Councillor Chris Harris

The NSW government have decided to add insult to the injury that was the failed CBD Metro by refusing to release 45 boxes of documents relating to land acquisitions and planning decisions carried out for the project.  After wasting half a billion dollars of taxpayers money on the cancelled project the government are trying to hide behind spurious claims of “commercial in-confidence” to avoid further embarrassment.

My Greens colleague in state Parliament Lee Rhiannon has been pursuing the government over this matter and recently former Chief Justice Sir Laurence Street, the independent legal arbiter appointed to determine this matter, issued a report supporting her position.  The report concludes that the majority of the documents the government wishes to keep secret either contain no information that needs to be legally privileged or can be easily edited to remove confidential information such as contact details of individuals or financial information about private businesses.

Justice Street’s conclusion leads me to wonder what the government is so keen to hide in these documents.  I suspect that they want to avoid embarrassment over a poorly structured planning process that worked in reverse of the way these things should.  Rather than plan a Metro because they had carried out a thorough investigation of transport problems in the area and found this to be the best solution they simply determined that they wanted a Metro and then went about trying to find justifications for the decision. 

In the end the government was unable to find the justification it needed for its Metro plan and was forced to scrap it, but not until it had wasted hundreds of millions on planning, publicity and administration.  Even the communities that might have gained some small benefit out of it realised that spending $5.3 billion on a disconnected 7km dead-end rail line in inner Sydney was an appalling waste of money.  It was enough money to fully fund heavy rail connections to the north-west and south west of Sydney that would have made a vastly larger contribution to improving transport across the greater metropolitan area. Plus the leftover funds would have built a significant light rail system in the City and the Inner West

It will also be interesting to see what these documents tell us about the persistent rumour of a secret deal between the State Government and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore.  While I have seen no evidence of a deal as such I was disappointed, along with many other members of the community, at the Lord Mayor’s reluctance to give the Metro the criticism it was due.  Perhaps she was simply so dazzled by her desire for the upgrades of Town Hall Square that would have accompanied the Metro that she was unable to see how flawed the project as a whole was.

Whatever the case may be, it is now incumbent upon the government to take the advice of the independent arbiter and release the majority of the documents on the CBD Metro.  In the interests of maintaining a transparent democracy and learning from this costly mistake – which cost taxpayers half a billion dollars yet produced no tangible outcomes – I very much look forward to these papers seeing the light of day.     

Image of the Montreal Metro by Denis Jacquerye, use authorised under Creative Commons.  While this image is indicative of what a Metro looks like, the CBD Metro would have never seen such a high level of patronage.  For further information on the campaign by Lee Rhiannon to have these documents released see her letter to the Clerk of the NSW Legislative Assembly requesting they be released as well as Justice Streets report.  

The major parties remain wedded to coal-fired electric power, pinning their last hopes on the ‘clean coal’ theory. But even if collecting, transporting and burying coal’s greenhouse emissions one day turns out to be possible and affordable, the stuff still has to be mined and transported.

On a round trip from Kooragang Coal Terminal to Mt Arthur mine, near Muswellbrook, each coal train burns at least 3,200 litres of diesel (about 1,000 litres empty on the down and 2,200 loaded on the up) and around 40 litres of engine oil, for a net load of 7,800 tonnes of coal.

There are also currently about 70 coal ships queued up waiting to get into the port, predicted to rise to 90 by April.

In contrast, the sunlight delivered to a solar thermal power plant arrives free, every day.

But what about the economic consequences of phasing out coal power generation? Read the rest of this entry »

Sydney’s transport future is the issue du jour now Chris Stapleton and the ‘10,000 friends of Sydney’ have started releasing their strategy.

I support the Stapleton vision because it’s far superior to the government’s feeble Transport Plan.

However it limits itself to current funding levels. That’s a straightjacket in some respects, for instance in settling for frequent buses to serve Sydney’s northwest instead of the planned heavy rail link to Rouse Hill.

Buses would be far less greenhouse-efficient than electric trains, especially if Sydney’s power was being generated by the Solar Thermal plant I have proposed.

The Greens Transport Vision proposes Public Transport Bonds to finance a fully fledged system for Sydney, built on solid spines of metro and heavy rail with buses mostly deployed to fill the gaps.

Yes, this means debt, but this kind of debt carries a far lower interest burden than private finance and can be repaid over several generations just like the 75-year-old Harbour Bridge was. This is not an unfair burden on our grandchildren as they will be enjoying not only the economic benefits of a world-class system but an environmental dividend as well.

Sydney developers appear to have found a new way around size and parking restrictions for new unit blocks.

First they ‘change the mix of units’ in a proposed block, losing some or all of the small, affordable units in favour of expensive three-bedroom units. Then they request a drastically increased number of parking spaces because the buyers of such units will ‘require’ two spaces each.

This in turn pushes the site beyond its allowable floorspace.

The result: Sydney ends up with more cars and less affordable housing - a double whammy to sustainability - and the developer ends up with more profit.

This was the scenario for two Development Applications (DAs) before Council last week, one in Onslow Street Elizabeth Bay, the other on the old Children’s Hospital site in Camperdown. Read the rest of this entry »

Differential pricing of parking permits according to the size of the vehicle would be a great idea for Sydney.

And the RTA is now accepting submissions about providing dedicated parking spots for car-share schemes.

Charging fuel-guzzling vehicles more forparking permitshas been working well in North Sydney and it’s yet another small thing we can do to minimise climate change.

Large cars use more street space and inflict more damage on local roads, which council has to pay for, so there is fairness in a differential rate. Council’s road maintenance spend is more than ten times the income from parking permits. Read the rest of this entry »