We did it once, why can't we do it aGain
In 1900 the leading citizens of Sydney saw that the State and City officials were incompetent and corrupt, but with plague hitting the shores, they wasted no time.
So much is similar now. Successive Labor and Coalition Governments have destroyed as much of their predecessors' achievements as they could, two Caligulas in particular, Gladys Berejiklian as Minister and Premier, and Scott Morrison, as Treasurer and Prime Minister.
1900 had a health catastrophe facing a decrepit city, 2020 a health catastrophe facing a sadly unprepared fused Fed/Sydney cabal.
Community cynicism is at an all-time high after their blunders through bushfires, corruption ("rorts") and the deadly onslaught of the Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19. What is unusual is the bigotry and violence of the anti-State (including PM) forces who were ignorant of medicine, uncaring of life, and malicious in their threats of violence. The business community put pressure on the wrong people - on Vic, WA and Qld Premiers, not Morrison & Berejiklian.
Once a system of governance is corrupted through association with multiple, sometime competitive, vested interests, within government and with lobbies and corporates, the objectives, inputs, outputs and outcomes of that system can be impossible to see and difficult to intuit.
So it is in Australia where the multi-layered structures of government interact, in normal through to apparently new modes that arose from PM Morrison. Each layer has its own vested interests, even of the pro- and anti-China type.
Decisions are being made without medical or economic evidence or analyses. They turn into disappointment and worse soon after they reach escape velocity. The wastrels making the blunders get promotions. Ministers cannot understand their own portfolios. PMs and Premiers (some of) get cranky and even more erratic. The pro- and anti-lockdown battle has the intensity of anti-vax attitudes, with threats of violence coming from re-awakened (“dog whistled") extremists.
It is happening because PMs Turnbull and Morrison, and Premiers Baird and Berejiklian, are the first in history to systematically destroy their ethical systems and disenfranchise an Australian citizen, without due cause but with deliberate malice, and will not discuss anything of the situation. They also reject “science” in management and medicine in economic assessments. This is about public benefits and private justice.
Now the controversies are so complex and diverse, the task is to unravel the shorter-term issues in the context of the long run, to interpolate and interpret. Mistakes made are not being “repaired”, a big one has been “restored” but in a dysfunctional direction. No agency or individual* is properly assessing how to manage the disease while keeping communities functioning, as no Government is impartial or understands Localism. (* I'm being modest.)
Corona panic started in January and tension built in February ’20, with many calls for the PM to start “stimulus”, an impediment being his Cabinet’s fear of having a Rudd label put on their foreheads. Morrison said on 27 February that “the risk of a global pandemic is very much upon us”, and next day a senior Health official said “There really was no national leadership at that point”.
On 13 March Health officials sandbagged COAG, annoying Morrison who was intending to go to the football even though he was imposing crowd limits on that very day. It took until the 18th for the “human biosecurity emergency” to be declared, which was the effective start of social distancing. (Queensland moved from 29 January.) The Premiers sandbagged him on the 22nd over business closedowns and pushed a national approach. Along with pressure from this analyst, action happened on 30 March but it proved to be unsuccessful.
On Friday 18 September the National Cabinet apparently discussed overseas air arrival targets but only that. That cannot be as the list of outstanding issues is massive - the schools holidays will see no significant improvements in travel corridor safety, fast-response testing clinics, pub and other premises' alert systems, and the like - all in my Corona package which is mostly at stimulus-stupidity.com (although there is much correspondence and Tweeting).
I solved the Murray River Zone's crisis to the benefit of hotels, clubs, cafes and families, but the Hotels Association and Business Council refused to offer support and consideration, so I question the value of their ethics and programs.
This website and associated websites and Facebook, Twitter and email programs, are intended to be "positive" in that when problems are identified the solutions are explained.
The real problem is the appallingly low quality of the central structures and personnel in Sydney and Canberra. One would normally say that elections would work that out, but here and now, strong community action is needed as the economic crisis is getting worse fast due to Morrison saying earlier, "don't worry, we'll work out the details later".
He had no plan, can understand no plan, and we must shove him aside to make a plan that works - fast, if he cannot repair and accelerate in the right directions.
This letter went to Mr John Kerry and thence one hopes to President Biden on 10 April 2020:
URGENT: using my materials before and at 22 April, to your advantage and mine, to
- Pressure Australia’s Scott Morrison to be honest, committed and accountable in pursuit of climate change mitigation and employment and social equity, such is the potency of my work as demonstrated from 2016 to now when I forced changes (not yet paid for), and
- Force Morrison to pay me for what he and his and have stolen from me which led to the deaths of c 4,000 children in slavery and misery, and rising.
We have the same specific values and problems and personal extensions, such as for me 8,000 Aborigines trained and equipped to reintroduce traditional fire risk reductions – versus Morrison who has deliberately increased mental and dwelling stress and done nothing good to reduce fire risk – in fact he cancelled the order for air fire tankers.
Hopefully together we will achieve solutions. I have prepared a Briefing on Australian Carbon & Stimulus CRISES - Reality or Pretence ? for you and the President, as a consolidated either/or set of problems/solutions.
It is critical that either the President or you ring Morrison ASAP on the basis of our negotiation over these options, in order of my preference:
1. He stops holding back the money he and Berejiklian stole so I can get on with my agenda, Morrison being substantially responsible for the deaths to date of c 4,000 children in misery and slavery; also committing to openly discussing my options and potential solutions – the incentive being Morrison will not be uninvited
2. The two 50-page documents be sent quietly to the OECG executive personnel and the Paris secretariat (M Tubiana et al) with a similar message – payment to me being primary after 13 years of plagiarism and theft from my family
3. Send same to all invitees to the 22nd Summit with a crisis note – Australia must pull back its manipulations
4. US pay for a suitable adaptation of my work as a case study and then push further on Morrison and OECD. I believe my work to be the first of a truly forensic nature
5. Raise concerns about OECD governance and policies, the implication being funding conditions, and/or
6. I proceed but with Mr Kerry’s help with contact details – I am proceeding hard if there is no other solution.
That will exercise leverage of rare potency.
