Keneally
devised a plan to ‘compensate’ Sydney University for its `loss’ of the Callan Park opportunity as Planning
minister, by offering it the North
Eveleigh site in Redfern, which had been prepared for tender. She
convened a meeting with the university’s Professor Richmond Jeremy to discuss
this option within two weeks of becoming
minister. This deal was to be subject to some ‘separation in time’ so that the two issues wouldn’t seem related.
Callan Park was to be a political
gift for Firth (MP for Balmain) and North Eveleigh one for Carmel Tebbutt (MP for Marrickville).
Keneally had quietly set up a parallel process to the
Redfern—Waterloo Authority’s (RWA) publicly stated process of taking the North Eveleigh site to market. By October she
had arranged for negotiations to occur between the university
and the NSW coordinator-general’s office, after David
Richmond had been sidelined from his position.This was done
without any advice to the RWA or its board, which continued to implement the
pre-existing Cabinet decision to put the site up for sale by
open, competitive tender. She wrote to the university on the issue
without bothering to inform the
relevant authorities.
The problem with this arrangement was that the North
Eveleigh site had been prepared for the market and was valued at about $100 million.
Cabinet had also approved the proceeds of the North Eveleigh sale to go towards a major
upgrade of Redfern Station.
Sources
reveal that the university was only prepared to pay some $30 million, and so the ‘deal’ didn’t go ahead.
Obviously the punctilious Roy Wakelin King (CEO of the Redfern—Waterloo
Authority) never found a way to justify this potential $70 million loss
in sale revenue for his boss.
The North Eveleigh proposal was poor policy. The
university’s use of the precinct would have been an under-utilisation of a key site for urban consolidation, a policy that can only be
achieved with the use of such strategic
spaces. As well, it would have cost the state money, for no public
benefit.
By
July 2011, the government had still not resolved the transfer issues concerning
Callan Park with Leichhardt Council …
though its concept
plan (lodged by the RWA before Keneally became minister) was approved by her in early 2009, thereby making
the site ready for market.
Source: The Fog on the Hill – How NSW Labor Lost its Way
by Frank Sartor Melbourne University Press 2011 pp120-122
Note: This extract has been made using optical character recognition and
may contain some errors. It is provided for community comment and
debate. Please refer to the original book to ensure correct citation –
REDWatch