| APRIL 2009 Pages - Page 2 |
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NSW's HARD WORKING MPs
The first quarter of 2009 has been....and gone.
So it's time to take a look at how "hard" our NSW MPs have been working in the first quarter of the year. There were 90 days in the quarter.
The "dance book" of MPs looked like this:-
1 January - 2 March 2009 - HOLIDAYS (61 days)
3 March - Parliament resumes
4 March - 5 March - parliament sitting
6 March - 9 March - BREAK (4 days)
10 March - 13 March - parliament sitting
14 March - 23 March - BREAK (10 days)
24 March - 27 March - parliament sitting
28 March - 30 March - BREAK (3 days)
31March - parliament sitting.
SO out of 90 days - MPs were at work in parliament for just 12 days.
Of those 12 days, 2 were Fridays.
On Friday 13 March 2009 just 42 MPs bothered to turn up and on 27 March 2009 a mere 47 fronted up for their parliamentary duties.
Nathan Rees MP demonstrated his disrespect for the parliamentary process by failing to front on any Friday.
A day by day analysis of the parliamentary sittings shows the maximum number of hours any MP chained themselves to the "work grindstone" for.
TOTAL HOURS Parliament sat in the first quarter of 2009: 83hrs 21mins.
IS TONY STEWART P***ING INTO THE WIND ???
In 2008 when Tony Stewart announced he was suing claiming he was "unfairly" dealt with when sacked as a Minister, we said he was p***ing into
the wind. We haven't changed our view.
Certainly that view, although expressed in more eloquent terms, is being argued by the legal team responding to Stewart's claim in the NSW
Supreme Court.
see: Harriet Alexander , Sacked minister's right to sue tested , Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 2009.
VIRGINIA JUDGE MP (STRATHFIELD) - OFF ICAC HOOK (for the present)
ICAC has announced it will not investigate a complaint made by Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell regarding "representations" made by Virginia
Judge MP (Strathfield) in relation to the siting of a police station.
Expect to hear more of Virginia Judge in the future. Time is not on her side.
see : Andrew Clennell , ICAC rules out Judge investigation, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April, 2009.
BENSON's VIEW
Simon Benson, the Daily Telegraph has written a number of opinion pieces lately regarding the NSW Labor government. None of it is flattering.
One can feel the frustration dripping from the ink of the words penned by Benson.
THE problem in articulating the incompetence of the Government is choosing an anecdote with which to characterise it.
It’s known as the Imelda Marcos syndrome. Like shoes, finding the right ones from so many is so bloody hard.
But for sheer stupidity, you could do worse than examine the Government’s $1 billion Royal North Shore Hospital project.
Whoever drew up the plans for this enterprise needs counselling. And a lot of it.
And the Government needs a solid boot in the proverbial.
A reasonable person would assume operating theatres to be an essential part of any hospital, particularly one of the largest teaching
hospitals in the country.
But not the designers of this project.
They believe that the only people needing treatment here will be pygmies.
How it turned out that of the 18 theatres being built, 16 will be too small to perform anything more serious than a haemorrhoidectomy,
is ridiculous.
And then there is the small matter of trauma victims being wheeled more than 250m to surgery, because the helipad will be built as far
away from the theatres as possible.
Be assured there won’t be anything wrong with the privately run car park, commercially operated food outlets, gift shops and valet
services.
Less than a year ago, the very people building this hospital attended a medical conference in Adelaide where they were told that the
accepted minimum standard for a multi-function operating theatre was between 55sq m and 60sq m.
All but two of the RNS theatres will be either 42sq m or 52sq m. When the surgeons raised eyebrows, and concerns, they were literally
told to “bugger off”.
Aircraft manufacturers once tried that with pilots when designing planes, only to find out later they had a better chance of staying
airborne if these important people were consulted.
But the RNS project is an experiment not without analogy. We know it as the the Cross City Tunnel.
The RNS is the first major teaching hospital to be built in Australia under a public private partnership (PPP).
Half of the cost will be borne by the taxpayer - around $450 million - and the rest will be thrown in by a consortium (ABN Amro, Thiess
and Wilson Parking).
