But in the parallel world where the fixed four year term is decried as the fountain of all evil, it seems to me something odd is going on. Paul Kelly traces the constitutional change back to the Greiner regime, but downplays the fact that the movement towards fixed terms in the early 90s was part of a range of managerialist measures and an overarching approach to governance which argued – reasonably explicitly – that political accountability was an annoying obstacle to “reform”. This was an era when all manner of measures – privatisation, purchaser/provider splits, downsizing the public service, closing schools and hospitals and competition policy – were trumpeted by elites as necessary but largely rejected by public opinion.

Indeed, there’s a residue of this managerialist politics apparent in the Rees government’s fetishisation of the state’s AAA credit rating.

However, the managerialists of yesterday are the populists of today. But I’m completely puzzled by Paul Kelly’s logic here:

He means a device to enable an election to be held mid-term to save NSW from a truly disastrous government, such as the present administration. The point is that in a globalised world, guaranteed political tenure is a fatal flaw. The NSW experience shows that the fixed four-year term model is a fraud on the public interest.

We are losing the political culture that surrounds the Westminster model. Its flexibility, depicted as a problem, is a virtue. It means that pressure can mount on bad governments for an election and that strong governments, when they need a new mandate to confront a crisis, can seek that mandate.

The inability to procure an election in NSW at present does not help the people of NSW. It assists only the Labor machine that tries to run the state in its own interest.

Just as I’m not surprised that a state government should resist calls to “sack itself”, I’m completely at a loss to understand how – if the Greiner era constitutional changes had never happened – the Rees government would be wanting to rush to an election where it would probably be wiped off the electoral planet in short order. Whether or not NSW is now some apocalyptic wasteland, I can’t say. I haven’t been to Sydney since February (and strangely I found it quite easy and convenient to get around by train then.) But I can’t see how some sort of constitutional recall provision (presumably administered more independently than by the tabloid press) is at all consistent with the Westminister model, or that governments under the Westminster model are constantly attempting to engineer their own defeat and that NSW Labor is being prevented from doing that by a pesky constitutional provision. I’m forced, rather, to conclude that certain elites thought populism was a horrible thing last decade but now think it’s all the rage. Because, after all, newspaper columnists are the voice of the people, aren’t they?

Elsewhere: Some interesting reflections from Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion on these newspaper crusades and their implications:

Is it a newspaper or some kind of uber citizen? The will of the paper is the big story of the day. Could they be more self-referential? Would it have been more appropriate for the editor to publish a letter to himself?

Update: Andrew Bartlett on the case for three year terms.