Gladys Berejiklian's resignation leaves only one woman standing, Queensland's Annastacia Palaszczuk, among nine federal, state and territory heads of government. In 2021.
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As tributes flowed on Friday, it was the NSW Premier's first name, "Gladys", that tripped most easily from the lips.
Berejiklian had become that rare thing in Australian public life, a one-name entity rivalled only by "Barnaby" for that familiarity.
Even the shopfront sign on her Willoughby electorate office reads "Gladys Berejiklian MP" - the first name painted in larger letters.
In a stark irony, the departing Premier was lauded by friend and foe alike for her diligence, her ear as a politician, and her uncommon integrity.
This can only have added to the personal tragedy of a stellar career, cut short by - of all things - an anti-corruption investigation questioning her observance of these very virtues.
Never far from a position change, Scott Morrison was first to heap on the praise.
Ignoring the instances of his office undermining her through the pandemic, Morrison called her a close personal friend, a valued colleague and more in that vein.
Long-term political veteran Graham "Richo" Richardson praised her also, attributing her four election wins to her keen sense of the electoral mood.
In fact, she had only won once, in 2019. Yet Richo's verbal slip spoke to the aura of invincibility that had come to surround this daughter of Armenian migrants, who declared in her election-night speech that NSW was a state where a person "with a long surname and a woman" could become premier.
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To many voters, Berejiklian's demise will seem out of whack with the lax standards in the federal sphere under Morrison's stewardship.
Allegations of poor personal behaviour, rorted travel allowance, needlessly cruel payment-recovery programs, corrupt car park and sports grants schemes, vastly over-market land acquisitions, and acts of needless political aggression have resulted in few lasting sanctions.
It is now over 1000 days since a federal anti-corruption body was promised - under the guiding hand of Christian Porter no less, himself now delisted from the frontbench for refusing to meet donation transparency rules.
But this does not mean Berejiklian should not have resigned. The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is now investigating the Premier herself, not simply calling her as a witness.
As usual, it is the cover-up that gets them in the end. In this case, that cover-up had come first with her decision to conceal a personal relationship with then-Liberal MP Daryl Maguire.
This deceit exposed the Premier to the conflict of interest and special treatment allegations now being probed.
- Mark Kenny is a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.
