Energy Efficiency

Two latest examples of how corporate government – in NSW – operates above the law and unblinkingly stares accusers in the eye with a ‘so what’ attitude; how long will the people tolerate the growth of spin-doctoring?

Linton Besser & Andrew West of the Sydnet Morning Herald wrote today (February 17, 2010) how bureancrats and political fixers inside the state’s transport agencies have altered official reports as part of a widespread government effort to suppress criticism of its controversial $5.3 billion CBD Metro.

Official documents, including some marked cabinet-in-confidence, have been suppressed to bury embarrassing but crucial technical advice that undermines the case for the metro.

READ THE DOCUMENTS:

CBD Metro environmental assessment report
CBD Metro environmental submission

At least four documents – not written for public view but required under government guidelines – have been censored, shelved or covered up.

Documents not written for public view but required under government guidelines – to prevent this sort of thing – have been censored, shelved or covered up; attempts have also been made to alter scientific modelling to justify the metro. A leading transport consultant, Sandy Thomas, resigned in December in protest at a request to censor his work, because it would have been “materially misleading and deceptive”.  Public servants linked to the metro have manipulated official data models to bolster the case for the project.

It comes as no surprise that a Labor party person – Tom Forrest, former Labor adviser appointed to an executive job in RailCorp – amended a consultant’s report which was used in RailCorp’s submission to Planning on the metro. A confidential planning document from last October about congestion at Central and Town Hall stations was shelved by RailCorp over fears of political retribution because it undercut the case for the metro.  A second version of this report, in December, was also shelved.

After ending his consultancy, Mr Thomas joined the Herald-commissioned transport inquiry, for which he was not paid. And his resignation letter – obtained independently by the Herald - said ‘In more than 30 years of preparing technical and legal reports this is the first time I have ever been presented with such a proposition with normal ethical and professional standards apparently having been ‘relaxed’ in favour of ‘political’ considerations to the extent that concepts of honest, frank and fearless internal-to-government advice are now simply deemed unacceptable.”

Mr Thomas, who declined to comment, discovered assumptions supporting the metro had been manipulated to make other options look less attractive.  The modelling also used slower train travel times for those alternatives (by as much as eight minutes) to make the Metro case stronger. ’The … report you have asked me to compile … is to be ‘entirely positive in tone’ and will not be including any of the ‘offending’ topics, and will therefore, in my view, also be likely to be misleading and deceptive by omission,” Mr Thomas’s letter said. ”My concern about the last of these risks has been heightened this morning by your admission that you knew at the time that the STM modelling had been and is being based on lower population and employment estimates than those described in the materials you wrote as inputs to the second report; this continues a pattern throughout the investigations of several ‘inconvenient truths’, especially about the critical and often dominant inconsistencies in train plan assumptions, being revealed only when queries were raised, rather than volunteered at the outset’.

DJ Alec Brown (spin-person for the Sydney Metro Authority), said: ”Sydney Metro stands by its modelling, which is robust and extremely comprehensive; all modelling for Sydney Metro stages 1 and 2, at Central and all other interchange stations, has always included time penalties for switching between metro and CityRail.”   investigations@smh.com.au

And a property developer in Sydney has won an application to turn a waterfront park into a road so that he can drive into a four-car garage under his planned four-storey house. The council will build a road through Marmion Lane in Abbotsford, an area that has been grassed over and blocked to cars for more than 20 years for the property developer despite neighbours objection which they say will alienate the public space, which is zoned for public recreation and used for walking dogs and access to the Parramatta River foreshore.

But the Council - in a blatant corporate government example – recommended the approval, to give access to a four-storey dwelling to build on the land. The Council – ins clearly misguided attempt at damage control - said vehicular access via Marmion Lane could be granted only ”if the access was created and constructed as a public road”, hence the property develper asking for and the Council agreeing to a ‘public road’ being built.  The council report recommending approval of the road said it would ”enable any resident or any other person to use the roadway for vehicular access to the adjoining properties and to the foreshore”.

Residents on both sides of the Bechara property have objected, saying it will benefit only the Becharas. The road, which will run for 38 of the lane’s 60 metres, will have no parking and the council report acknowledges it could be used only by people wanting to drop passengers or equipment to the foreshore.

Peter Tomasetti, QC, who is advising the neighbours, said the road appeared to be at odds with the objectives of land zoned for public recreation, which included ”to enable land to be used for public open space or recreational purposes” and ”to facilitate public access to and along the foreshore”.   ”I can’t see that this proposal is in any way consistent with those objectives,” he said.  ”Whilst roads are permitted within that zone, what it appears is this will provide driveway access to his land when he already has access from the street,” Mr Tomasetti said.

The road will be built by the council but paid for by Mrs Bechara. Neither she nor her husband would comment, but could the councillors be re-elected with some heavy financial support for their re-election … will it matter anyway, if the road is built ?