Guy Beres

And what or who is Barangaroo? Barangaroo, of course, was the wife of the famous Aboriginal Australian Bennelong, and is now also the name of the “East Darling Harbour” foreshore development planned by the Iemma Labor Government. One only really needs to consider the “before” and “after” images online here to fully appreciate the unprecedented opportunities that this site offers the city and people of Sydney. It is assuredly quite rare that a city of Sydney’s size and prominence has the opportunity to reinvent such a large sector of land so close to the heart of the city.

While I know at least one person who is relieved to be out of the country for Sydney’s World Youth Day celebrations, personally I am a little disappointed to be missing out on all the hullabaloo. In particular, it would have been nice to have been part of the first major civil usage of the Barangaroo site following the demolition of the site’s storage sheds, which completed in April 2008. This is a site which, fingers crossed, will change for the infinitely better over the coming decades. It will be nice to observe things develop to the point where Sydney inherits a new drawcard for residents and tourists alike, and we all have something just a little more to be proud about.

ELSEWHERE: The State Government’s detailed concept plan is available online here. Some of the World Youth Day pictures online at the SMH are quite spectacular and give a certain flavour of the Barangaroo that is to come for Sydney.

I am on the other side of the world, but even I can scent a whiff of change in the air for NSW Labor. Setting aside for a moment the disturbing and unacceptable schism between the parliamentary leadership and the rest of the party in relation to electricity privatisation, it would have to be a rare punter indeed who believes that the Iemma Government is doing a stellar job of managing the state. Reiterating this perception, Tim Dick has a frankly unsurprising report in the SMH today noting that a Griffith University study has found that the NSW State Government is the most unpopular government in the country. If that wasn’t enough, Andrew Clenell and Alexandra Smith report that a leadership challenge is imminent, backed by party general secretary Karl Bitar, who has fallen out with Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa over the electricity privatisation issue.

What I think is important at this juncture is for NSW Labor to do some seriously constructive navel-gazing. It’s all very well to talk about changing leaders, but what is really required is a culture shift in the way the party interacts with the electorate and indeed conducts its affairs. It’s arguable that such a shift can only really happen if the parliamentary leadership changes, and on that basis, in the absence of any serious prospects of improvements otherwise, I would support a change in the leadership at this point. Despite his professed loyalty to the Premier, his factional handicap as a member of the Left and his close association (as Deputy Premier) with the current leadership team, I am inclined to think that John Watkins is the right man to take the party forward.

Let’s put the last fifteen months in perspective. The Iemma Government won a fairly strong election victory in March 2007 over an Opposition that was rendered incredible and unelectable by its then leader, Peter Debnam. Thanks to Debnam’s weak leadership and somewhat flawed personage, the government honestly did not encounter the tough electoral challenge it might have expected after four years of decidedly so-so governance. From what I can gather, Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell has not exactly been blazing the trail in the job since obtaining it a month after the election, but nor has he been doing that badly either. I think most voters would agree with me when I suggest that he is a credible alternative leader, even if he is not doing a very inspiring job. This spells trouble for NSW Labor in 2011 unless people’s impressions of the government change for the better and change fairly rapidly.

As a party member, I do feel that Morris Iemma really has tried his heart out to put things right over the past couple of years, thrown into the lion’s den as he was after Bob Carr’s abrupt resignation. Although I tend to disagree with Michael Costa’s views more frequently than I agree with them, I do believe he wants to do the best he can for the party. However, particularly in light of the electricity privatisation debacle, with the party wrenched apart in a recklessly destructive fashion, I don’t think it has been good enough. For many punters, I am sure it has not even been close to good enough. For the good of the party and indeed the state, I think both Premier Morris Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa should stand aside and let a new leadership team try and steer the government in a fresh direction.

NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca has lost his license after being caught speeding for a seventh time in his government car. The political news media is agog with commentary on the Rudd Government’s inaugural Federal Budget at the moment, and as a result, the media blowtorch has not been applied. It should be.

I suspect that I am not alone in subscribing to the admittedly romantic notion that our politicians should hold themselves to higher standards of behaviour than the people they represent. These people are meant to be our best and brightest, and have our best wishes at heart. They should, by definition, hold the law in deep respect and abide by it to the best of their ability, not just because of their own belief in its sanctity but to serve as an example to the wider community. It is for these reasons that I think Della Bosca, despite probably being one of the more talented ministers in the Iemma Government, should at the very least step down from cabinet and spend some time doing penance on the backbenches. This is obviously not a one-off error. One would have to infer that someone who has been caught speeding on seven separate occasions actually speeds quite a lot. It is clear that Della Bosca does not respect the state’s traffic rules and regulations as much as he should as an elected representative of the people and proxy custodian of law in New South Wales.

There are good political reasons for Della Bosca to resign as well. The Iemma Government desperately needs to turn around what are some fairly deep set public perceptions about its levels of transparency and probity. Of course the government will be further damaged regardless of whether Della Bosca resigns, but by stepping down, the minister could reclaim a certain sense of honour and dignity for himself and for the government. If he remains in his current position, the average punter is going to get the wrong message about speeding and acquire an even more critical view of the Iemma Government that many voters already do. The government really can not afford to keep tossing logs like this one onto the bonfire of what quite possibly could be its electoral demise in 2012.

Despite the fact that the NSW ALP has been tearing itself to pieces over the last week on electricity privatisation, it still does not seem that the Opposition can take a trick. Brian Robins reports for the SMH today that the former Opposition Leader Peter Debnam has resigned from the shadow ministry, reportedly in protest at the Opposition’s decision to support the controversial privatisation. Because Debnam still holds that neither the government nor the opposition have an election mandate for the sell-off, it would seem he feels that his position as the Opposition infrastructure and energy spokesperson has been critically undermined.

The sell-off is an interesting policy issue for the NSW Liberals because it is plain for all to see that they are desperate to capture the sort of wave of public interest and support that enveloped Kevin Rudd and Federal Labor in the year leading up to last year’s federal poll. The Howard Government may well have been on the nose, but the Federal Opposition did a fairly good job of outlining some positive reasons to vote for a change in government. In contrast, the NSW Opposition is there, but that is about all it is. As much as some punters may be sick of Morris Iemma and NSW Labor, there is no evidence yet of any groundswell of enthusiasm for the only credible alternative. At this rate, there is little danger of that changing. Barry O’Farrell is marching his troops right along side those of the government on this fairly thorny issue, with the end result no doubt being that punters can’t really distinguish between column A and column B.

Large privatisation plans do by their very nature arouse strong emotions in people. There are likely great numbers of people out there in the electorate who would strongly support the NSW Liberals if they elected to oppose the privatisation. By supporting the privatisation, the Opposition is probably being true to its principles, but I am not sure it is playing the politics of this potential goldmine as well as it could. Peter Debnam was wrong about a number of things during his stint as Opposition Leader, but he alludes to something worth latching onto when he suggests that neither NSW Labor or the NSW Liberals have a clear electoral mandate for privatising the state’s electricity industry.

Perhaps a more nuanced stance for the Opposition to take would be to announce its own plans for privatising the industry, but to promise voters that it would not proceed with the privatisation until it received an electoral mandate at the next state poll. By taking such a stance the Liberals would stay true to both their principles and the electorate and be one up on the government. As it stands, they are foolishly portraying themselves as the Iemma Government’s complicit accomplices on this issue. Everyday people who oppose the privatisation have been shut out of the debate completely.