The Guardian 30 April, 2008
Iemma government’s latest power grabs
Peter Mac
New laws being drafted in NSW will enable the Iemma government to compulsorily acquire property owned by families and small businesses, and sell them on to property developers, on the pretext that the land is required to complete projects it deems to be of state significance.
Under existing laws, land and buildings may be compulsorily acquired in order to contribute to major road or rail projects, but cannot be passed on to private developers.
Planning Minister Frank Sartor intends to change all that. The alteration to the legislative wording is slight, but the implications are tremendous. Sartor has declared that the new laws would be only used on the rarest of occasions, and only in the most serious cases. However, the fact remains that if the Planning Minister feels like it, he will be able to take your house away from you, and offer you whatever compensation he feels is appropriate.
This outrageous innovation is just one of the NSW government’s latest moves to assert tremendous power over the electorate. Sartor consistently dismisses suggestions of a conflict of interest in the government’s policy of accepting donations from major property developers, and then accepting development applications, if necessary against official advice from the State Planning Department. This was recently revealed in a Four Corners program on the ABC, with regard to two major projects at Queenbeyan and in the Hunter Valley.
Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee
The government seems to be assuming that it can do virtually whatever it feels like because the Liberal parliamentary opposition will do nothing to stop them.
This was certainly demonstrated recently when, after repeated jibes about receiving electoral donations from developers and other interested parties, the government suggested a bi-party move to ban political donations and to introduce public funding for electoral campaigns.
The Liberals declined the offer and backed off, just as the government knew they would. The Greens have now tabled information which indicates that the conservative coalition is also receiving massive donations, particularly during electoral campaigns. (Last Friday the Australian Hotels Association announced it was going to cease political donations in NSW in a review of its policy.)
Trade unions, which helped to found the ALP, are still major contributors to the Party. However, developers are now the biggest contributors to the major parties, followed closely by the finance industry.
But other vested interests are closing the gap. Last week Greens MP Lee Rhiannon revealed that since the 2003 state elections donations to the major parties from the hotel industry had increased 22 percent to at least $2.7 million ($1.7 million to the government and more than $1million to coalition), while donations from clubs had risen 34 percent, to more than $845,000 ($382,850 to the government and $461,864 to the coalition).
The government may deny that there is any relation between their receipt of political donations and their decisions with regard to development and other matters, but that’s not how the contributors see things. When, after huge public pressure the government at last announced that it would introduce partial smoking bans in entertainment venues, the clubs and hotels were infuriated, and the hotel industry seriously considered ceasing its practice of making political contributions to the government. They obviously expect results for their bucks!
Ms Rhiannon commented: "In recent years hotels and clubs have won more pokies, extended business hours, exemptions to shut down periods for gambling and a half-hearted smoking ban.
"There can be no serious policy debate about how best to combat alcohol and gambling in NSW until the corrupting influence of donations is erased from the political landscape.
"Reducing alcohol-related crime, highlighted by the Auditor-General, is a pipedream while the hotel and club industries wield undue influence from donations.
"The public will never know what deals are done with the hotels and clubs industries, but we do know that the coalition has consistently voted with Labor to pass laws that benefit these industries."
As Ms Rhiannon is pointing out, if NSW electors want something serious done about these burning issues they will have to cease voting for the major parties and turn to other parties which are genuinely committed to tackling the problem.