Morrison has a heavy load of ethical, diplomatic, economic and general governance issues to repair in line with OECD’s guidelines and no time to waste, as explained by in your speeches and me in my publication program, for example
- Border Wars and the Murray/Gibbons Template for community resilience and other local solutions (so relevant as Morrison has just realised after resisting for 6 years) in the face of repeating cycles of coronavirus
- The current positioning of Australia and its links with the UK through Messrs Sharrock and Cormann, being contrary to the OECD’s path to date
- The imminent If Christ Came to Canberra which detonates the myth of the Canberra Bubble and replaces it with Morrison’s and Qanon’s psychoses. This gets very seriously into regime change
- Progressive exposes of the underlying corruption of the carbon agenda by corporates and cliques within Australia’s minerals industries. The Briefing has the full text of a letter sent on 5 November 2020 to International agencies – there have been no replies.
You might have seen my letter to Mr Biden and the 50 pages of 6 appendices which covered the range of governance issues, whereas this Briefing delves more deeply into politics and political decrepitude, including of the fused Morrison/Berejiklian HK infrastructure conspiracy and the threatened perversion of OECD’s leadership. (The main text of that letter is at the foot of this email.)
Morrison is a disaster for Australia as is the most destructive politician in history, his fused ally as Premier (Governor) of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian. I believe they are conspiring to defer coal moratoria and thence reductions in their usual way of ignoring critics until they have lost interest. Morrison is incredibly insensitive, his wife tells him what to do, then he bounces back to default incredibly quickly, so nothing changes.
The thesis here is that that Morrison’s and Berejiklian’s “gifting” culture (including to Trump’s personal wallet), which includes executive de-skilling and journalistic churnalism, effectively neutered Australia’s chances of minimising the impacts of the carbon crisis and Novel Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Now the challenge is to repair the blunders and accelerate “improvement stimulus” which will see Australia becoming more internationally responsible, more equitable, more prosperous, and cleaner and safer to live in.
The Governments ignore, even suppress, the solutions which the Australian people should have the opportunity to understand and discuss, including new budgetary processes to assist with “targeted and proportionate” (which the Government has been unable to achieve) and to save lives; and the impediments to that, being the people and processes including in the Coalition Governments in Canberra and Sydney & the National Cabinet and NCCC.
This has been such a long and hard road with massive disappointment that my peer-reviewed solutions were contaminated by distinctly conflicted persons, as seen on sydneyimprovementpolitics.com.
Here is the index in the Briefing by page number to give an idea of the potency (not here yet).
I’m standing by, waiting for an email address I can send the document to IMMEDIATELY , please, and with best wishes (happened)
(It will be noticed the webpages are dated, not uniformly - that has been the nature of the lunatic tangents Australia has suffered.)
The Inside of how the Biden Connection started
A year before the idea of the US President helping Australian democracy was fanciful. Joe Biden came in with a message of international cooperation and shared directions - and the Morrison Covid mania became highly relevant, Biden's and my problems had the same solutions.
I wrote to John Kerry and President Biden through their offices' portals and received no reply, so I tried the State Department and found an excellent person. Regrettably there has been no sign of action/response in the top echelons and G7 was a massive failure with poor signs for Glasgow in November - here is the early part of the long saga: ~
10 April
Robert, we will pass your message forward to Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and his team. Best regards,
U.S. Department of State
From: Robert Gibbons <rpgibbonsvic@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 11:30 AM
To: Climate Communications <ClimateComms@state.gov>
Subject: URGENT: USING MY MATERIALS BEFORE AND AT 22 APRIL, to your advantage and mine
Dear folk in Climate Central
I composed this email to flag the critical importance of using my work to break through PM Morrison on climate and humanity crises. I would be grateful if you could grab this and deliver to Mr Kerry's team so as to expedite the negotiation next week. An abbreviated version has just gone as a webmail (maximum of 5 000 characters).
I'm the main opponent to Morrison's deceit and malice and the main victim of plagiarism and abuse.
With best wishes
Robert
Dear Mr Kerry
URGENT: using my materials before and at 22 April, to your advantage and mine, to
- Pressure Australia’s Scott Morrison to be honest, committed and accountable in pursuit of climate change mitigation and employment and social equity, such is the potency of my work as demonstrated from 2016 to now when I forced changes (not yet paid for)and
- Force Morrison to pay me for what he and his and have stolen from me which led to the deaths of c 4,000 children in slavery and misery, and rising.
We have the same specific values and problems and personal extensions, such as for me 8,000 Aborigines trained and equipped to reintroduce traditional fire risk reductions – versus Morrison who has deliberately increased mental and dwelling stress and done nothing good to reduce fire risk – in fact he cancelled the order for air fire tankers.
Hopefully together we will achieve solutions. I have prepared a Briefing on Australian Carbon & Stimulus CRISES - Reality or Pretence ? for you and the President, as a consolidated either/or set of problems/solutions.
It is critical that either the President or you ring Morrison ASAP on the basis of our negotiation over these options, in order of my preference:
1. He stops holding back the money he and Berejiklian stole so I can get on with my agenda, Morrison being substantially responsible for the deaths to date of c 4,000 children in misery and slavery; also committing to openly discussing my options and potential solutions – the incentive being Morrison will not be uninvited
2. The two 50-page documents be sent quietly to the OECG executive personnel and the Paris secretariat (M Tubiana et al) with a similar message – payment to me being primary after 13 years of plagiarism and theft from my family
3. Send same to all invitees to the 22nd Summit with a crisis note – Australia must pull back its manipulations
4. US pay for a suitable adaptation of my work as a case study and then push further on Morrison and OECD. I believe my work to be the first of a truly forensic nature
5. Raise concerns about OECD governance and policies, the implication being funding conditions, and/or
6. I proceed but with Mr Kerry’s help with contact details – I am proceeding hard if there is no other solution.
That will exercise leverage of rare potency.
Morrison has a heavy load of ethical, diplomatic, economic and general governance issues to repair in line with OECD’s guidelines and no time to waste, as explained by in your speeches and me in my publication program, for example
- Border Wars and the Murray/Gibbons Template for community resilience and other local solutions (so relevant as Morrison has just realised after resisting for 6 years) in the face of repeating cycles of coronavirus
- The current positioning of Australia and its links with the UK through Messrs Sharrock and Cormann, being contrary to the OECD’s path to date
- The imminent If Christ Came to Canberra which detonates the myth of the Canberra Bubble and replaces it with Morrison’s and Qanon’s psychoses. This gets very seriously into regime change
- Progressive exposes of the underlying corruption of the carbon agenda by corporates and cliques within Australia’s minerals industries. The Briefing has the full text of a letter sent on 5 November 2020 to International agencies – there have been no replies.
