Frank Sartor can't understand why he's lost out - should we tell him?

Frank Sartor thinks that the current situation, which finds him without his title of planning minister and off the new NSW Rees Government front bench entirely, is all a big mistake.

He told The Age yesterday:

Mr Sartor said in nearly 17 years of elected office, he had made many contributions to the City of Sydney, of which he was former lord mayor, and the state of NSW.

He pointed to his "transformation" of Sydney, the establishment of the Cancer Institute of NSW, the Water and Energy Savings Fund - now the Climate Change Fund, the smoking ban in pubs and clubs and difficult planning reforms.

What Frank Sartor doesn't understand is how the average voter thinks.

While everyone either approves or disapproves of state policy initiatives across a broad range of community concerns, it is the politics of their own streetscapes that brings individual passions to the fore.

When Crankie Frankie stripped away the rights of residents and ratepayers to have any effective say in most local development decisions, he crossed a bridge to far.
One which is likely to cost Labor at the next election.

Premier Rees is obviously hoping that with Sartor gone, NSW voters will forget about those draconian planning reforms.

He is perhaps being overly optimistic, especially in coastal electorates where development pressure is fast stripping local identity away and leaving behind a generic 'retirement and tourism zone'.