The other point that needs to be considered is not only the size of the theatres but the number of theatres being planned.
The surgeons, who unlike politicians don’t tend to lie, said they needed 10 more theatres than was originally being planned to cope
with a growing population and rising demand for critical care.
The Government said that they could have two more.
Their argument was that the extra demand would be taken up in the new Northern Beaches hospital.
But the Government appears to be wavering over that now too.
Health Minister John Della Bosca and Reba Meagher before him have both proclaimed the RNS to be the greatest capital works project
ever undertaken.
And that’s what others said about the Cross City Tunnel.
Simon Benson, Small IQs design small hospital for small-minded, Daily Telegraph, 10 March 2009.
IF the former Soviet bloc could build a 1000 kilometre eight-lane motorway through four struggling eastern european economies then
surely the NSW Government could organise a T-card.
You’d think so. It’s not that hard. Every other city in the world that has at least some form of public transport has one. But not Sydney.
It beggars belief that after 10 years, Sydney still doesn’t have one.
And the fact that the companies involved in both the bungled Millennium train delivery - remember, they couldn’t go around corners -
and the original tender process for T-card in 2002, have now been shortlisted for another crack at it, should have everyone thrilled.
The public, rightly, can have no faith in this Government that it will get it right this time.
The reason, and in the defence of the first contractors ERG that are being sued for $100 million by the Government for stuffing up the
first one, a T-card won’t work until the State Transit, Citytrail and Sydney Ferries’ fare structures are resolved.
Sydney has something like 70 odd different fares and tickets. It is ridiculous.
But the Government has resisted moving to a zone ticketing system, like Melbourne, London or Paris, which is simple easy to use and
allows an integrated bus and train ticketing system.
On the contrary, the introduce a new ticket, on average about once a month.
They argue that the ferries makes it difficult to integrate. Brisbane has ferries. And so does St Petersberg.
But the real reason is that Treasury like it this way. The more complicated the better. A simpler system, they will quietly argue, may
shave the top of the Government’s revenue stream.
The T-card has come to symbolise the shambolic state of this Government and its complete failure to deliver even basic services let
alone upgrade existing ones into the 21st century.
The Government should just give up and confess that the delivery of T-card is beyond their capabilities - and leave it to the next
Government.
Simon Benson, T-card symbolises the shambolic state of NSW Government, Daily Telegraph, 18 March 2009.
UNTIL now you could excuse the State Labor Government for merely being a bungling, incompetent warehouse of misfits. It’s a
narrative that has dominated NSW politics for some considerable time.
We can be thankful to former premier Morris Iemma for at least one thing - his commitment to mental health services
There are myriad reasons to feel aggrieved at the management of this state at the hands of this Government and understandable that
we fear for the decisions it will make in the future.
But then, bungling is at worst a flaw most of us can relate to, even if few of us will ever achieve it on a scale comparable to that
reached by this Government.
So much for bungling. Deliberate sneakiness on the part of the NSW Government is a entirely different matter, however.
The story of this Government took a curious twist yesterday when The Daily Telegraph exposed an apparent plan to hide government
business behind what appears to be a craftily-built smokescreen.
When the NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour began investigating a complaint made by this newspaper’s former investigations editor
Kelvin Bissett about the RTA Freedom of Information processes, he was exploring the long-held practice of government agencies being
dictated to by ministers’ offices about what information they could and could not release to the public.
We shouldn’t forget that the original FOI that was refused by the RTA was among the most innocuous imaginable. The Daily Telegraph
simply wanted to know what the Government was doing to fix potholes. Fair question.
And there is a delicious irony to this story.
The RTA decided to hide from the Ombudsman by hiring an external lawyer to represent it. Interviews conducted and documents
obtained then were classified as under legal privilege, which meant they became unavailable to the Ombudsman.
It was a very sneaky way of trying to prevent him from examining the questionable practices of an agency that appears to have become
a law unto itself.
However, the RTA outsmarted itself when it decided to cut corners on the hiring of the consultant lawyer. It opened itself up to a deeper
investigation into its use of legal privilege and the offering of a $640,000 contract.