You might have seen my letter to Mr Biden and the 50 pages of 6 appendices which covered the range of governance issues, whereas this Briefing delves more deeply into politics and political decrepitude, including of the fused Morrison/Berejiklian HK infrastructure conspiracy and the threatened perversion of OECD’s leadership. (The main text of that letter is at the foot of this email.)
Morrison is a disaster for Australia as is the most destructive politician in history, his fused ally as Premier (Governor) of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian. I believe they are conspiring to defer coal moratoria and thence reductions in their usual way of ignoring critics until they have lost interest. Morrison is incredibly insensitive, his wife tells him what to do, then he bounces back to default incredibly quickly, so nothing changes.
Reminiscent of Trump, a noted journalist and historian John Birmingham wrote today,
- That flop dick goat rodeo was already morphing into a disaster with the promised four million doses missing-in-action as of a week ago, the PM’s goons blaming the states, the PM blaming the EU, the states swearing a blood oath to defend each other against these vile slurs, and the EU straight up blading ScoMo as a teller of untruths whose trousers had combusted. So of course he defaults to his bogus operandi of blame shifting and back stabbing when it becomes obvious his only vaccine rollout strategy is staring out the window, whining, “Where the bloody hell are ya?”
- Hubris — masked as charisma or charm — is often mistaken for leadership mojo according to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. And while you might recoil from finding anything the Prime Minister does charismatic or charming, you’re not the audience. The 68% of male voters who approve of his handling of the Brittany Higgins horror show [rape in a Minister's office, covered up but exposed through her courage] are. Where by ‘approve’ I mean ‘enjoy’, and by handling I mean something worse.
It is my intention and belief that my work can break the chains just as If Christ Came to Chicago did in 1894.
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I have been the main driver of innovation in NSW since 1971, and the main victim of their crypto-fascist predations since 2008. It happens I am an eminent economist, political scientist and historian (including of Chicago), introduced energy conservation in NSW under my boss the Minister for Minerals & Energy, and led the revival of Newcastle City on the close of steelmaking. I introduced energy labelling of white goods and social vouchers for energy bills via welfare NGOs.
There’s a lot more. I used the time of exile to prepare forensic economic, pol sci and historical critiques and innovative solutions to the main problems in my purview.
To add insult to injury, Morrison engineered one of his Hard Carbon and Budget advocates, Cormann, into the top job at OECD, whose recovery guidelines had made great sense but which had been contradicted by Morrison and his Cabinet. Morrison and Cormann as well as Frydenberg neutered the financing of renewables solutions and OECD’s “climate change mitigation” and other education and like elements, and are to be condemned.
It is said the Morrison OECD line was opposition to carbon pricing across European borders as he had opposed it within Australia and as the UK PM has lately been doing (incorrect). (Morrison had made fairy-tale promises to try to avoid blame over the failure of his unbelievable statements on multiple sources and massive quantities of vaccine only to fail – he “blamed” Boris Johnson who bit back! ) The SMH again acted as cheerleaders.
The thesis here is that that Morrison’s and Berejiklian’s “gifting” culture (including to Trump’s personal wallet), which includes executive de-skilling and journalistic churnalism, effectively neutered Australia’s chances of minimising the impacts of the carbon crisis and Novel Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Now the challenge is to repair the blunders and accelerate “improvement stimulus” which will see Australia becoming more internationally responsible, more equitable, more prosperous, and cleaner and safer to live in.
PM Morrison’s smugness is false bravado: he has not yet started genuine stimulus including carbon mitigation. Treasurer Frydenberg will not listen and continues blunders and corrupt plagiarism. He and his peers reject responsibility and chronically “blame the victims”. From the start they denigrated local governance including Health and now are embarrassed.
It’s worse than that, Frydenberg and Mathias Cormann were confronted with my 2019 version of my Malenomics package which unpeeled three years of their errors but they hid – they cancelled MYEFO, deferred the Budget, deferred Parliament, cancelled 2 weeks of Parliament, and deceived themselves into more “gifting” tranches. “The Emperor has no clothes”. That they got further into trouble was no surprise but that they oppose repair of their blunders is catastrophic. Most media are entangled through proprietors’ political and commercial connections and they have misinterpreted and ignored a damaging climacteric. These factors were ignored by OECD and IMF in their surveys.
Professor Christian Downie published “Genuine about climate action, Mr Cormann? Here’s how to turn over a new leaf” on 21 March 2021 in The Conversation:
From 2013 to 2020, Cormann was finance minister in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments – an administration with arguably one of the worst records on climate change of any OECD government.
Just last week, Australia ranked last on a list of the world’s 50 largest economies for “green” spending to aid economic recovery after the COVID pandemic, according to a United Nations report.
The litany of the Coalition’s indictments is too long to list in full here. But dubious highlights include:
· abolishing Labor’s carbon price in 2014
· abolishing the Climate Commission
· unsuccessfully seeking to kill off the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
And Cormann has also discouraged the climate action of others. For example, in 2017 he described Westpac’s lending restrictions on coal projects as “very, very disappointing”.
The OECD itself has condemned Australia as “one of the most carbon-intensive OECD countries and one of the few where greenhouse gas emissions (excluding land use change and forestry) have risen in the past decade”.
It is not hard to see why many around the globe lobbied against Cormann’s new appointment, including the British Labour Party.
The Governments ignore, even suppress, the solutions which the Australian people should have the opportunity to understand and discuss, including new budgetary processes to assist with “targeted and proportionate” (which the Government has been unable to achieve) and to save lives; and the impediments to that, being the people and processes including in the Coalition Governments in Canberra and Sydney & the National Cabinet and NCCC.
This has been such a long and hard road with massive disappointment that my peer-reviewed solutions were contaminated by distinctly conflicted persons, as seen on sydneyimprovementpolitics.com.
