So long Laurie

Little Laurie Glanfield out of favour with Barry O'Farrell ... Top bureaucrats reshuffled ... Not long before Laurie shuffles off to Buffalo ... Greg Pearce ponging badly ... Updated with latest development on Pearce sacking ... From political reporter Alex Mitchell 

Laurie Glanfield (right) at a departmental awards ceremony

LAURIE Glanfield's fall from the commanding heights of the NSW state bureaucracy has been spectacular.

In the process he has claimed an early lead in this year's race for the "Golden Rooster to Feather Duster Award".

For more than two decades Glanfield was the crafty bureaucrat at the "heart" of  the Attorney General's Department - serving a brace of AGs including Peter Collins, John Hannaford, Jeff Shaw, Bob Debus, John Hatzistergos and Greg Smith.

Now he has been removed as director general of the department, a bureaucratic fiefdom covering Corrective Services, the Judicial Commission, Legal Aid, the Office of the DPP, the Crown Solicitor's Office, the NSW Crime Commission and the courts.

Premier Barry O'Farrell has installed him as director general of the Department of Finance and Services as well as badging him with the amusing title of the State's Chief Information Officer (CIO). 

Glanfield's tenure at AG's has been in doubt since the Coalition stormed to victory in the March 2011 election.

He's been on the outer with Bazza and following his transfer to Finance and Services, final farewell drinks can be only a matter of time.

Certainly before the next NSW election due in March 2015.

O'Barrel's switcheroo

Coutts-Trotter: he partially firewalls the wretched Department of Community Services (pic. Daily Tele)

IN switching to the top job at Finance, Minister Greg Pearce's department, Glanville succeeds Michael Coutts-Trotter, modestly famous because of his marriage to federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek.

In an inspired move, O'Farrell has chosen Coutts-Trotter as the new director-general of Family and Community Services, a source of unrelenting grim stories about child deaths and violent abuse. 

At a stroke, O'Farrell has dampened down further attacks from the Labor Opposition.

How so? Labor's spokeswoman on community services is Linda Burney, the party's deputy leader, a former Minister for Community Services and a former head of the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs.

She also belongs to the same left-wing faction as Plibersek.

Will Burney be demanding a judicial inquiry or a major overhaul of Coutts-Trotter's department next time scandal strikes?

I don't think so.

O'Farrell has partially firewalled Coutts-Trotter from Labor attacks on his under-funded and under-staffed department.

There was a second "bonus" as well.

Coutts-Trotter is replacing Jim Moore, who was stood aside after being arrested by police over an alleged domestic assault last month.

With the arrival of Coutts-Trotter, the department is "moving forward".

Promotion or demotion?

WHEN Coutts-Trotter was shifted to Family and Community Services, the sleuths from the Daily Telegraph were first on the scene.

Their headline story blared: NSW finance minister Greg Pearce's director-general Michael Coutts-Trotter demoted in major reshuffle. 

Demoted? Really?

For the record, the Department of Finance and Services' current budget is $1.5 billion with a staff of 5,970 while the Department of Family and Community Services' current budget is $5.2 billion with a staff of 13,252.

Call me old school, but it seems to me that Coutts-Trotter, a former chief of staff to treasurer Michael Egan, has received a rocket-fuelled promotion.

But who am I to question the boys at Rupert's Telly?

The back story

Pearce and dummy: on the way out

FINANCE Minister Greg Pearce is on the way out of O'Farrell's first ministry.

When he departs, he will be the Coalition's first ministerial casualty since it regained office after 16 years away from the Treasury benches.

Pearce was sent to the corner of the Cabinet room when he was caught on CCTV  cameras in the Upper House in a state of over-tiredness.

Then followed a string of stories about his travel and accommodation, the latest from the Tele on Monday (June 29) with the page-one headline, "Weekend warrior - Pearce wracks up 39 work trips on us". 

The flood of embarrassing leaks has been fed to the Daily Telegraph by Pearce's political enemies on the "wet" side of the Liberal Party and by senior ALP figures in the Upper House who developed a "dirt file" on him when he led the 2010 assault on Labor's chaotic attempt to part-sell electricity assets.

Pearce was not informed of the transfer of his director-general Coutts-Trotter to Family and Community Services, nor was he consulted about the arrival of Glanfield as his new director-general.

O'Farrell is treating Pearce as though he simply doesn't exist.

Pearce, who took his arts and law degrees at Sydney University before joining Freehill Hollingdale & Page and making partner by the time he was 28, has other pressing embarrassments.

One item still to surface concerns Sydney Water, which spent $7 million developing a new website while Hunter Water conducted a similar project for $50,000.

Questions about the website fiasco are already on parliamentary notice from Labor's Walt Secord, former chief of staff to (Electric) Eric Roozendaal, the former Treasurer and pal of the Obeids. 

Update on Thursday, August 1, 2013 by Justinian

The curse of Polly Peck has struck.

A day after Alex Mitchell's column predicted an untimely end to Greg Pearce's political career, Barry O'Farrell sacked the hapless minister.

The ostensibe reason is that Pearce failed to disclose that his wife worked for Richard Fisher, who he appointed to the board of Sydney Water in 2011. 

See details here. 

Fisher is a former partner at Blake Dawson Waldron and is now the general counsel at the University of Sydney.

Pearce's wife, Shauna Jarrett, worked for Fisher as assistant group secretary at the university. He failed to disclose this to Cabinet, and Fatty sacked him for breaching the ministerial code of conduct. 

A very worthy scalp for our political correspondent, Alex Mitchell.