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 ?

Queensland has seen a spate of under-performers who obtained office (in State politics), continued their lack-lustre operand and subsequently had the ‘expertise’ to act as a go between for corporate and government ‘cohesivness’.

Recently NSW has likewise been been put under the light, seeing the rats scurrying about all awhile distancing themselves from the known crooks and yet to be proven crooks; the latest pilfering of public funds – which will probably be glossed over by various media types (who view their ‘results’ similar to Police who stick radar traps about, to keep the numbers up).

The St Vincent’s board has ‘lost $24m on junk bonds’ courtesy of former CEO Mary Foley and a former chairman Nick Curtis.

Who knows if we will ever find out what their kick-back was for almost $80 million (earmarked for new equipment, research projects, education and salaries), was used to buy high-risk bonds, the same kind responsible for triggering the global financial crisis last year in the United States.

Of course doctors are furious because research projects – some of which had already been granted funding – may now be cancelled and donors will be upset to learn their money – intended for good work – has been lost.

Although the National Health and Medical Research Council forbids its grants being used for any purpose other than the approved project and is demanding the funds be returned if the research is not carried out; its unlikely the hospital is in the position to and there are rumours that the hospital has been attempting to fill an $11 million hole in its budget.

Although the NSW Government should launch an investigation, its unlikely anything will come of it while certain sitting members protect their own backs and keep their snout in the trough.

There has to be auditors and the like who must have known about the misallocation of funds and strangely, the hospital apparently said it lost 32% of its ‘investments’ because it bought securities known as collaterised debt obligations, which are now worthless, but defended its right to use public money.

The question remains on how trust money – bequeathed or given to the hospital – was used to ‘invest.

Donors would be upset to lose their donated funds to financial mismanagement by the board and will badly damage the St Vincent’s Hospital name even though the hospital promised to underwrite any lost money allocated for research projects and said it had changed its investment strategies since the loss.

The board claims they ‘did not operate outside the law in the way the money was invested’, but the damage has been done and in a tighter economic market, it will be difficult to get ‘new’ investors and of course the real problem is if politicians again use public funds to bail out rather than prosecute.

It makes you wonder how much the public will stomach this lackadaisical management style synonymous with political manipulations and ‘jobs for the boys’.

Debra Jopson wrote (full story – http://www.smh.com.au/environment/20091011-gse4.html) that more than half of the vegetable farms in the Sydney region – that supply important fresh food – are set to disappear in the southern and north-western growth areas because a the developer biased corporate – NSW – government has has earmarked them for suburban development over the next twenty years.

There are only 1,050 vegetable farms left in the Sydney basin – half the 2000 that some commentators had suggested – and the number continues to fall, according to the report by Peter Malcolm and Riad Fahd of the NSW Department of Industry and Investment.

They recommend a review of the Sydney vegetable industry to consider whether it should be encouraged to expand so that the metropolis becomes more self-sufficient in produce.

Because Sydney imports the bulk of its vegetables from outside the region many Sydneysiders, feeling increasingly concerned about the issues of food security, food miles and the carbon footprint of imported vegetables compared with locally produced vegetables, may wish to develop strategies to improve the city’s self-sufficiency in vegetable production’ they say.

There should be a full carbon life-cycle assessment of fruit and vegetables grown everywhere; the Murray Darling once provided irrigation to Australia’s fruit and veggie basket, but now Australia imports more vegetables than it exports.

The article went on to say Sydney is self-sufficient in mushrooms, cabbages and lettuce, but analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures shows that commentators are wrong when they say that the metropolis gets most of its celery, capsicum and chillies locally.

Sydney’s vegetable industry is shrinking, according to the department and Horticulture Australia Ltd. with less than 2025 hectares compared to some 5000 hectares documented in two reports six years ago.  Anecdotal evidence from many industry observers also suggests that the vegetable industry, not only in Sydney but also in Gosford and the Hunter Valley, has shrunk dramatically over the last 20 years.

Paradoxically, the Sydney turf industry has about 1800 hectares planted in grass for lawns and parks, an area almost similar to the land used for outdoor vegetable; ‘many of these turf farmers are ex-vegetable farmers who, if given the appropriate incentives, could easily switch back to growing vegetables’, but they make more money from lawns than lunches.

603 hectares currentlky devoted to vegetables in the south-west and north-west growth areas – about 52 % of Sydney’s farms – are likely to disappear and the area devoted to greenhouse vegetables could decline by as much as 60%t when these areas are developed.  Some communities, such as the Cambodian growers who farm rented land, may have to disperse or cease production.

Does The Wee Book of Calvin accurately describe politicians, bureaucrats and corporations in these words, “Millions o women bring forth in pain – Millions o bairns that are nae worth the haein”?