That in itself has now become a subject of investigation by the ICAC.
No better example exists of a Government turning the proverbial molehill into a mountain - by accident and through its belief that it
was above scrutiny.
The concept of legal privilege exists for a number of very important reasons, none of which apply to a government agency seeking to
prevent its dirty laundry being aired in public.
And it isn’t bungling. Far from it. It is an apparent attempt to divert the course of an investigation.
As pointy-headed as all this may sound, there is a fundamental reason why every resident of this state should be deeply disturbed.
Our Freedom of Information laws, and the powers of the independent agencies to investigate government, are often the only means by
which we can keep our elected governments accountable.
Clearly, they cannot be taken on trust. The greater irony is that it took this newspaper to publish, to finally force Premier Nathan Rees
to release a report into government secrecy, after his promise to end the secret state.
The Ombudsman’s report goes to the heart of the way government operates. It should be read by all.
Nathan Rees made it mantra to return government in NSW to open and accountable government.
“The days of the secret state are over,” he said in Parliament on October 23, 2008. Every piece of evidence thus far has suggested the
contrary has occurred.
But as with most of life’s woes, it is the small stuff that trips people up.
How the Government allowed an inquiry into potholes to turn into the ever-widening mess it now finds itself in just illustrates its
ineptitude and the devious means by which it seeks to trick the public.
The Ombudsman’s report has exposed a sinister side to our Government. It has opened a window to a culture of secrecy, propaganda,
political interference and ministerial arse covering.
Mr Barbour’s words in the final chapter of the report sum it up: “Agencies must be accountable for their actions and decisions and the
public has a right to know why an agency has done what it has done.
“Secrecy leads to a risk that power will be abused.”
Simon Benson, Falling into a pothole of its own ineptitude, Daily Telegraph, 2 April 2009
FARDELL DENIES "LOVE AFFAIR" WITH NSW LABOR
Dawn Fardell MP (Dubbo) has denied she is having a love affair with NSW Labor.
She told the Dubbo Daily Liberal :-
“It is wrong to suggest that I support Labor on either a State or federal level.’’
Mrs Fardell has also suggested that the recent bizarre behaviour of some NSW MP's is "theatrics", caused by the anxiety of retaining their
seats at the 2011 general election. Mrs Fardell says that even though the election is 2 years away, NSW MP's are currently in "election mode".
Mrs Fardell won the seat of Dubbo in 2007 with a 0.87% margin - or by 707 votes.
SOURCE :
Heather Crosby, No apology from Cobb as Nats condemn Dubbo MP's comments, Dubbo Daily Liberal, 14 March 2009.
Belinda Strahorn, Bad behaviour just political 'theatrics', Dubbo Daily Liberal, 13 March 2009.
REES & ROBERTSON - WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP HYPOCRITES ???
IT really is surreal. IT could only happen in NSW, one suspects.
IF it had not been for community opposition to Morris Iemma's plans to sell-off NSW electricity assets - Nathan Rees MP (Toongabbie) would not
be Premier. Except for that opposition, Michael Costa would still be in parliament, and a casual vacancy would not have arisen for John
Robertson, the union official who led the opposition to the electricity sell-off, to fill in the NSW Legislative Council.
Yet fast forward 6 months after Iemma and Costa committed huri kuri, and Nathan Rees has directed his "new" Prisons Minister, John Robertson
MLC to sell off the state's prisons.
Now while arguments can validly be mounted for the sell-off of electricity assets, it is difficult to imagine any argument that can be mounted for
the transfer of the coercive power of the state to "private enterprise".
HOWEVER, as a reality check, one has to remember this is NSW under the governance of NSW Labor. While that reality check does not
legitimise the actions of NSW Labor, it explains the bizarre behaviour.
IT is a little wonder prison officers have stormed Parliament House in Macquarie Street.
One suspects however, that Nathan Rees and John Robertson would be sitting back in their luxurious ministerial offices, wondering what the fuss
is all about.
SOURCES:
Julieanne Strachan, Stop cell off say Cessnock jail protesters, Newcastle Herald, 3 April 2009.
