Surry Hills routed

The Minister for Transport told a packed community meeting in April 2013: "No matter which route we chose it would cause disruption to people who lived in that street. Its true." You can see her saying this in the video in the bottom panel. This was deceptive. There are routes that do not create a killing field for pedestrians, do not grid-lock the arterial roads between the Eastern Suburbs and the rest of Sydney south of the Harbour and do not degrade every bus service to the CBD. The meeting asked for a professional Feasibility Study which has never taken place.

I wrote to the Minister the next day outlining a route that had none of the obvious flaws of her project. You can read my letter here. Nothing has changed with the route I described. I will outline it in more detail in this blog which has the advantage of pictures than expand to full size when you click on them.

Hazzard warning

O'Farrell on election day

O'Farrell appointed the Manly-educated Brad Hazzard as Minister of Planning and Infrastructure upon his election on March 28 2011. Brad Hazzard you may recall had admitted that his testimony to  the Independant Commission against Corruption was false along with Greiner but had not suffered any sanction. Within a few months he made amendments to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 which took force on October 1st.

The amendments provided for projects to be declared State Significant Development, State Significant Infrastructure or Critical State Significant Infrastructure. Projects so declared would be approved by the Planning Minister without anyone having any right for judicial review by the Land and Environment Court - not even democratically-elected Councils. Randwick Council objected to the tram terminus in High Cross Park in their submission to the EIS and maintained their objection in their response to Preferred Infrastructure Report which finally revealed that the arterial road into Coogee would be reduced to one lane. They had no say in the matter.

Baird has appointed Hazzard Attorney General and he has called on the Director of Public Prosecutions to launch actions against witnesses who gave false testimony to the ICAC. There must be a statute of limitations.

Critical State Significant Infrastructure

Deputy Director General TfNSW Chris Lock

A few days after his disastrous appearance at the community forum at Sydney High School Chris Lock received a rapturous reception at a Randwick Businessmen's breakfast. If they had served Kool-aid it would have been lapped up. Only now are the burghers of Randwick realising what they are being forced to sign up for. Following the breakfast Chris Lock would become a recluse and the Minister for Transport would refuse to answer any questions in Parliament on the light rail project.

At the community forum the Minister said you can criticise me but do not attack the Public Servants. The Minister would put herself beyond criticism. On 20 May 2013 Hazzard declared the CSELR proposal to be State Significant Infrastructure and critical State Significant Infrastructure. The letters received a month earlier from me and others pointing out the obvious flaws in the project which was just a line of dots on a crudely drawn map (shown in the header to this blog) would be ignored; the Public Servants and their consultants would be free to write a deceptive EIS containing contradictory descriptions. The Minister was answerable to no-one.

Only a change of government on 28 March 2015 can save the City of Sydney from catastrophe.