By Sean Nicholls
Throughout the NSW election campaign Barry O'Farrell declared he would not stoop to dealing with ''sectional interests''.
He was referring to the Shooters and Fishers Party and Fred Nile's Christian Democrats, but he could just as easily have been talking about the Nationals.
O'Farrell was also at pains to promise - many times - that his shadow cabinet would become his cabinet, barring mishaps by shadow ministers on the campaign trail.
Weekend revelations cast doubt over both statements.
The unpublicised decision to abolish the department of environment and climate change and hand control of key environmental responsibilities to the Nationals' Katrina Hodgkinson smacks of a political fix to keep the peace with the Liberals' important Coalition partner.
Excluding the Coalition's former environment spokeswoman, Catherine Cusack, from the ministry looks for all the world like a quiet nod to the Shooters and Fishers, who had objected to her public statements.
When Parliament begins, they, along with the Christian Democrats, will hold the balance of power in the upper house, meaning the government will be forced to secure their votes to guarantee the passage of legislation that is opposed by Labor and the Greens.
What better way to open negotiations than by sidelining the woman who had publicly rejected the two issues at the top of their wishlist: shooting in national parks and the winding back of marine parks?
O'Farrell's comment about sectional interests was prompted by claims by Labor that the decision by the Greens to not preference Labor in the upper house risked handing control to a ''right-wing coalition''.
Labor said that if the Shooters and Fishers and Christian Democrats gained the balance of power, they - along with the Nationals - would wind back years of environmental gains achieved under the former government.
The jury is still out on the effect of that preferencing decision, but Labor now has evidence that its warnings were justified.
On the Monday following the election, O'Farrell and the Deputy Premier and leader of the Nationals, Andrew Stoner, made sure they were sworn in before the rest of the cabinet.
It has now emerged they have used this power to sack the director-general of health, Debora Picone, move the director-general of education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, to a new role and send the secretary of Treasury, Michael Schur, on ''immediate leave'' while they investigate a questionable budget ''black hole''.
The secrecy with which these latest changes are being carried out raises the question: what else is going on that we aren't being told about?