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Tag: NSW Government

25/08/2024

Sydney Harbour as an Investment Opportunity

25 August 2024

You may not be aware that there is now a new lobby group to reorganise moorings in Sydney Harbour. With a limited number of moorings, they are likely to become a new investment opportunity, and it might be noted that foreign interests, who were very active in buying expensive houses, not living in them and waiting for am easy capital gains profit may be targeting moorings or marinas now. The government in theory controls all this, and Eddie Obeid has some schemes for marina developments.
In Woolwich, there are new plans for a marina extension, and over in Lavender Bay near Waverton they have been fighting Marina developments for some years. As an observer, most of the boats are not used much, so they is actually a parking lot for rich people’s toys. As the areas to travel become smaller and more constricted, it is harder for rowers and people who want to get around the harbour. As a rower, I can attest to this. Moored boats are a problem, and moving boats are also worse the closer they get in the shared space. If people want to go boating every now and again, perhaps an encouragement of hire schemes might be a good idea. Obviously a few days a year, like the start of the Sydney-Hobart race might lead to shortages, but this does not justify turning the harbour into a yacht parking lot all year.
In Woolwich, the local Independents have been fighting this for years, and the local Liberal, who did nothing, tried to put herself prominently in the photo but did not succeed.
Here is the write up in the SMH today:

WATERWAY PRIVATISATION
‘Existential battle’ with marina developer

Lucy Macken SMH 25/8/24

Prestige property reporter

The well-heeled folk of Hunters Hill have been known for their strident stance against overdevelopment since 1971, when about a dozen local mums joined with the late union organiser Jack Mundey and his ‘‘green bans’’ movement to stop Kellys Bush becoming a housing estate.

So an application to the council to almost double the size of Woolwich Marina met a groundswell of opposition in what is being billed an ‘‘existential battle’’ against the privatisation of a public waterway.

On the drawing board is a proposal to expand Woolwich Marina from the current 45 berths to 79 and to moor larger vessels, including 35-metre superyachts.

The estimated cost of $8.5 million seems to be the least of the hurdles facing the marina’s ultimate owner, Hong Kong businessman Chan Hoi Li, given it was unanimously rejected by both Hunters Hill Council and North Sydney Local Planning Panel.

The next step will be an on-site conciliation meeting with the Land and Environment Court on September 19 and 20.

Chief among the 11 grounds for refusal – including maritime, Aboriginal and bushland heritage concerns, visual impacts to state heritage-listed Kellys Bush Park, the existing use of public space and public consultation – are what former mayor Ross Williams cites as the privatisation of a public waterway and the safety risk to children sailing in what is already a congested section of Parramatta River.

Then there are the heritage concerns of a native kelp forest and a shipwreck in the river, as well as the endangered White’s seahorse recently found at Cockatoo Island.

Less represented among the local community groups objecting to the proposal are casual boat users and kayakers.

‘‘They’re not organised, but there are a lot of them,’’ local David Griffith said in his submission to the planning panel. ‘‘The only winner in all this is the owner, who will get a wonderful financial windfall from privatising a public waterway.’’

Marina manager Idy Chan, daughter of the owner, referred queries to architect Micheal Fountain, whose firm designed the proposed expansion and who said any comment would be inappropriate given the matter was before the Land and Environment Court.

Chan family corporate interests bought the marina in 2015 for $10 million. The historic Glen Mahr residence behind it was added in 2019 for $6.6 million.

Idy Chan made no secret of her plans, telling Good Weekend in 2018 that she had a waiting list of Chinese emigres wanting berths for their smart yachts.

There were 406 submissions to the council about the proposed new marina. Of the 289 in support, the 285 form letters were counted as a single submission. The 117 objections included a formal objection by the elected members of Hunters Hill Council.

Rallying behind

the vocal locals, opposing community groups include Lane Cove 12ft Sailing Skiff Club, Greenwich Flying Squadron, Hunters Hill Sailing Club, Friends of Kellys Bush and Hunters Hill Trust.

‘‘Even the kindy P&C are involved one way or another. It’s a proper community outrage,’’ said Chris Stannage, president of Hunters Hill Sailing Club.

‘‘We already exist alongside the ferries, party boats and everyone else on the harbour, but we also have fairly substantial duties of care, and if it means our sailors will be put at undue risk then we would have to look at where we sail.

‘‘That has turned this into a pretty existential battle from our perspective,’’ Stannage said.

