There are too many vested interests in Sydney and it makes it difficult for the NSW Government to act in the public interest and, because of this, the city is now in a nine-week lockdown, with no end in sight.

Gladys Berejiklian says “but there is no guidebook for a pandemic”. Actually, there is, and we provide a five-point plan, which would be obvious to anyone looking at what’s been happening all around the world, including Australia. But, evidently, it’s not obvious to the NSW Government, or to the Prime Minister.

Western Sydney has been sacrificed and next on the block are Year 12 students, who are returning to schools in two weeks’ time: this is a precarious situation, but the private school lobby has decided expensive tuition must be delivered, and the high HSC results they’re expecting from exams much be fulfilled. And Berejiklian has agreed, because that’s how power in NSW works.

The political theorist, Niccolò Machiavelli asked the question: “is it better for a leader to be loved or loathed”, before deciding leaders seeking the love and attention of the electorate are destined for failure. Scott Morrison is seeking tonsorial splendour and is far more focused on his appearances – and trying to make himself loved by the populace – rather than the needs of the electorate but he really needs to decide if he wants to be Prime Minister of Australia, or the next contestant on The Bachelor: he can’t be both.

Prime ministers do need to worry about how they appear in public, but spending time during a pandemic to keep up their appearances? Morrison is fixated on the winning the next election and he’s going about it the wrong way about it. And qualitative research agrees.

McKinsey & Company is a consulting firm with close ties to the Liberal Party and it has received a $2 million contract for [redacted] – no one knows what it is for and the government is not releasing any information about it. So we can only assume that it’s public money used for the benefit of Liberal Party. $108 million has been paid to McKinsey since 2018 – $36 million per year – and that’s a great business model, for McKinsey. But not for the public.

And the Labor leader Anthony Albanese is offering support for the Stage 3 round of tax cuts, to be introduced in 2024. It mainly favours higher-income earners, costs the budget $18 billion each year, widens inequity within the community, is lousy policy, doesn’t even need Labor support to be implemented but yet… the Labor Party is supporting it anyway.

Why? Because politicians should never stand between a bucket of money and the electorate, irrespective of how much it costs, or how inequitable the policy is. And Labor wants to win the next federal election, and one cannot be shot if they don’t have a target on their back. A win for politics, but a disaster for low-income earners, supposedly the supporter base of the Labor Party.