For one brief shining moment, before he handed the chalice to Gladys Berejiklian, it seemed that the entire world supported Mr Constance’s candidacy.

For its part, the Bega Valley Shire Residents & Ratepayers Association (BVSRRA) believes that Mr Constance is an ideal candidate for the position of Premier of NSW.

If the requisite capabilities for the job include an ability to talk for more than eight minutes without pause and without saying anything meaningful, an ability to respond to any question without actually answering it, a readiness to be partisan, a readiness to avoid constituents raising unhelpful issues, a record of ignoring submissions/correspondence, a readiness to take the community for granted, a readiness to pursue/support major projects without consulting the community and most importantly, the capacity to pose as “everyman”: as all things to all people, Mr Constance is the man.

The branch president of the Merimbula-Eden Liberal Party, Jon Gaul, reportedly claimed that if Mr Constance became Premier, it “would put a rose in every cheek”.

Without wishing to denigrate Mr Gaul’s poetic talent, the Association would be concerned about the many sharp thorns that would adorn his rose.

“The persistent misunderstanding and misrepresentation of how and when our national history began is not so much a function of lost chapters as selective reading… If we broaden our gaze, our story will get bigger. But we will also have to cope with an incomplete picture. Yet this larger complexity can still help us to address the many concerns of our present… It compels us to look at broader historical processes than the ‘discovery-then-settlement’ triumphalist children’s tale we have been fed for several generations, and to develop a more inclusive understanding of our collective past and path.”

Nick Brodie: ‘1787 The lost Chapters of Australia’s Beginnings’.

There’s nothing to celebrate on Australia Day while our national emblem remains the victim of the largest wildlife slaughter in the world and our national university slaughters thousands of kangaroos and their babies on university grounds.

Documents obtained under Freedom Of Information have revealed the Australian National University shot and killed 1300 eastern grey kangaroos and joeys at its Kioloa campus in NSW since 2007 including 65 in 2016.

Internal records provided under FOI reveal that the ANU killed 560 eastern grey kangaroos and their young in 2007 and another 300 in 2009. It then applied to the NSW Department of Environment to kill another 600 in 2016 but was denied the application and issued a permit for another 65.

Large scale kangaroo “culls” can never be humane. Kangaroos are intelligent and affectionate animals with complex social structures and strong family bonds. These large scale slaughters terrorise the mob for hours. It destroys the integrity of the mob structure and leaves dependent joeys orphaned and alone to die from exposure, predation, stress and starvation.

This is not a practice our national university should be proud of.

The Australian Society for Kangaroos still has many questions for the university and the NSW government: Why weren't non lethal strategies discussed with experts and wildlife groups and why was there no attempt to trial non lethal strategies before the permit was authorised.