The first quarter of 2009 has been....and gone.
So it's time to take a look at how "hard" our NSW MPs have been working in the first quarter of the year. There were 90 days in the quarter.
The "dance book" of MPs looked like this:-
1 January - 2 March 2009 - HOLIDAYS (61 days)
3 March - Parliament resumes
4 March - 5 March - parliament sitting
6 March - 9 March - BREAK (4 days)
10 March - 13 March - parliament sitting
14 March - 23 March - BREAK (10 days)
24 March - 27 March - parliament sitting
28 March - 30 March - BREAK (3 days)
31March - parliament sitting.
SO out of 90 days - MPs were at work in parliament for just 12 days.
Of those 12 days, 2 were Fridays.
On Friday 13 March 2009 just 42 MPs bothered to turn up and on 27 March 2009 a mere 47 fronted up for their parliamentary duties.
Nathan Rees MP demonstrated his disrespect for the parliamentary process by failing to front on any Friday.
A day by day analysis of the parliamentary sittings shows the maximum number of hours any MP chained themselves to the "work grindstone" for.
TOTAL HOURS Parliament sat in the first quarter of 2009: 83hrs 21mins.
IS TONY STEWART P***ING INTO THE WIND ???
In 2008 when Tony Stewart announced he was suing claiming he was "unfairly" dealt with when sacked as a Minister, we said he was p***ing into
the wind. We haven't changed our view.
Certainly that view, although expressed in more eloquent terms, is being argued by the legal team responding to Stewart's claim in the NSW
Supreme Court.
see: Harriet Alexander , Sacked minister's right to sue tested , Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 2009.
VIRGINIA JUDGE MP (STRATHFIELD) - OFF ICAC HOOK (for the present)
ICAC has announced it will not investigate a complaint made by Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell regarding "representations" made by Virginia
Judge MP (Strathfield) in relation to the siting of a police station.
Expect to hear more of Virginia Judge in the future. Time is not on her side.
see : Andrew Clennell , ICAC rules out Judge investigation, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April, 2009.
BENSON's VIEW
Simon Benson, the Daily Telegraph has written a number of opinion pieces lately regarding the NSW Labor government. None of it is flattering.
One can feel the frustration dripping from the ink of the words penned by Benson.
THE problem in articulating the incompetence of the Government is choosing an anecdote with which to characterise it.
It’s known as the Imelda Marcos syndrome. Like shoes, finding the right ones from so many is so bloody hard.
But for sheer stupidity, you could do worse than examine the Government’s $1 billion Royal North Shore Hospital project.
Whoever drew up the plans for this enterprise needs counselling. And a lot of it.
And the Government needs a solid boot in the proverbial.
A reasonable person would assume operating theatres to be an essential part of any hospital, particularly one of the largest teaching
hospitals in the country.
But not the designers of this project.
They believe that the only people needing treatment here will be pygmies.
How it turned out that of the 18 theatres being built, 16 will be too small to perform anything more serious than a haemorrhoidectomy,
is ridiculous.
And then there is the small matter of trauma victims being wheeled more than 250m to surgery, because the helipad will be built as far
away from the theatres as possible.
Be assured there won’t be anything wrong with the privately run car park, commercially operated food outlets, gift shops and valet
services.
Less than a year ago, the very people building this hospital attended a medical conference in Adelaide where they were told that the
accepted minimum standard for a multi-function operating theatre was between 55sq m and 60sq m.
All but two of the RNS theatres will be either 42sq m or 52sq m. When the surgeons raised eyebrows, and concerns, they were literally
told to “bugger off”.
Aircraft manufacturers once tried that with pilots when designing planes, only to find out later they had a better chance of staying
airborne if these important people were consulted.
But the RNS project is an experiment not without analogy. We know it as the the Cross City Tunnel.
The RNS is the first major teaching hospital to be built in Australia under a public private partnership (PPP).
Half of the cost will be borne by the taxpayer - around $450 million - and the rest will be thrown in by a consortium (ABN Amro, Thiess
and Wilson Parking).
