The hottest show in Sydney has an unusual setting, a hearing room on the seventh floor of 133 Castlereagh Street. This is where the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is investigating affairs involving former Labor state minister Eddie Obeid and his family, and former Labor minister for resources Ian Macdonald.
Obeid is accused of benefiting from buying farmland over which MacDonald allegedly approved a coal mine, in return for receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks.
When the packed public gallery empties at lunchtime, the midday meal is forsaken for a place in the queue to get back in for the afternoon session. Counsel assisting ICAC, Geoffrey Watson SC, opened the inquiry by announcing that it would examine alleged corruption “on a scale probably unexceeded since the days of the rum corps.”
This is some scale.
The NSW Corps reigned over the fledgling British colony for almost three years following Governor Arthur Phillip’s departure in late 1792.
During this time they established a monopoly in trade and became known as the rum corps because of their control over the supply of what proved to be one of the more popular and profitable commodities sold in the colony. They also issued land grants, mostly to themselves, which made the previous governor look prudent.
Needless to say, the traditional owners weren’t consulted.
If ICAC exists to keep the bastards honest it certainly has its work cut out for it.
An independent review into planning in July 2011 found there was “a significant degree of residual lack of public confidence in the integrity of the planning system.”
They also noted that this lack of confidence was influenced by “a procession of investigations by ICAC.”
In September last year, minister for planning Brad Hazzard told the NSW parliament that planning reform was essential because “the community lost confidence in the integrity and objectivity of the planning system.”
Hazzard delegated authority to the Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) — set up by the previous Labor government in 2008 as part of its so-called planning reforms — to determine major development decisions.
Prior to the NSW state election in March, 2011, the then opposition leader, Barry O’Farrell, announced: “The next Liberal-National government will ensure that mining cannot occur in any water catchment area and will ensure that mining leases and mining exploration permits reflect that common sense: no ifs, no buts, a guarantee.”
The government used the “reform” to effectively renege on its pre-election guarantee by deliberately omitting it from the PAC’s delegated powers. The plan in this planning reform is to shift the blame to the PAC for allowing mining in water catchment areas.
The government hides behind the PAC and the PAC allows itself to be compromised. The result? The PAC’s 2011-12 annual report shows that it dealt with 105 applications. Approval was granted to 96 projects with just nine refused.
So the 200 people who packed into a room at the local club in Helensburgh on February 13 to make submissions to the PAC opposing CSG mining on the Illawarra escarpment in a water catchment area weren’t expecting much.
Speaker after speaker, including from the Wollongong City Council and the Illawarra Local Aboriginal Council, denounced the proposal on economic, environmental, planning, health and technical grounds.
As a bespectacled, knitting grandmother invoked Dickens’ Madame Defarge, the two
PAC panel members looked on with bored indifference.
A planning process that treats widespread public concern with arrogant disdain will reap what it sows. If, as expected, the PAC grants gas company Apex Energy the right to contaminate the water supply, it will be a stain of irrelevance met by a blockade.
The PAC panel was reminded that the community will fight any decision to allow this project to proceed: no ifs, no buts, a guarantee.