Here is the index in the Briefing by page number to give an idea of the potency.
I’m standing by, waiting for an email address I can send the document to IMMEDIATELY [is this it?], please, and with best wishes
Robert
April 28 - Morrison raving about carbon again
Please do not associate me with this crap, which is more Cormann's, my boss and I started energy conservation in Australia in 1984 and I led it across the NSW local government sector in the 1990s.
I am extremely frustrated at being treated as a leper, whether by design or through myopia. That is by the least likely people to do so, I would have thought. OECD leads with the words and stumbles with actions.
Australia has no hope with Morrison and Albanese in the opposing chariots, both are going backwards. The US having identified the risk is puzzling me for reasons they know.
The Federal Government has lost its way
There is a lot of material on these websites about the adverse consequences of the Bairdijiklian / Turnbull / Morrison conflagration
- growing congestion and living costs
- rising air quality problems and in-built energy waste
- higher cost than options - to a crippling extent
- higher risks - ditto
- later results if ever - there are too many Mother Hubbards across the map
- less effective in terms of real needs e.g. housing supply in axes Vs greiner's medium-density, Beaches Peninsula loses character Vs Gibbons' BRT
- less integrated with the great legacy systems that Sir Thomas Hughes and his "improvement generation" gave us e.g. Nancy-Bird Airport gets worse transit in the world Vs Greiner/Gibbons' best transit in the world - faster and at l.
The Federal Government's Budget is in a mess, with the $100 billion Masquerade and the inveiglement of the Governor of the Reserve Bank - just because the Treasurer could not address my criticisms.
The coming MYEFO will determine the value of the Morrison/Frydenberg compact - it will have NONE if Josh again rejects "budget repair".
Folk ask why Morrison is so erratic, angry and abusive - he was hurt, never repaired and is now narcissistic, the second in a row, how unlucky could Australia be!
Break the Cycle
IMPROVEMENT POLITICS - PAST SUCCESS, CURRENT MORASS
It's not that Trump is a paragon of leadership but his is a light on the hypocrisy that characterises post-Menzies Australia.
We've seen the PM ignore fire chiefs and me on the pending bushfire infernos. We've had trouble believing the Deputy PM insults firefighters and farmers over the obviously rising bushfire risk - him dumping on "greenies" (who are broadly representative in the country and urban fringes).
We've seen the Treasurer call on over-60s to retrain and be re-employed - what planet did that come from? We've seen the same Treasurer compromise the Governor of the Reserve Bank just because he, Josh, could not counter my MYEFO counter-case.
The Treasurer and his CEO were requested to provide a reconciliation of the line items under the $100 billion, against my assessment it was 2/3 short. PM Morrison shifted out the Treasury CEO with a big promotion (for ...?) and no one replied. He did the same for Turnbull's appointee in the Infrastructure agency - both are now in position to cause maximum damage to NSW. Media comment now is that Morrison has abandoned all mores and philosophies more than 3 years old, so no more cant about Menzies, Howard or Abbott.
The PM handed out shekels for stock feed subsidies without knowing the quantum was insulting and increased stress with the withdrawal of hope. He gave almost free water to South Australian water thieves without having a cooee of how Victorian and especially NSW farmers felt about being smashed in the face, with referred increases in feed costs.
Without realising that Vic farmers on one side of the Border have water but NSW - supposedly Scotty’s people - have none. “Have we elected bombastic morons? Ley acted that way", say the Riverina farmers.
The nation is rudderless. We see reorganisations of agencies and changing personnel without understanding that loss of leadership is self-protective: it reduces surveillance inside and outside, reduces performance measurement and reporting, takes funding out of the sterilising sunlight, and recruits, and grooms and neutralises harbingers of journalistic insight.
The linked set of three websites, many published op-eds and Letters, an increasing number of published letters, and Facebook page are the public expressions of a major “Save Sydney” campaign, which has three main objectives:
- Regain leadership in Sydney, a quality that we led the world in and now have none left in government, especially since 2015 – as we did it before, why cannot we do it again?
- Restore sovereignty, which our forebears fought to protect but which our witless politicians have sold-off to Hong Kong (while paying subsidies to HK instead of the other way) – it is not too late to halt the predations and revive “engineering and economics” so as to ensure intergenerational sustainability
- Redress IP thievery by Federal and NSW politicians and agencies, as their cruelty and unfairness are both despicable and hidden – so here comes the disinfecting light.
This website and www.sydneybetrayals.me contain broad aspect and specific case studies of how far Australian and Sydney governance has declined against the standards set by past leaders.
www.thinkinglogicallogistics.info shows the stagnation and decay in a major sector of the economy - freight, ports and logistics.
No Party or masthead has reason to be proud of their contributions. The evidence is that the Party Rooms are failing to envelope the PM with better ideas and to energise the Deputy PM from his pasture. No one seems to understand and/or be interested in "economics and engineering".
The traditional roles of "government" are to protect and nourish each and every community in the country and world.
The psychology of leaders - especially Trump and Morrison - are almost as important as were Chamberlain's and Hitler's in 1938. They deviate from norm - their deviances (as explained under CRUELTY & DECEIT), through such pathways:
- manipulation of the "rule of law" by singular individuals and/or fascistic/totalitarian regimes
- stage-managed "engagement", what ResPublica calls "meaningless participation"
- replacement of meritocracy by nepotism and scumbaggery, add the stupid syndrome - Dunning-Kruger
- suppression of innovation and anal insistence on silo/ego thought-bubbles
- injection of foreign mercantile and political interests
- suppression of the media whether through ownership or self-censorship ("identification" and fear).
But could the deviances come to be so severe that, in a proud country, a great multi-cultural nation, governments
- steal a citizen's rights and ability to protect family and society
- dishonour its heroes, currently Tim Fischer
- knowingly
- hurt children in slavery and misery
- deny care to hurt sporting heroes and those afflicted by brain cancer, as well as the emerging phenomenon of female indigenous NRL teams
- deny support to families in firepaths and storm zones.
The last point has exploded with revelations that PM Morrison has refused (late 2019) to meet with emergency services leaders to discuss the practicalities of urgently ramping-up bushfire rescue and recovery equipment. That is added to his refusal to discuss bushfire path housing safety.
