Dom Perrottet

In such circumstances, one might think the person often suggested as a potential challenger for Ms Berejiklian’s job, Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, would be treading carefully, waiting for the tide to turn his way and people to forget about icare.

But no. Instead, he’s taking NSW off to the casino, thinking he can make a killing with the help of a bunch of former dealers at said casino, borrowing at least $10 billion and perhaps as much as $15 billion to play.

The Australian Financial Review’s John Kehoe started this week with a fine scoop on what Mr Perrottet was up to, “an under-the-radar budget strategy that public finance and credit analysts warn will put taxpayer money at risk”.

“Market participants believe the innovative financial structuring under state Treasurer Dominic Perrottet is unprecedented in Australia, and rare among governments in the world, because it involves the use of debt to effectively underwrite inflows into the NSW Generations Fund,” Mr Kehoe reported.

The AFR’s acerbic Rear Window columnist Joe Aston added spice to the story on Wednesday, running through the CVs of the key refugees from the private sector involved in the Perrottet play, suggesting the NSW Treasury Corporation (TCorp) is running rings around the Treasurer.

“TCorp’s fantasy outcome is to build itself a massive, debt-funded pile of financial assets it can charge the government fat fees for managing,” opined Aston. “Clearly, TCorp’s fantasy is being indulged to the fullest extent.”

Treasury claims it isn’t borrowing the extra $15 billion to gear up its spin of the wheel on everything from humble local shares to hedge funds and emerging markets’ debt. The claim is laughable.

By hoovering up money from every other nook and cranny, the fund-of-funds has already forced the government to borrow an extra $10 billion to make up for what has gone into casino chips.