Oh come on – we all make mistakes.  Yes, I was wrong about Dominic Perrottet being the hope of the side when he became Premier of New South Wales, having taken over from Gladys. But sometimes it’s worth writing a column based on confident, rather than reasoned, expectation. OK – overly confident, as it turns out.

On paper at least, Perrottet looked like a conservative, in contrast with most NSW Liberals who are to the right of Labor by the thinnest of margins – and not on all issues. Surely, he would govern according to a vision of limited and responsible government and use his socially conservative values to inform his government’s decisions? Gosh, he had even said some sensible things initially when the Covid curse first emerged – along the lines that you can’t shut the whole economy down because of a virus.

Of course, I should have been more sceptical because of some of his actions as NSW Treasurer. He was particularly entranced by the investment bank types that had been recruited to NSW Treasury. They were being paid big bucks but were keen to do even more than their duty statements permitted.

Using taxpayers’ money and the state’s credit rating, a plan was concocted that a vast sum of money – in the billions of dollars – should be borrowed at the low rate of interest prevailing at that time. They could recycle assets, securitise any cash flows coming in the direction of the government, hive off activities and create separate financial entities – the joys of financial board games, with large bonuses attached naturally.

Forget private sector investment banking, this could be really good fun and highly remunerative. The dreams of these ex-private sector spivs in Treasury were almost without limit and they even got some way to realising their ambitions with the ludicrous creation of the Transport Asset Holding Entity as well as the creation of a NSW Future Fund.

Just think about it: take a bunch of loss-making public transport-related assets, put them in a new company, fudge the figures, engage in some financial acrobatics and Bob’s your uncle. Well, that’s until the pesky state auditor-general starts snooping around and smells a rat and a very big one at that.

At some point, common sense prevailed and the hopes and dreams of the panjandrums at Treasury were sadly dashed. But by this stage, Dom had his sights on the big prize – premier of the state. Following on from her very poor choice of boyfriend, Gladys was forced to leapfrog over to Optus and the father of seven was able to move into the big office.

Sadly for Dom, he was forced to follow through with the panicked pandemic restrictions that Gladys had begun to introduce – her show of sensible restraint was short-lived – and this occupied the new premier’s first months in office. Whether he really believed in these freedom-sapping, pointless rules and regulations is not clear, but it was too late for him to do a U-turn.

So what has the Perrottet government achieved? Sadly, the change of leader didn’t lead to a decline in the influence of the Matt Kean clique, with Kean assuming the important role of Treasurer as well as keeping his energy portfolio. That told us a lot.

It was full steam ahead with the promotion of renewable energy and the denigration of fossil fuel electricity generation. Renewable energy zones were outlined, billions of dollars of subsidies were made available, taxed coal-fired plants were to close before their technical expiry dates – NSW would become the poster child for decarbonisation. All the time, Perrottet appeared to sit back and let it happen, presumably in part because he lacked the factional numbers to do anything about it.

(Panic has now set in with the closure of the coal-fired Liddell plant in April and the foreshadowed early closure of the large Eraring plant in 2025. After a botched negotiation with Origin Energy, the owner of Eraring, Kean lamely accepted the company’s decision. But now that the Labor opposition has announced its proposal for the government to buy the plant – which, under the circumstances, is the only sensible thing to do – Kean is looking very exposed.)

In the meantime, Perrottet has struggled in his premiership, with the recurrent problems of the metropolitan train network, including the intractable negotiations with the unions, blotting his copybook. As for all those vouchers being handed out – sports vouchers, back-to-school vouchers, eating-out vouchers, stay-in-NSW vouchers – it clearly didn’t occur to the premier and his team that most of the gains are snaffled by the providers who simply jack up their prices.

But the bigger point here is that no self-respecting conservative politician would regard handing out these piecemeal vouchers as a legitimate role of government. They stink of vote buying using other people’s money because they are vote buying.

I guess this way of thinking was always going to lead to some sort of crescendo – it’s Perrottet’s proposal for a Kids Future Fund which is the centrepiece of the Liberal party’s re-election platform. The idea is to create some sort of incentivised saving scheme for the young’uns which can be withdrawn when the child reaches 18 years of age, but only to be spent on education and/or housing.

You can imagine the phalanx of nosey bureaucrats making sure these teenagers only spend the money on allowable items (receipts required). Who needs parents when you can have interfering public servants?

For every child under ten, the government will contribute $400 and parents can contribute $400 and an annual rate of return of 4 per cent is guaranteed by the government. All going well, an 18-year-old can expect a pot of close to 30 grand. Sadly, the NSW taxpayer will be required to chip in for this largesse, with a figure of $850 million over four years quoted – which is not peanuts.

What could go wrong? Plenty, actually. The fact that Perrottet has declared that he won’t be enrolling his own children in the fund was particularly bizarre. Is he implying that the fund is essentially unfair if high-income earners decide to participate? It is reminiscent of Tony Blair’s short-lived Children’s Trust that lasted only a few years before he was voted out and the incoming government rightly decided that it was a particularly stupid idea.

So Speccie readers, please be kind. We all make mistakes. I’d hoped that Perrottet would be a breath of fresh air in the putrid atmosphere of state premiers.

Of course, NSW opposition leader, Chris Minns, could be even worse, but that’s democracy for you.