One headline today screams at us, "Why Iemma has made Sydney a global joke". And notwithstanding the dreadful transport mess that we're in, the headline derives from the fact that the company that couldn't deliver on the T-card - the integrated ticketing system - is now going after the Government, which is us, for $200 million.
And this has attracted the attention of the head of the International Association of Public Transport, a Mr Rat, who has said at a conference in Singapore that the way the T-card contract was handled and the resulting court case had damaged the State's image.
He said "Everywhere in the world where change of ticketing systems is occurring, if there's no teamwork from the departments and the management of public transport companies, it will fail. In New South Wales you throw away two CEOs a year."
Now this bloke represents public transport operators and transport authorities in 90 countries. He said uncertainty discouraged innovation.
He said "You create a situation where everyone's hiding. A massive change in ticketing means you need people who form a team and take risks together."
Now the New South Wales Government being bagged internationally is not good news. But this is where the Government is its own worst enemy.
It mooted this T-card 15 years ago, kept on spinning and spinning, not telling the electorate the truth, and then in January, terminates a $367 million, ten year agreement to roll out the integrated card where you could jump from train to bus to ferry. Scrapped it.
But you have to wonder whether such a system could ever work under the current set-up we have.
For example, the system for buses alone has 30 types of tickets, 54 different prices and 95 concession entitlement categories. That's just buses.
Ferries and rail are another outfit. So the Government gets badmouthed. But it's only got itself to blame. And then when that happens, no cards seem to fall your way.
The week began with people unable to get across the Spit Bridge. Then on Wednesday morning the M5 East tunnel fiasco.
Last night 200 passengers were trapped for 45 minutes in a tunnel after a train broke down on the Eastern Suburbs line near Edgecliff. The train apparently lost power because of an electrical surge just before seven o'clock. Lovely stuff on Thursday night.
But how on earth do you get a smart card ticketing system out of a million and one types of tickets and prices and concessions? And of course, the international criticism makes a mockery of the argument that the Government's business record hasn't been affected by these failures.
Not just the T-card.
The Lane Cove Tunnel, the Cross City Tunnel, both of which are virtually broke. So then you've got to find international money and international partners for infrastructure down the track when your recent history is of sending companies broke.
Mind you, we're all critics. But the one question that we're not prepared to ask is, who would want the job?
Which businessman would want to wake up to find a headline "Why Iemma has made Sydney a global joke".
We expect the world from politicians. We don't pay them a whole heap of money. And we cut them to pieces at will. Our anger is often in inverse proportion to the homework we do before we go into the polling booth.
I suspect that before the last State election we did no homework at all.
Mr Iemma received a thumping mandate. 15 months on, we're angry as hell.
Yet even the newspapers, who seem now to be wanting to make Mr Iemma their latest political casualty, were strenuously endorsing the same leader to be re-elected.
We're a funny lot.
Perhaps that's why we're facing some very funny, as in peculiar, situations.
The answer is pretty simple.
Identify the problem, do what your instinct tells you, but for God's sake do something.
