Duncan Gay, the Roads Minister, has enjoyed a long parliamentary career, but in the sunset of his days he is carving out a latter-day career as the scourge of inner-city Sydney.
It's Gay's private joke.
He plays the country bumpkin from Crookwell but spends much of his time living in the inner west.
Now 65 and surely approaching retirement, Gay is using his remaining time as the colossus of roads to leave an indelible mark on Sydney. He also seems to be riding roughshod over those who stand in his way.
He has but three words for the lord mayor Clover Moore: "Anti-roads idiot".
This week Gay announced a consortium of Leighton, Dragados and Samsung was the preferred tenderer for the $5 billion second stage of the WestConnex motorway, a new M5 tunnel from Beverly Hills that would include a spaghetti junction of above-ground ramps at St Peters.
"I am as proud as hell of this project," Mr Gay said. "It is going to make a hell of a difference to this city," he said, reiterating his line that Newtown would become a nirvana once the third WestConnex stage was built. "Those people that put effigies of me in Newtown should be treating me as a deity."
Before deifying himself, Gay made a career out of playing the country bumpkin for city consumption but the facade hides a hard shrewdness that goes a treat in the bush where they still like putting one over city folk.
Born in Goulburn he came to the city to attend Newington College, tried wool classing, enlisted in the army reserve during the Vietnam War and drove trucks. He joined the old Country Party in 1974. Fourteen years later he was elected on the National Party ticket's NSW Upper House when Nick Greiner swept to victory in 1988.
Gay turned up for work for 23 years.
Then in 2011 Barry O'Farrell named him Minister for Roads and Ports.
Gay, a well-liked frequenter of the press gallery during his long years in opposition, found the transition to government a hard ask and he started running remorseless critiques of those blind to his vision.
In May, he savaged Tim Williams, chief executive of the advocacy group the Committee for Sydney, for daring to suggest upgrading public transport services in western Sydney would be a better policy.
"If you talk about particulate matter, there is more particulate matter goes into the air over the city of Sydney from the chattering classes sitting around their log fire and a glass of chardonnay [talking about] that horrible Duncan Gay – they put more particulate matter into the air of Sydney by a factor of four or five than heavy vehicles ever did."
Before the March election, Gay said that without the third stage of WestConnex 120,000 cars per day would be "spewed into Newtown, Balmain, Leichhardt, Erskineville" but this could be avoided with a "magic tunnel" and he was so chuffed with the idea he might even "buy a black shirt".
Gay's lame attempt at slightly dated inner-city cool took some opponents back to Rome, circa 1930s.
