Australians have realised that they can’t trust Labor governments with taxpayer wealth – Rudd, Gillard, Keneally, Bligh, Kirner, Burke. Equally, we have learned that we can’t trust Liberal governments with our public asset wealth – Hockey, Newman, Kennett, O’Farrell.
Labor and Liberal are factions of the same anti-Australian ideology, wasting Australian’s inheritance and flogging off our wealth for party self-interest.
The Laboral pendulous electoral cycle in New South Wales evicted a corrupt and broke Labor government, only to be replaced by their Liberal cousins, hell bent on selling off public assets that are not theirs to sell in the first place.
Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell won the 2011 state election with the help of New South Wales rural Nationals, but Naive Nationals once again will only see more wealth channelled to megalopolis Sydney. A coalition for some.
Like all Laboral premiers, O’Farrell has interpreted his emphatic victory as an electoral mandate to wreak whatever he likes while in office, just like his equivalent in Queensland. His big corporate mates have lobbied and donated millions to him and his party for years in order to win office, and now they demand their dividend.
In classic Labor style, the previous Labor government spent all taxpayers’ money to fund its excesses. The former NSW Labor government spent, on average, $116 million a year on promoting itself between 2007 and 2011. The current NSW Liberal government has racked up a $740 million deficit and forecast this year’s budget blowing out by $1.9 billion.
Neither Labor or the Libs can live within their means. Laborals don’t know the meaning of wise and frugal government.
So O’Farrell, desperate to rebuild and renew NSW, in his words “to make NSW number one again”, is auctioning off Sydney’s heritage assets. O’Farrell’s corporate mate at Investec Bank, Geoff Levy, has convinced O’Farrell to view New South Wales public buildings (worth an estimated $130 billion) to be subject to “private sector disciplines”, that is in lay terms, to earn their keep.
O’Farrell is also cosy with his corporate Lombard mates at Macquarie Capital. they setup meetings for him in in Singapore and Hong Kong to spruik Sydney’s heritage buildings to casino racketeers. Macquarie Capital has become O’Farrell’s real estate agent to pawn our public buildings, mainly to foreigners.
O’Farrell’s pawning of Sydney’s heritage has commenced. He is dealing in stolen goods that belong to the people of New South Wales.
In early 2013, the O’Farrell Liberal government sold off the McKell building in Sydney’s Chinatown for $400 million. Two of Sydney CBD’s most historic landmarks, the Department of Lands building and the Department of Education building, are expected to hit the market as part of the NSW government’s second tranche of asset sales.
The Department of Lands building of 1892 represents one of the city’s finest Victorian public buildings of the Renaissance Revival style with its large copper dome and its dozen niches whose sculpted occupants include explorers and legislators who made a major contribution to the opening up and settlement of the nation.
The Liberals want to sell it off for $80 million. O’Farrell’s tourism head Andrew McEvoy has been in southeast Asia spruiking it to foreign hotelliers, like Mandarin Oriental. But it is State-owned, that is owned by the people of New South Wales. But it is not O’Farrell’s to pawn for cash.
Another two public buildings including Macquarie Street’s Chief Secretary’s Building, and the Energy Australia building (since renamed Ausgrid) at 570 George Street, will reap the Liberals cash-strapped coffers about $200 million.
O’Farrell is so enticed by money, that he secretly has designs on the historic Department of Lands building to be a casino.
It is nothing short of Liberal Privatisation once again. O’Farrell hides behind the facade of promoting international tourism for Sydney.
It is all about the Liberals pawning off New South Wales heritage wealth illegally, and inviting more cashed-up asians to overrun Sydney’s CBD in more asian-only high rise apartment buildings.
Once these prominent sites are sold off, O’Farrell will look around for lower profile assets.