Where's Gareth?

Stuffing up Australia's Premier City is serious business

The photo above was taken before Chris Lock, Deputy Director General, Transport for NSW disappeared into his bunker in April. Chris Lock is the doddery old fart pointing at the map, which is being attacked by his "guys" with different coloured textas. But where is Gareth? Our anonymous departmental Wiki-leaker could be anyone, even Chris Lock.

O'Farrell launched his preemptive strike, a blitzkrieg, on the people of the Eastern Suburbs on December 13th, 2012, a date that will live in infamy. There was no proclamation and no consultation in advance. Business in Anzac Parade, Kensington and Kingsford, and in Belmore Road, Randwick and in west Surry Hills and of course Devonshire Street, opened as usual on 13 December totally unaware that the O'Farrell government had been plotting in secret for months to devastate the businesses that they had built up over years and in many cases was the foundation of their superannuation.

They would not be told until April the next year that the O'Farrell government would not respond to any criticism of the "Project" and would not allow any changes. Subsequently, all attempts to obtain more details, even using "freedom of information" requests and Questions with Notice in Parliament, were met with the response that a brochure containing the deliberately vague maps shown in the header, had fully disclosed the Government's plans.

Within two days of the release of the brochure, on December 15th, Gareth made a revision to the Wikipedia article on Anzac Parade, inserting the information that the O'Farrell Government would be proceeding with the light rail project. Seven minutes later, WWGT (an acronym for Wrong Way Go Back) deleted two bytes. Wikipedia uses a global clock to archive revisions. They evidently work in the same office - is WWGB Gareth's supervisor? And they evidently work for Transport for NSW. They have leaked information on the names of stops and other things, that had not been made public, and the information has proven chillingly correct.

On 30 June, Gareth was activated again, setting up a new article on the CBD and South East Light Rail. Since then Gareth and WWGB have made 13 revisions, taking down information that challenges the department's assertions and leaking additional speculation from the department. Information on the history of light rail projects in the article is patently untrue, but hasn't been taken down.

Gareth and WWGB have made contributions on other articles about light rail over the last few years. Public Servants spend a lot of time with absolutely nothing to do. They are light-rail zealots and they work for Transport for NSW. There is nothing wrong with being light-rail zealots, but they work for Transport for NSW, i.e., they are deliriously incompetent.