The other point that needs to be considered is not only the size of the theatres but the number of theatres being planned.
The surgeons, who unlike politicians don’t tend to lie, said they needed 10 more theatres than was originally being planned to cope
with a growing population and rising demand for critical care.
The Government said that they could have two more.
Their argument was that the extra demand would be taken up in the new Northern Beaches hospital.
But the Government appears to be wavering over that now too.
Health Minister John Della Bosca and Reba Meagher before him have both proclaimed the RNS to be the greatest capital works project
ever undertaken.
And that’s what others said about the Cross City Tunnel.
Simon Benson, Small IQs design small hospital for small-minded, Daily Telegraph, 10 March 2009.
IF the former Soviet bloc could build a 1000 kilometre eight-lane motorway through four struggling eastern european economies then
surely the NSW Government could organise a T-card.
You’d think so. It’s not that hard. Every other city in the world that has at least some form of public transport has one. But not Sydney.
It beggars belief that after 10 years, Sydney still doesn’t have one.
And the fact that the companies involved in both the bungled Millennium train delivery - remember, they couldn’t go around corners -
and the original tender process for T-card in 2002, have now been shortlisted for another crack at it, should have everyone thrilled.
The public, rightly, can have no faith in this Government that it will get it right this time.
The reason, and in the defence of the first contractors ERG that are being sued for $100 million by the Government for stuffing up the
first one, a T-card won’t work until the State Transit, Citytrail and Sydney Ferries’ fare structures are resolved.
Sydney has something like 70 odd different fares and tickets. It is ridiculous.
But the Government has resisted moving to a zone ticketing system, like Melbourne, London or Paris, which is simple easy to use and
allows an integrated bus and train ticketing system.
On the contrary, the introduce a new ticket, on average about once a month.
They argue that the ferries makes it difficult to integrate. Brisbane has ferries. And so does St Petersberg.
But the real reason is that Treasury like it this way. The more complicated the better. A simpler system, they will quietly argue, may
shave the top of the Government’s revenue stream.
The T-card has come to symbolise the shambolic state of this Government and its complete failure to deliver even basic services let
alone upgrade existing ones into the 21st century.
The Government should just give up and confess that the delivery of T-card is beyond their capabilities - and leave it to the next
Government.
Simon Benson, T-card symbolises the shambolic state of NSW Government, Daily Telegraph, 18 March 2009.
UNTIL now you could excuse the State Labor Government for merely being a bungling, incompetent warehouse of misfits. It’s a
narrative that has dominated NSW politics for some considerable time.
We can be thankful to former premier Morris Iemma for at least one thing - his commitment to mental health services
There are myriad reasons to feel aggrieved at the management of this state at the hands of this Government and understandable that
we fear for the decisions it will make in the future.
But then, bungling is at worst a flaw most of us can relate to, even if few of us will ever achieve it on a scale comparable to that
reached by this Government.
So much for bungling. Deliberate sneakiness on the part of the NSW Government is a entirely different matter, however.
The story of this Government took a curious twist yesterday when The Daily Telegraph exposed an apparent plan to hide government
business behind what appears to be a craftily-built smokescreen.
When the NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour began investigating a complaint made by this newspaper’s former investigations editor
Kelvin Bissett about the RTA Freedom of Information processes, he was exploring the long-held practice of government agencies being
dictated to by ministers’ offices about what information they could and could not release to the public.
We shouldn’t forget that the original FOI that was refused by the RTA was among the most innocuous imaginable. The Daily Telegraph
simply wanted to know what the Government was doing to fix potholes. Fair question.
And there is a delicious irony to this story.
The RTA decided to hide from the Ombudsman by hiring an external lawyer to represent it. Interviews conducted and documents
obtained then were classified as under legal privilege, which meant they became unavailable to the Ombudsman.
It was a very sneaky way of trying to prevent him from examining the questionable practices of an agency that appears to have become
a law unto itself.
However, the RTA outsmarted itself when it decided to cut corners on the hiring of the consultant lawyer. It opened itself up to a deeper
investigation into its use of legal privilege and the offering of a $640,000 contract.
