“Who the hell… do you think you are? ... I will be speaking to Gladys Berejiklian in about five, three minutes and if you can’t come to the party Louise you should lose your job.” Even now, the sheer menace of it reverberates.

It’s been a big week for me, a week of people dying and (other) people getting sick, different hospitals in different cities, of intimacy with suffering. In one way, this made it harder to care about a few minutes of tacky but ephemeral light-vomit chucked all over the Sydney Opera House. But still I find it hard to lose the dirty feeling of Alan Jones’ invective, vile even by his standards, which became such a lightning rod for Sydneysiders’ impassioned defence of their city, their arts and their values.

Racing NSW beamed a promotion for The Everest race on to the Sydney Opera House. Credit:Wolter Peeters

For Jones’ attack wasn’t just on Louise Herron, chief executive of the house, or the beloved building she manages, though these were real and nasty. It was an unusually naked attack on order itself.

If someone can have you sacked for doing your job with fairness and integrity rather than perpetuating his own commercial interests; if such a person, making such a threat, commands the public loyalty of our political leaders, we’re in dangerous territory indeed.