13/02/2022

NSW By-Elections:- Greens Hand Willoughby and NSW Parliament to the Libs

13 February 2022

There were 4 by-elections on Saturday. The Liberal vote fell, which is normal in by-elections, especially with a Federal government as hopeless as this one and the NSW pork-barreling reports, iCare incompetence and dodgy rail entities to dress up the books.

In Willoughby the Liberal primary vote fell 14.65%, from 57.03% to 42.38% (in the count so far). But what is interesting is that the Greens have given the seat to the Liberals by not allocating preferences. At the latest count, the Libs got 42.38%, Larissa Penn, a credible independent got 31.36% (up from 9.91% when she stood last time) and the Greens 11.64%.

Note the maths: Independent + Greens = 43.0%. Libs= 42.38%

Larissa Penn, the leading independent has stood before and would appear to be a considerable improvement on a right-wing Liberal who also ensures continuing Liberal dominance in the Parliament. A lot of votes are still not counted and it is not certain that she would have won even with Green preferences, but it certainly would have been a line ball. The other candidates who together got 14.62% may well have favoured a progressive independent over the status quo. William Bourke of Sustainable Australia got 3.44%, Penny Hackett of the Reason Party (previously called Voluntary Euthanasia Party) got 5.97% and even the LibDems at 2.67% may well have favoured an independent over a Lib. This is what preferential voting is for. I do know that a bigger cross bench makes for better legislation.

The major parties introduced optional preferential supposedly to make it easier for voters who didn’t know about those little parties and were in danger of voting informal. In reality they did it because if preferences exhaust it becomes ‘first past the post’ which favours those with big primaries. The big parties can (and have) put in a few dodgy independents to soak up the primaries of other independents and win even though a majority of people did not want them. Minor parties should stick together and allocate preferences. It is most irresponsible of the Greens not to do this. I wonder if they are scared of ‘like-minded independents’ and would rather have just the major parties and themselves than more diversity in Parliament Their long-term voting strategy of frequently exhausting their preferences rather than numbering all squares would support this proposition. In this case they numbered no squares themselves but put ‘VOTE 1’ then the lame recommendation ‘then number the other squares in order of your preferences’. Perhaps this was a sop from head office to the candidate, and perhaps the swing was bigger than anticipated and if they thought the Liberals were beatable they may have done differently. Perhaps, perhaps, but the Libs will keep a seat that may have changed hands, sent a big symbolic message and changed the parliament significantly. Silly Greens. The Libs should be very grateful to the Greens but will hope that no one will notice that the anti-democratic fiddle of optional preferential has really helped them this time.

In Bega the Liberals had a 13.46% swing against them (48.91 to 35.45%) and Labor picked up 11.93% (30.59 to 42.52%) and gained the seat. The Greens dropped 2% and the Shooters entered the fray and picked up 5.47%. We may have had a COVID and pork-barrel election up here, but down there where the bushfires wiped out whole towns and numbers of people were huddled on the beaches and rescued by the navy the government may have been in trouble for different reasons. But the swing was still very similar to Willoughby.

In Strathfield, Labor held on, but did not look too flash considering the mess the Liberals are in. Their primary vote fell from 44.30 to 40.07% (4.23%). The Liberal vote fell from 38.89 to 37.24% (only 1.65%). The combined major party vote fell from 83.19 to 77.28% (5.91%), and the Greens fell from 8.79 to 5.94% (2.85%). This was probably due to Elizabeth Farrelly, the well-known SMH journalist who is stridently in favour of better town planning and was sacked by the SMH when it was revealed that she was a member of the ALP. She stood as an independent, got 9.28% and did not direct preferences, giving her almost no chance. The Labor candidate Jason Sun-Yat Li is a good person, but did not live in the electorate, which is a bad look. He will, however, be an asset to the somewhat talent-poor NSW Labor Parliamentarians.

In Monaro, which the Nationals retained after the retirement of leader John Barilaro is likely to get little attention. The National’s primary vote fell from 52.31 to 45.48% (6.83%) which was similar to what Labor gained 27.16 to 33.04% (5.88%). The Shooters did not stand in the by-election adding their 7.78% to the pool, but an Independent who got 5.93% took up much of this and the combined major party votes only fell from 79.47 to 78.52% (0.95%).As the percentage of postal and early votes continues to rise the margin of error of these figures is increased but the sample size is large enough for the results to probably stand, (unlike in the Hunters Hill local elections where the pre-poll and postal vote varied significantly from the polling days votes, probably influenced by an anonymous defamatory leaflet which was miraculously delivered to the whole electorate on the Wednesday night, favouring the Liberals. The change in the voting pattern gave them the mayoral election.)