What does that say of "leadership"?
The eminent journalist Peter Hartcher has described Morrison's lack of bushfire rationale as:
- It's okay to discuss fires and suffering, but not causes and solutions. Or, resuming the military metaphor, it's okay to talk about the enemy's weapons and your own casualties, but not military strategy.
- As PM Scott Morrison puts it: "There is a time and a place to debate, you know, controversial issues and important issues. Right now, it's important to focus on the needs of Australians who need our help. They need our support."
- This is a nonsense because it's a false binary. Of course it's necessary to focus on the needs of people suffering and in need of support. It's also necessary to make sure you have the right strategy and tactics in addressing the phenomena causing the suffering.
The incoming Coalition leaders in NSW, O'Farrell, and Turnbull in Canberra, respectively in 2011 and 2015, both promised to vigorously listen to the best people and implement "innovation". Both wilted under the pressures of lobbies and factions; producing an increasing divergence of community outcomes from promised outcomes. That is, "intergenerational equity" has been sacrificed to internal corporate values.
Denial of accountability + studied ignorance + bureaucratic adhesion (Dr Stephen Kennedy, Turnbull's special advisor whom Morrison has appointed to head Treasury) feature in the non-responses of Federal and NSW Parliamentarians, to logical and informed criticism (see the email and download at https://sydneyimprovementpolitics.com/save-sydney-the-guide) - "democracy is dead" when our elected and un-elected representatives recuse themselves from reality and remain stuck in a lobby-driven obsession. (Similarly Berejiklian has filled every sentinel post with acolytes and now has no sound advice nor ability to correct her invariable blundering.)
THAT IS THE CHALLENGE HERE - TO REVERSE THE ROTTEN STATE OF THE NATION AND RESTORE MORALITY, VITALITY, CARING AND PROSPERITY. The SMH of 29 October '18 carried a story that is taken apart under "Bairdijiklian Big Lies" - it casts the Federal and NSW Governments, the media, the lobbies and the Parties in a sordid light.
A dominant theme is that President Trump and PMs Turnbull and Morrison share three entirely negative characteristics, so it's no wonder they are in tune:
- When questioned about their opinions or decisions, they deny history, say they're focussing inwards, and act as though they are what Trump says, "very stable geniuses"
- They bewilder, enrapture and hypnotise their Cabinets so that they walk onto the gangplank before they realise there are sharks in the water, then they try to pretend they are not responsible - but there is no Nuremberg defence in our national crises
- They think that economics is a dark mystery shrouded in witches' spells, which might well be true in Australia but not in Washington or New York with their vigorous mastheads.
Cruelty is perceived to be an outcome of current government cultures. Politicians tell obvious lies, utter meaningless mantras and avoid addressing reality. Are the governments intrinsically malevolent? or are they imbalanced between a silent majority and warlike cabals?
Valuation tools can be applied to, say, direct and indirect, private and public, costs, of motor vehicle accidents. Thorough metropolitan plans such as Eddington's in London do the same on a bigger scale.
Not in Sydney! The Greater Sydney Commission says it's committed to metrics, but hasn't even made an effort to compare the costs and benefits of transit options, housing patterns (suburban Vs forced densification), or scenario-setting such as in a Future Directions report in 1993.
The chart under the Cruelty tab lists 26 ideas, proposals and projects, in two groups:
- blunders, the "acts of commission"
- missed opportunities, the "acts of omission" ("opportunity costs and benefits").
The divergence in the directional arrows gives an impression of the costs of blunders + the missed opportunities = a catastrophe for NSW.
All are products of a Broken Democracy that is dominated by lobbies and corporates and hidden by miscreants and scoundrels.
All aspects are subjective, but professional as evidenced by the efforts made under "Save Sydney". It is an intergenerational disgrace that capricious, "ideology and stupidity", modes dominate the Canberra and Sydney bubbles so prodigiously, and that cognitive reasoning and genuine engagement are verboten.
~ No one can take President Trump too seriously, but the theory can hardly be improved ~
shambolic.sydney at gmail com
The biggest "productivity" opportunity - smashed by malice
A positive path to the future ...
Australia had a new National Government after a period of disorder and confusion. There is an acceptance of the need for a more positive path to improve city and regional sustainability - affordability, congestion, energy and other living costs, and intergenerational equity. That is the framework into which we must fit sensible budgets and projects.
There are problems to be faced in our famous democratic manner, emulating as best we can the hero generation of Sydney reformers from 1900, led by Thomas Hughes and Jack Fitzgerald.
Theirs was the most famous municipal council in the world and they were nation-builders: leveraging up the achievement of Federation into meeting the needs of a 300 per cent increase in Sydney's population.
No government agency now has a successful record of needs analyses, innovation or community engagement. None have succeeded in as complex a situation as Newcastle's recovery from BHP's withdrawal. None know "cheaper, faster and more effective". All are doctrinaire and dominated by ideologues and vested interests, not national and community priorities.
The "Save Sydney" Suite of IP
This analyst has worked on the improvement of Sydney, as an economist, historian and political scientist, since 1971. The Suite comprises system, project and democracy ideas.
It is based on
- Solid empiricism and quality analyses
- Famous sense of innovation and cost-effectiveness of solutions
- Practicality of implementation paths
- Strong engagement
NSW Planning Minister - past & future: Dr Rob Stokes:
Using meaningless participation as a facade to cover over disagreement merely clogs up conflict, creating a dam of resentment, which spills over in the form of increasing litigation, loss of trust in politicians and administrators, and poor planning outcomes.
That was in his PhD thesis. Naturally, he became Planning Minister because he was Premier Baird's surfing buddy. In office he contradicted every manta he espoused in uni. He has returned under Berejiklian, making the same insipid statement but this time he uses an UTS don to do the housing targets - sidelining the GSC which now resides in Berejiklian's Kremlin NSW Inc silo
THE MAD HATTER'S RACE TO THE BOTTOM: The ACCOUNTABILITY Hit List
THERE HAS BEEN AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE BETWEEN O'FARRELL, BAIRD, BEREJIKLIAN AND THE TURNBULLS, WITH TREASURER/PM MORRISON AND FRYDENBERG, IN STEP STILL YET, AND THEIR MINISTERIAL AND BUREAUCRATIC ACOLYTES - THE "30-MINUTE CLUB" AND BAIRDIJIKLIAN MALENOMICS. THEIR VICIOUS PLAGIARISM WILL CONDEMN THEM TO DANTE'S SUB-BASEMENT.