That in itself has now become a subject of investigation by the ICAC.
No better example exists of a Government turning the proverbial molehill into a mountain - by accident and through its belief that it
was above scrutiny.
The concept of legal privilege exists for a number of very important reasons, none of which apply to a government agency seeking to
prevent its dirty laundry being aired in public.
And it isn’t bungling. Far from it. It is an apparent attempt to divert the course of an investigation.
As pointy-headed as all this may sound, there is a fundamental reason why every resident of this state should be deeply disturbed.
Our Freedom of Information laws, and the powers of the independent agencies to investigate government, are often the only means by
which we can keep our elected governments accountable.
Clearly, they cannot be taken on trust. The greater irony is that it took this newspaper to publish, to finally force Premier Nathan Rees
to release a report into government secrecy, after his promise to end the secret state.
The Ombudsman’s report goes to the heart of the way government operates. It should be read by all.
Nathan Rees made it mantra to return government in NSW to open and accountable government.
“The days of the secret state are over,” he said in Parliament on October 23, 2008. Every piece of evidence thus far has suggested the
contrary has occurred.
But as with most of life’s woes, it is the small stuff that trips people up.
How the Government allowed an inquiry into potholes to turn into the ever-widening mess it now finds itself in just illustrates its
ineptitude and the devious means by which it seeks to trick the public.
The Ombudsman’s report has exposed a sinister side to our Government. It has opened a window to a culture of secrecy, propaganda,
political interference and ministerial arse covering.
Mr Barbour’s words in the final chapter of the report sum it up: “Agencies must be accountable for their actions and decisions and the
public has a right to know why an agency has done what it has done.
“Secrecy leads to a risk that power will be abused.”
Simon Benson, Falling into a pothole of its own ineptitude, Daily Telegraph, 2 April 2009
FARDELL DENIES "LOVE AFFAIR" WITH NSW LABOR
Dawn Fardell MP (Dubbo) has denied she is having a love affair with NSW Labor.
She told the Dubbo Daily Liberal :-
“It is wrong to suggest that I support Labor on either a State or federal level.’’
Mrs Fardell has also suggested that the recent bizarre behaviour of some NSW MP's is "theatrics", caused by the anxiety of retaining their
seats at the 2011 general election. Mrs Fardell says that even though the election is 2 years away, NSW MP's are currently in "election mode".
Mrs Fardell won the seat of Dubbo in 2007 with a 0.87% margin - or by 707 votes.
SOURCE :
Heather Crosby, No apology from Cobb as Nats condemn Dubbo MP's comments, Dubbo Daily Liberal, 14 March 2009.
Belinda Strahorn, Bad behaviour just political 'theatrics', Dubbo Daily Liberal, 13 March 2009.
REES & ROBERTSON - WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP HYPOCRITES ???
IT really is surreal. IT could only happen in NSW, one suspects.
IF it had not been for community opposition to Morris Iemma's plans to sell-off NSW electricity assets - Nathan Rees MP (Toongabbie) would not
be Premier. Except for that opposition, Michael Costa would still be in parliament, and a casual vacancy would not have arisen for John
Robertson, the union official who led the opposition to the electricity sell-off, to fill in the NSW Legislative Council.
Yet fast forward 6 months after Iemma and Costa committed huri kuri, and Nathan Rees has directed his "new" Prisons Minister, John Robertson
MLC to sell off the state's prisons.
Now while arguments can validly be mounted for the sell-off of electricity assets, it is difficult to imagine any argument that can be mounted for
the transfer of the coercive power of the state to "private enterprise".
HOWEVER, as a reality check, one has to remember this is NSW under the governance of NSW Labor. While that reality check does not
legitimise the actions of NSW Labor, it explains the bizarre behaviour.
IT is a little wonder prison officers have stormed Parliament House in Macquarie Street.
One suspects however, that Nathan Rees and John Robertson would be sitting back in their luxurious ministerial offices, wondering what the fuss
is all about.
SOURCES:
Julieanne Strachan, Stop cell off say Cessnock jail protesters, Newcastle Herald, 3 April 2009.
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