The NSW Parliament will have one less Liberal, so the numbers will be Liberals 33, Nationals 12 (=Coalition 45), Labor 37, Greens 3, Shooters 3 and Independents 5. With a total of 93, it takes 47 votes for a majority, but the Coalition 45 can still rely on two of the independents, John Sidoti and Gareth Ward as these two were elected as Liberals. They both resigned from the Liberal party but not the Parliament after allegations were made against them, Sidoti from ICAC re property development in Fivedock and Ward after allegations of sexual violence. It is interesting that both our Federal and NSW state governments rely on people who left their party for embarrassing reasons to survive.

Business as usual. Thanks Greens.

08/10/2021

Toll Doesn’t Pay Toll

8 October 2021

Trucking giant Toll Holdings tells its drivers to avoid toll roads as they are not worth the time savings. It might be noted that Air Freight to Melbourne is actually taken by trucks, the only thing being sky high is the prices.The toll roads have the price levels befitting a private monopoly of Transurban. They were sold as lessening congestion. They have taken the money and now we have done nothing for our rail network. There was an article in the SMH of 29/9/21 and also this one:

www.truckandbus.net.au/toll-says-no-to-tolls/

04/09/2021

Please Sign the Petition to stop the COVID Lockdown Ending Prematurely

4 September 2021

The Governments, Federal and NSW State, seem hell bent on ending the COVID lockdown.

Morrison stuffed up the vaccine and Gladys stuffed up the lock-down.

Now Morrison is talking about ‘Freedom’ and ‘One Australia’ showing that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Gladys is talking about the need for more deaths as if it is an inevitable consequence of the Delta strain and that nothing can be done to mitigate the situation . She is talking about bed numbers and trying to conjure ICU nurses out of thin air. The fact that the State public hospital system is always at full capacity with beds in corridors in ED is well known to any health professional who has any dealings with the system and is about to bite us big time.

So what should be done? The lockdown can only buy time to improve the vaccine rollout, but this is still very much worth doing. Figures from NSW that I posted last week suggested that vaccination reduced the chance of being in ICU by about 97%. Vaccinated people can still get and transmit COVID as it seems that the antibodies are not in secretions, so it is not until the virus invades that the body starts to fight it. But as the disease is milder, vaccinated people will cough less, spread the virus for less time and be less sick themselves.

NSW has given about 7.2 million doses to a population of 8.2 million people. For everyone in NSW to have 2 doses it would take about 16 million doses. If we assume that about 4% of people are anti-vaxxers and want to take their chances, and 16% are children under 12 for whom the vaccines are not approved, then 80% of the total population should be vaccinated, which will take about 13 million doses. At the current rate of a million doses a week, that should take about 6 weeks from now.

The government already has a huge debt and will avoid a lot of future costs by prevention rather than ‘cure’. A support package for those who cannot work is naturally needed also. There was a full page ad in the SMH last week with a number of businesses urging the Government to stick to the opening up timetable of the Doherty Report. Given that the Doherty Report recommendations were based on a far lower number of cases and it was assumed that what cases there were could be traced and were not Delta variants, the report needs to be reconsidered. Perhaps because it is from a reputable research organisation and that it is a long read it has not been seriously challenged, The Government has used it to try to justify the early opening.

One of the disappointing things in my life has been the revelation that some people really do not care a fig about anyone as long as they are personally OK. I was initially shocked to find that the Tobacco industry really did not care how many people died as long as they could make money. I found that the asbestos industry was the same, and then that most businesses skimp on safety on the principle that ‘we take the money, you take the risk’ There has also been the worrying trend, which I still link to Harvard management theory in the 1980s that managers can manage anything, and just need to buy any expertise that they do not have. Often that do not even know what they do not know, so they neglect to ask, do not know who or what to ask, or find the advice inconvenient. And sometimes they put ads in the paper.

We also cannot assume that those in Government know or care or that their primary concern will be for the welfare of their constituents. Presumably their unlikely re-election is what they are focused on.

So please sign the petition to stop the early opening- it currently all we can do.