The way that PM Turnbull developed unConstitutional "gifting" mechanisms (extended by PM Morrison), prepared the forerunner Turnbull/Morrison 2017 and 2018 Budgets, and indoctrinated policy and planning agencies, can be summarised as the "headless chook" model, or as The Australian's editor put it, "Mayor Turnbull".
The height of Turnbull's "ideology & stupidity" was the "unConstitutional" Western Sydney City Deal which included gifting of $100 million to buddy consultants to confirm the decision that The Club had made behind closed doors - with dreadful consequences. (Normal contract negotiation would have seen a price of around 1/190th of that figure!)
That Morrison and Treasurer Frydenberg locked into that showed callous disregard for economics, congestion, affordability, environment, community well-being and future generations.
It is now a false truism of the Morrison Government that "it is of Menzies" who was a nation builder who would never have trashed the standards and heritage of past generations. In "The Sickness of Democracy" in October 1942, a dark time indeed, he wrote that:
There can be no doubt that this democracy of ours has been very sick. If and when it can be cured, it has great work to do. But it will never be cured unless we see the past clearly, and recognize frankly that we cannot ignore politics and treat democracy as a mere matter of loaves and fishes and demean the politician, and at the same time sensibly demand that "government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
He also wrote that
If we come to life only at election times and go back to indifference or grumbling criticism for the years that intervene, our political judgment, being based on no continuing principle, will be spasmodic, uncertain and inconsistent. We shall take only short views, and the candidate who plays up to them will be elected. Yet, a moment's reflection should tell us that only long‑range thinking and planning can save either democracy or the world.
The Turnbull/Morrison Federal Government has been cross-infected by Berejiklian's latest fad which is to announce everything, any new metro or freight line, any new release area, any time the blunders in her past work are exposed. The Tele and Herald accept that without question, having missed the lack of electoral mandate in the main, early phases and now accepting explicitly-false "promises". The Morrison Government did the same in the 2019 Election process.
Here is Berejiklian’s mandate at the 2011 election (Herald 18 2 10):
Gladys Berejiklian said the metros were doomed if the Coalition won. ''We want to reassure the community - if we do win the next election, our absolute priorities will be to construct the north-west and south-west rail links.''
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The journalists came to under-emphasise and even distort the defects of the Bairdijiklian “planning stench”. So do MsP in both Parliaments, thus endorsing malpractices that they would not condone in their own family lives.
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The 2019 Budget showed that nothing had been learnt about
- correcting past mistakes
- understanding problems better
- being smarter at solutions
- caring, not pretending to care, about communities and individuals' rights.
The 2018 MYEFO review, post-Turnbull, showed that Treasury has no desire to conduct "budget repair" in this area as it does in others - leaving a crippling mess for coming generations.
There is no equitable and sustainable way to recover the $20 billion cost of the NW-Bankstown metro fiasco, from which the beneficiaries will be developers like the HK MTR; and the victims the 95% of unserviced population growth etc etc etc.
The Baird Model is smashed and only the fanatics are proceeding in those anti-Bradfield directions.
The Club took NSW Labor's aspirations and turned them into a $40,000,000,000 subsidy to foreign corporates and their lobbyist parasites.
This website and the two associated sites and two books are about the credibility gulf between both main Party groups and their lobbyist and sponsor obsessions, and journalists in their cheer squads, versus the strong governance and probity standards which were the foundations of our forgotten heroes’ achievements.
The areas of transport dis-advantagement are increasing despite unprecedented fiscal extravagance. Politicians are going in circles, recycling each other's mistakes, fully resistant to remedies and solutions. In election mode,
Berejiklian was un-ashamedly deceitful with her continuing Big Lies, for which we need a Scoville-like scale.
The deterioration in governance in NSW started after the departure of Nick Greiner, especially from 2005; and was interrupted by Tony Abbott’s time as PM. It accelerated from 2015 and the creation of Federal/state Bairdijiklian Malenomics, with the deliberate evasion of due diligence protocols. PM Turnbulls cabal even created three sub tabula gifting devices, two delivered through the Greater Sydney Commission which is chaired by Mrs Turnbull.
The seeds of destruction were sown.
PM Morrison has allowed the continuance of all of Turnbull’s distortions, including an unprecedented level of plagiarism. Lies at the Federal level have continued, with “congestion busting” being a reflex as well as continuing as deceitful.
Meanwhile the "cost of quality" in projects was rising fast. The NSW Local Government Act lacked scrutiny powers over council decisions which would have curbed the tram furore as well as corrupted blunders in Liverpool, Port Macquarie and Bega Valley among others. This analyst urged the creation of "audit committees" on a corporate model during the exposure stages of that Act.
Subsequently, the UK's Localism Act does that through Scrutiny Committees and, in London's case", Scrutiny Inspectors looking over the Mayor's ideas and decisions. My thinking is incorporated in the Creative flowcharts (which are extensive), as follows.
Professor Matt A Crenson of Johns Hopkins has reviewed much of the Australian infrastructure situation and, of course, all responsibility is the site's author's:
- There's been much talk of an infrastructure program before and during the Trump administration, but nothing substantive has emerged -- possibly because it's the one program that has virtually universal support. If he embraced it, Trump would do so with the support of Democrats, and they would be able to take credit along with him.
- Morrison has an infrastructure program on which he's taken some steps but it appears that no one would want to take credit for it.
Strengthening The Pipleline: State & community confidence
the 1980 Environmental Planning & Assessment Act handled community engagement well
The Act served the Wran-Unsworth and Greiner-Fahey governments but the Carr Government entangled it with developer incursion points and diluted public enquiry obligations. By 2011 it was generally agreed a new Act was needed; but there were important Sydney figures who argued that cleaning-out the incursions would be simpler, faster and more effective than the half-baked fiascos that O'Farrell and Baird pursued.
