Last Sunday, we carried a front page story revealing parliament's road safety advisory group was urging the government to consider extending school zone hours.

The Premier obviously had plans for his Sunday that didn't include having to deal with a potentially unpopular proposal. So, instead of batting the proposal away as a recommendation he wasn't so keen on, he took aim at The Sunday Telegraph.

Mr O'Farrell's strategy was simple: kill the story in its tracks so it didn't feature on radio news bulletins all day, and didn't get a run on the high-rating Sunday night TV news.

Mr O'Farrell told journalists that the story was 'BS' and speculated the source of the "inaccurate" story was Labor upper house MP Walt Secord.

He then trashed Sunday newspapers in general.

"I've talked to the chairman of the committee this morning, and surprisingly - this is my scepticism about other stories in the Sunday papers - there is no recommendation in his report to extend the hours of speed zones outside schools," he said.

With no other journalists having access to the yet-to-be published report, it was an easy kill, and his media strategy for that day stayed on course.

The problem for Mr O'Farrell is that the story was accurate. Two days later, on Tuesday, the report was tabled in parliament, and there it was: "Recommendation 18.

"The committee recommends ... an evaluation of alternative school zone hours of operation based on data from other Australian jurisdictions with a view to ... altering the operation of school zone hours in NSW."

It then goes on to cite the ACT's 8am-4pm zones and South Australia's 24/7 school speed restrictions.

Cut and dried, as The Sydney Morning Herald's Josephine Tovey wrote the next day on page three under the headline "Call to keep school zones in operation all day".

"The report from the Staysafe inquiry into school-zone safety ... also recommends the O'Farrell government examine extending the hours of operation for school zones."

Talk back radio - 2UE's Stuart Bocking and the ABC's Adam Spencer - were equally nonplussed by the O'Farrell smother.

Bocking spoke on air about the Premier killing the story which turned out to be correct. Spencer took talkback calls from listeners eager to discuss the extension of school zones.

Bizarrely, Mr O'Farrell kept the charade going, and also enlisted Roads Minister Duncan Gay into the theatre of the absurd. Mr Gay told parliament: "Whoever leaked that to The Sunday Telegraph was wrong."

He went on: "The report in question was tabled in the House yesterday and there was no mention of any such thing."

What's he talking about? There was a clear "mention" of "such a thing" in Recommendation 18 of the report. Mr Gay either can't read or he deliberately misled the House.

The question is, why? Why does Mr O'Farrell, who has just clocked up 12 months as Premier, need to resort to such ridiculously transparent and unnecessary tactics to avoid controversy? He has an enormous majority and the goodwill of an electorate unlikely to swing back to NSW Labor any time soon.

So why so brittle? Why so cautious? Why so, let's face it, silly and juvenile? Grow up, Mr O'Farrell. NSW needs a leader who is full of ideas and energy, not full of BS.

Some might question WTF are children doing out on the road at night when they should be home in bed, staysafe are being idiotic with this.