One reason, and it’s a very significant reason, why Sydney is such a mess is that planning (of anything that attracts public funding) is heavily skewed towards marginal seats.
Now today we have a newspaper report that Rudd (and the guy who plays at being a national Treasurer) are making infrastructure decisions based on the same old state labor approach.
THE Federal Government has told NSW not to bother asking for funds for the $12 billion North West Metro project because there are no federal Labor votes in it.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, told a meeting in February involving the former premier, Morris Iemma, and senior state bureaucrats that they were not interested in the rail project because Labor had no marginal seats in the area it would service, senior NSW sources said.
The revelation comes as Mr Rudd is scheduled to deliver a speech in Brisbane today in which he will stress that decisions on financing projects out of the $20 billion Building Australia fund will be made on merit.
Presumably this ‘leak’ is another part of the fallout from the recent destruction of the Iemma-Costa government by a group who have deluded themselves into thinking that Nathan ‘black panther’ Rees is actually up to being Premier.
Rudd, Swan and Albanese better come up with a more transparent process for the billions they have earmarked for infrastructure spending.
There’s no point Rudd flitting about the world trying to look like a leader if he is going to carry-on like a Bob Jelly back home.
11 Comments
Political leadership in Australia is an oxymoron. A chameleon ‘leader’ who changes colour according to votes is not a leader, merely a follower.
That is a terrible slur on small towns, and grubs.
BTW, what do you think of the task ahead for Ronan Lee ( Qld ex-Labor MP suddenly announces he is now a Green MP) in building an electable narrative for himself?
It sounds like all players hate him for what he’s done, ie apparently acted according to his conscience, which of course no-one can quite believe. In the annals of PR nightmare asks, how do you reckon this rates?
Cheers, GBS
GBS – I have a real problem with people who defect. The problem is that he got elected because he was the labor candidate. Without ALP endorsement he wouldn’t be in parliament. And he won’t be after the next general election either.
The offensive emotional pejorative title of this blog: “Is Rudd a leader or just another small-town grub?” And the phrase: “and the guy who plays at being a national Treasurer” Tells us we have here in the owner of this blog a disafected Liberal voter or member unable to come to grips with having lost the election.
How on earth can you have a phrase “and the guy who plays at being a national Treasurer” and think you are a legitimate blogger instead of an offensive dissafected Liberal member?
Well mate your Treasurer Costello was the one that wasted a decade of Australia’s prosperity – the make believe Treasurer.
So we have Fox News take over Crikey now?
Dear Mr paine. I am not a disaffected liberal voter. Elsewhere on this blog you can find conclusive evidence that I am strongly pro-Obama and anti-republican, last time I looked Fox is not endorsing Obama.
My concern with Swan is that he has been all over the place – telling us the economy is stuffed and then backtracking to tell us its OK and telling banks they must pass on interest rates in full (a populist and irresponsible position now adopted by the Liberals) and so on. Swan needs to get some gravitas, maybe he’ll grow in the job, we can only hope.
If the ALP, or anyone else, decides to spend billions on infrastructure with a version of the Ros Kelly whiteboard then they are grubs. Our national future is much more important than that and it deserves a completely transparent and rational process.
BTW, that ‘wasted a decade of Australia’s prosperity’ line is really just a bit of ALP spin.
I think the more Rudd starves the haplessly incompetent Rees, the better. It’s time for NSW to get rid of the idiotic government that has been treating our state like their personal fiefdom for too many years!
Hey, GP, I’d like to see this hopeless NSW government given the boot but hopefully not at the expense of good infrastructure decisions
Funny thing, Trevor, is that the NSW Government has a tendency to kill its own infrastructure announcements. The NW Rail link has been discussed for the best part of a decade but has been cancelled and delayed several times. That’s just one project. There are too many to list.
Seriously, the current NSW Government must rate as the worst in our history. The Queen could do a better job.
Tell me about it I live on the Northern Beaches where the announce-abandon-reannounce roundabout is so well established that it makes us giddy
I’m in the Inner West. Dealing with the useless Victoria Rd + City West Link grid lock on a daily basis is intolerable.
Trevor, extending the BTW from before, in the general Tag area of PR, if I may:
I take it, from your reply, that even someone of your PR talents would be pushing it up hill “to build an electable narrative” for Ronan The Rat. Though the organised and therefore dominant narrative is as you say “he got elected because he was the labor candidate”, I reckon quite a few recognise there is some truth in the line: It’s historically, and naturally a blue ribbon tory seat ( leafy ravines, gin-palaces, private jetties, acreages, ) and the only reason labor got it was Ronan’s personal constituency. It’s displayed by the fact that the Libs were in fact first past the post, and Labor only got it on (undirected) Green prefs.
I once did a scrutineering stint, and being mathematically inclined, detected what I thought was an interesting phenomena, which I’m wondering has any counterpart in the general PR/ brand-building literature/playbook:
If you ignored (partisan) first preferences, and instead scored only the 2nd preferences, (to find who was most acceptable by the most), the Greens would have romped it in. It was a soy-milk-eco-chino-latte inner city seat to be sure, and quite possibly a local phenomenon, but what I’m interested in is if there is a general PR-type phenomenon.strategy that gets sub-surface agreement to emerge despite first order prejudices in a highly contested attitude space? If that makes sense.
Cheers, GBS