up all around. We all need somewhere to live. But for simple spatial reasons, not all of us are going to be able to drive – and park – everywhere we want to go.
Many will want to cycle. And Baird's government is insisting on a range of measures that work against bike riding. Even the pro-cycling law requiring motorists to leave a metre's space when passing in effect operates to discourage cycling by emphasising its dangers.
Cycling will become more safe when more people do it, and motorists are more accustomed to cyclists.
This is unlikely to happen while Baird wants to fine people $106 for not using a bell.
5. Heritage list the Sirius building.
Finance Minister Dominic Perrottet says the Rocks' Sirius building is a "concrete eyesore".
The Heritage Council, the state-appointed agency whose job is to make recommendations on these things, says the building should be preserved for its architectural integrity and as a marker of a time and place. That is, the fight to preserve inner-city low-income housing in the 1960s and 1970s.
Enough with the philistinism. The Sirius may not fit an idealised conception of what history should look like – sandstone and antimacassars.
But that is why the Heritage Council exists, and why it is populated with people who can make these recommendations. And that is why, when a future decision needs to be made about whether to preserve Alan Jones' apartment in the Toaster to mark the spot NSW premiers travelled for emergency lumbar work, hopefully the decision will not be left to the finance minister.
Jake Saulwick is city editor.
