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back to archive index28th February 2006 Record Pollution, Planners Sacked and Labor Pretends they have Changed..The Cross City Tunnel Inquiry has been a source of some very interesting information for those wishing to take a serious look at the way that infrastructure is funded and planned in NSW. One of the most interesting parts of the inquiry was the testimony of Ken Morrison, of the NSW Property Council, who said that that they had commissioned a study that concluded that the best way to create infrastructure was for governments to borrow and build. Yes, you heard that correctly - BORROW and build.Government and Opposition members chose not to hear this refutation of the standard line they have both used in the last fifteen years. Likewise, they have also chosen to ignore the ex-Auditor-General, Bob Walker, who testified that he knew of no economist who said that Public Private Partnerships (as done in NSW) were a good idea. His conclusion was that the costs fail to account for the longer-term expenses resulting from government loss of control over planning. The extent of this loss of control has become very clear through the Cross City Tunnel Inquiry, as well as through recent revelations around the Metropolitan Strategy. Sam Haddad, Director of the Dept of Planning, testified during the Cross City Tunnel hearings that his job was to evaluate plans put to him by others. I asked whether decisions about road proposals were evaluated against the alternatives, such as rail, before they are approved. The answer was that if there was not a proposal for rail, it would not be considered. In other words, if the State Rail Authority does not put in proposals for rail, then all we will have is roads. This goes a long way towards explaining the fact that the number of kilometres traveled by cars has increased enormously in the last ten years. Figures given a lot of prominence in the Daily Telegraph this week showed that while in an average year there are five to twenty days of pollution above the safe health level, we have exceeded this level fourteen times in the last three months! The need to address this has been on the agenda for most of the Labor Government's tenure, but the Clean Air Strategy continues to miss it's most important targets - reducing the number of kilometers traveled by private vehicles. The Metropolitan Strategy was touted as a way to achieve this target, but as of this moment, the Metropolitan Strategy, is very light on infrastructure and transport planning detail - in fact these chapters have not been written according to some sources. Despite the enormous importance of these elements, the Government has disbanded the group that has overseen the strategy, and sacked most of the planners who contributed to it. This does not bode well for Sydney, and given Sydney's central role in distributing goods throughout NSW, this does not bode well for anyone else either. The fact that neither the Liberal nor Labor parties have recognized the folly in disbanding the planning group, before their task was finished, should raise alarms. Meanwhile, The Cross City Tunnel report is shaping up as a concerted effort to maintain the credibility of PPPs. The report seems likely to conclude that this project is a one-off mistake, caused by the fact that they gave too much away in street closures. This is not a line that we should accept given the poor outcomes delivered by the vast majority of PPPs to date. Yrs, Dr. Arthur Chesterfield-Evans (ACE)
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