When BOF (Barry O'Farrell) first came into government, he went out of his way to tell everybody in the media that he wouldn't be doing any deals with the minor parties (whatever that means). That was in March 2011. At the time I thought it was good old fashioned tough Coalition talk.

But really it seemed that his problem was more like having to pull a bad tooth. He could tie it to a door handle and just get it over with or he could hope that it might fall out by itself. Having chosen the "let it fall out by itself " option he now must wait for it to do so, whilst hoping that an abscess won't develop.

According to standard Labor party theory, the electorate can be expected to forget practically every bad thing done by a government if given a sufficiently long time in which to do so. This theory seemed to be confirmed by experiments conducted in NSW in the Carr-Iemma-Rees-Keneally years. If the theory is correct, BOF should be giving himself enough time to distance himself from every politically unattractive decision which he needs to make. Certainly he recognised that when he brought out his 2.5% industrial cap laws early in his reign.

So if he is worried about any flak being received from granting some small requests of the minor parties, the time to grant those requests might well be right now. In a few months nothing much will be going on in Parliament when they have their summer break. If he persists with his current plan I am reminded of a certain beer advertisement which used to show on TV.

In the ad a man lies gravely ill in bed. His friend is on the phone to the doctor, and the doctor says that he needs to be given something cool to drink. The friend asks the doctor what will happen if he doesn't get something cool to drink, and the doctor says "Well, it's going to get pretty bad". The friend goes to the fridge, looks in and sees one cold can of beer. He takes it out and opens it. He goes into his friend's room and his sick friend asks him what the doctor said. As he takes a sip of the beer, the friend says to the sick man "He said its going to get pretty bad".