Rubbish infrastructure: failed due diligence
Trams as a transit killer (pdf)
Download
PM Scott Morrison's challenge
PM Turnbull:
It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them, and have the honesty to say to people 'there are no easy solutions here'.
The facts of "waste" and unintended consequences have been established: the new PM has allowed every blunder to overspill the Turnbull Chaos into structural damage to the NSW economy and society. The Sydney CBD and Eastern Suburbs Light Rail has started to creep along its tracks against Berejiklian's claims that it is us who do not understand. The above planning cycle revealed in the download and at https://sydneybetrayals.me/cbd-tram-betrayal/ could not have happened had the City of Sydney and successive State Governments observed the protections inherent in the Pipeline graphic above.
Will the PM and Deputy PM now articulate and pursue the public interest in cleaning-out the Aegean Stables in Martin Place?
More Turnbull:
Infrastructure should be assessed objectively and rationally on its merits. There is no place for ideology here at all. So if politicians are not being held to account, why would they bother? What is the incentive for them to tell the truth? If you want someone to change, you must persuade them there’s a problem, then you explain the solution.
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That was Malcolm Turnbull as new PM - every word was broken in practice. Scott Morrison said he'd be like Menzies but now that he's one-focussed and won't look at other issues. He is not just ignoring Sydney and his own electorate, he is extending barbaric unfairnesses imposed by his Coalition predecessors. He now has Berejiklian saying the same thing as did Baird before his downfall - "crash or crash through". The other option is she'll trip and slide over the cliff edge.
RESULT: Turnbull and Morrison are wrecking major aspects of NSW's economic, social, environmental, tax and funding futures. STOP & LISTEN NOW, please.
Here follow some ideas I have for supporting out communities when I receive compensation for theft of my IP as detailed under "Evils of Plagiarism":
Save the Children
Remembering Forgotten Heroes
Bushfire Safe Housing
A legitimate expectation of being paid for stolen IP, with a demonstrated value, has behind it a proposed significant donation.
PMs do not seem to care.
Bushfire Safe Housing
Remembering Forgotten Heroes
Bushfire Safe Housing
Having been through three massive fire events in NSW as well as the Newcastle Earthquake, I produced an adapted model for bushfire safe houses that would be cheaper to build
Remembering Forgotten Heroes
Remembering Forgotten Heroes
Remembering Forgotten Heroes
Sydney was led by Heroes like JD Fitzgerald and Tom Hughes, I am their principal historian and applied the principles in Newcastle. All States & Territories have much to teach us all
Baird to Berejiklian to Turnbull to Morrison - now to repair and reform?
The first “world city” to show a planning lead to the others was Sydney. Its leaders of 1900 to 1912, through the great Reform Council, then political commitment to a massive, focussed public works program, lead to Sydney being called the “social laboratory of the world”. Sydney was also in a race with San Francisco and Melbourne to be the “Pacific Entrepot”.
A century later, Sydney’s planning has disintegrated to the extent that massive amounts of money are producing the opposite outcomes to those expected.
Sir Rod Eddington and Nick Greiner gave reasons for a due-diligence based project planning framework. They included:
- Lower cost items often have the highest returns
- Non-Big Ticket items are less risky and faster to deliver, also increasing returns
- There are no one-size-fits-all “solutions”, and non-build, pricing, evidence-based, alternative technology, innovation and scale matched to need can be achieved to the benefit of communities and networks.
NSW Lobbies support Berejiklian but have obviously forgotten the other major benefit which is a stable and effective “pipeline” of projects, as against State-imposed (or fascistic) interventions such as forced densification.
The Urban Taskforce throws petrol on spot disputes by endlessly recycling “mainstreets must get used to 20 storey buildings”, with the Greater Sydney Commission’s failed methodology producing a target of 67 high-rises in just one of many suburban mainstreets (where no building now is higher than two storeys).
Not one lobby has developed one successful solution to any of Sydney’s major challenges; and the property lobbies and professions have pushed Part 3A, activation zones and priority precincts against the strictures of sound engagement espoused by Professor Bowditch and the Property Council and Planning Institute when faced with Labor’s “planning stench” (as quoted on this website). The latter and the main media now fully meet Menzies’ definition of “contempt”:
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to be a real democrat in a really democratic country is to occupy a position of great dignity and self‑respect, for these qualities are the natural and proper attributes of independent man. To be one of those who mouth the catch‑cries of democracy and stridently clamour for their so called "right" from the cradle to the grave and after it, but at the same time dodge every civic responsibility, is to occupy a position not of dignity but of contempt
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That "ideology & stupidity" instead of wisdom and probity dominated Bairdijiklian Malenomics (www.sydneybetrayals.me) was seen in the WS City Deal - who could propose to pay $100,000,000 to pet consultants for a pretend job on an obviously implausible "project" with massive "unintended consequences" (because of clod-headed ignorance) but a think-tank of deluded ingénues. Who could propose to concrete that in but a fully paid-up guild novice - or a co-conspirator! (Who do you think told the Treasury to do so?)
The main indicators of stench are the non-delivery of promised due diligence and local government and planning (“framework”) reforms, and
- waste of over $40 billion especially on Metros which constitute non-remunerative subsidies to foreign corporates and local lobbies
- poor engineering with high escalation and externality costs, with BIG LIES about the costs of WestConnex, trams and Metros
- delays of 10 years and more in delivering ANY projects let along the right ones, most especially in the CBD-Parramatta and Northern Beaches corridors
- “unintended consequences” of monumental dimensions to the viability of all three NSW ports, Inland Rail, outer growth areas, Illawarra and South West commuting, coal export flows, Parramatta CBD and critical congestion zones (including the PM’s electorate’s St George and Sutherland suburbs)
- multiple resident action groups through suburban centres and along major road and metro corridors, with a collapse of project pipelines through politicking and reduced targets
- poor returns to superannuation, Chinese and Japanese investors through poor route selection and pre-engineering, and wrong technologies
- reduced capacity in major urban corridors, at massive cost and disruption, through the replacement of one mode with another without logic, and
- crippling penalties on future generations – embedded congestion, high living costs and unhealthy neighbourhoods, and a “rescue” financial burden once the Bairdijiklian malfeasances are fully revealed.