29/08/2021

Irresponsible COVID Policies will Destroy the Federal and NSW Liberals

29 August 2021

Ok. I am making a prediction. The totally irresponsible Liberal COVID policies will destroy both the Morrison government and the NSW Liberals.

Why? The strategy of unlocking with only 70% of over 16 adults vaccinated is totally irresponsible. It is true that less children will get a bad infection and die, but some will- perhaps 1 in 100,000. But if a few million children go back to school, that is still a significant number. The unvaccinated children will also get infected and go home to their families and infect them. Every parent who has had kids start at day-care knows how many more colds they got that year.

As far as the adults are concerned, if there are still 30% of them unvaccinated, that is a huge number to make an epidemic. The hospitals always manage with very slim margins of capacity. How many beds are in corridors and how many trolleys in ED normally? Quite a few. Now they are stopping non-urgent surgery, but these cases are not trivial, and cancer patients may well die of their delays.

But they key point is that the hospital system will be overwhelmed by cases and that those cases would not be necessary if the government held its nerve and continued the lockdown until all those who wanted the vaccine had it- upwards of 95% perhaps. If NSW is vaccinating a million people a week and has 8 million people needing 2 doses each, that is 16 weeks, less the fact that almost half the adult doses has been given. 12 weeks might be a realistic estimate, better if the vaccine can be hurried further. As far as the children are concerned, I recall in the 1950s when polio vaccine came- we were simply lined up in the school corridor at lunch time and everyone was done.

The cost of vaccination compared to the cost of hospitalisations does not bear thinking about. It is also probably that the cost of the hospitalisations and time lost will exceed the cost of a decent home support system- but Morrison will not even consider this, still talking about tax cuts before the election, as the national debt balloons to record levels. Do the rich really need this?

Morrison also wants to force states that have almost no COVID to open up. Qld and WA, having isolated themselves, controlled COVID and given themselves quite a remarkably normal quality of life do not want to be forced to open to NSW and Victoria, where COVID is frankly out of control. Morrison needs Qld seats to get re-elected. If he forces Qld to open and the pandemic spreads there as it will, his chances of re-election is nil.

Gladys Berejeklian is now talking about vaccinations, trying to distract attention from the number of cases and is systematically getting us used to the idea that since we now can never get to zero cases, we have to open up, and might as well do it now as later. This is not true, if now we are not vaccinated, and later we will be. She is blamed for the Delta virus escape as she did not mandate vaccination for limo drivers who ferried people from the airport to the quarantine hotels and then was slow to lock down Bondi when the infection escaped in June. So now to say it is all inevitable and unlock with what amounts to a very low vaccination rate is likely to lead to very big epidemic, the health system being overwhelmed, a lot of unnecessary deaths and yes, Gladys losing the election.

And Gladys does not like Morrison either, so she had better throw him under a bus before he does it to her.

27/06/2021

NSW Govt tries to Blame Limousine Driver for New Sydney COVID Outbreak

26 June 2021

The pathetic efforts of Gladys Berejeklian to blame the limousine driver for the latest COVID outbreak, which has now caused a city-wide lockdown and an increasing number of cases needs to be judged on its demerits. Obviously there should have been regulations that anyone on the front line had to be vaccinated, and surely driving a limo from the airport to the quarantine hotel is ‘front line’.

She said that she ‘could not control the subcontractor of the subcontractor.’ Actually, she could have. Now she has the regulation that she should have had months ago- front line staff have to be vaccinated.

Of course, the reason for the spread of the virus from the Melbourne quarantine hotels months ago was the fact that the support staff had many jobs, because they were not permanent and had shifts everywhere. The same problem occurred with transmission in Victorian Nursing homes- casual shifts. Now it is Sydney drivers.

The farmers are moaning that they will not be able to pick the fruit without the visas for backpackers, foreign students and Pacific Islanders. Skilled migrants? I do not think so. It is about sub award wages and poor conditions. If Australia is a rich country we need also to remember our roots as the country of a ‘fair go’. If top wage are high by world standards, so they should be at the bottom. If wages were high enough Aussies would pick the fruit, and cleaners and limousine drivers would have regular jobs and award wages.

But here was the NSW Government trying to blame the limo driver for the outbreak. But today’s Sun Herald has the Police Commissioner saying that the driver had committed no crime. Neither has the NSW Government- they are just incompetent, but no one seems to blame them.

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-17/nsw-quarantine-worker-may-have-breached-health-order/100223120