The Morrison Government is not pausing and re-assessing its predecessor’s grave mistakes. It is concreting them in. Sydney cannot afford that and needs a new Reform Generation.
Are the system of government, the executive apparatus and the melange of media we have capable of delivering that?
Scumbaggery & Crypto-Fascism
"Scumbag" implies a deliberate manipulation of how money is spent; and that is indeed a focus in looking at three ex-bankers who re-organised how NSW and Sydney are "planned".
But importantly, the standards on which judgements are based are traditional, used by the Askin Government's Milton Morris in the mid-1970s, by Ron Christie in 2001, and by Sir Rod Eddington and Nick Greiner about a decade ago.
Smaller, faster and cheaper is their theme; but so profound has been the scumbaggey,
I add "more effective", as the bankers have spent most of the budget on very, very few people, on projects of marginal or no viability, and on the never-never - too big, too slow, too late - and mainly ripping up one transit mode or another and putting down a flash new one producing greater cost, lower capacity and more congestion.
Go figure. I know that the old ways are the right ways.
In May ’17 Berejiklian told the National Press Club that she wants "fewer agreements, fewer points of contact between the two levels of government, less red tape, less prescriptive agreements, less overlap and more trust".
Trust? - who!
Lobbies used to say "evidence-based" before they became cowardice-based
A summary of reasons to rid NSW of GSC
ReviveBlueMountains’ finding was that the Council was wasting $190 million over the rating cycle; and Baird’s deliberate decision was to permit that continuing, breaching economic and ethical standards in this analyst’s opinion. Something similar though less explicit happened in East Gippsland, Darren Chester MP on the periphery.
Portland, Oregon, showed the world how to use information to guide citizens in recovering from local economic depression. GSC and Smart Cities says they will use metrics to improve decision-making in both government and private sectors. This is not possible in a State where all decisions are political, economically illiterate and inefficient in engineering.
Tom Lewcock, City Manager of Sunnyvale in California, was quoted by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler in Reinventing Government. Lewcock was regarded as a leading reformer in municipal planning in America:
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One of the keys in government is to take things that aren't politically acceptable in the normal context and change the context - to create a different way for the decision makers to look at them … the very same issue often turns out to be politically acceptable.
In the right environment, all of the myths about how elected officials behave have come falling down for me. They don't have to be short-range thinkers, they can be long-range thinkers. They don't have to be people who say, "I know this is more important than that but we're going to spend our time on that, because local constituents are on my back”. They don't have to be any of those things.
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Politicians seem to not know nowadays what questions to ask before they open their mouths. Professor Judith Sloan in Oct ’16 showed sympathy for generalist Ministers who face complex policy debates:
There was a time governments received advice that was well-researched and reasoned on a broad range of policy topics from outside government. There was a large number of university-based research centres and high-profile academics who were involved in policy debates. These days, most academic economists are narrowly focused and deliberately shy away from any involvement in public policy debate. Their strong incentives are to publish in prestigious international journals and to keep their heads down.
We are worse off for the competition of ideas being so much weaker. The debate is dominated by a small number of well-funded outfits undertaking pseudo-research and peddling the case for higher taxes and spending and more regulation.
News and Fairfax have abandoned such logic even though they had espoused them under better editors and correspondents. GSC said they'd be "metrics based", but in meekly succumbing to Berejiklian's manipulations, they have destroyed the credibility of evidentiary and analytical integrity, contra Christie, Eddington and me.
Plagiarism, stupidity, destruction of public ethics - why I'm doing this
In 2012 iNSW and iA started to really stuff-up strategic studies and I had had enough of Mike Baird and plagiarism and broken promises. I started to look at every planning situation to see what I could do and that became “Save Sydney”. It is now a massive trove of IP, with worthy ideas for better ways forward, and I am going to promote its persona. (The elections would lead a sensible PM to a Damascus moment.)
I work back from outcomes to evidence then forwards. That produces radically different results to ideological, simplistic let’s-do-that snap judgements by people with inadequate educations, experience and nous, and sometimes lunatic inclinations.
The first produces successful reform as in Newcastle. The latter, waste and stupidity on historically absurd scales as with the Baird/Berejiklian/Turnbulls cabal's.
I have experienced grievous plagiarism while watching political cheats allocating $100 million to pet consultants for a small, corrupt camouflage exercise. It is time to bring the backroom manipulators to account.
That’s the way it is. I’m still with Menzies' ethics (shared by every PM up to Turnbull) and Eddington, Christie and Gordon Messiter – the Feds and NSW are looking at a credibility precipice, also facing tsunamis of moral condemnation arising from plagiarism.
ex-PM Turnbull left a shambles, NSW needs a "Rescue Plan"
Experts Vs inexpert politicians & political cadres
Robert Gibbons
Lead urban scholar in Sydney University 1971-78 to M Ec - urban politics, economics and governance (Sydney and Chicago etc). In Merit List of 9 out of 10 courses, first or second in 7, M Ec at High Distinction level.
Manager Planning Coordination and later Executive Director Planning & Projects in NSW Transport
General Manager in NSW Commercial Services
Leader of reform of the Electricity Commission and AGL
Reforming General Manager of Newcastle City Council on the closure of steelmaking
Executive Business Analyst in Council on the Cost of Government
Policy Manager in State Development
Lead consultant Rockdale 2020+ - new pier, marina, pool, international hotel and F6 option.
Author of “Creative Reconstruction of NSW Local Governance”, “Case to Pause the Metros”, ReviveBlueMountains (main citizen-led UK-style 360o regional study in Australia), “Greater Sydney from the Centre”, “Revitalise Sydney”, “Myths about Value Capture”, “Faux Amalgamations”, and “Eddington Bedrock: from Christie to Greiner to Gibbons”.
This work is part of a broader “Saving Sydney” suite which was offered to then Premier Baird and PM in Dec ’15, Jan ’16 and Nov ’16; and to Premier-elect Berejiklian and PM Turnbull in Jan ’17, and regularly, and PM Morrison in Sept '18 and Treasurer Frydenberg in Dec '18 (MYEFO), as the transport/land use planning, local government, community disruption, port and financing/taxation crises escalated. All were mute and recused, all disinterested in Menzies morality.
Just received the Premier's latest must-dos, now how do we do it!
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