The first is at the Westin Hotel in Martin Place and costs $1900 a table for
non-members (plus GST). The second, to be held in the glittering surrounds of
the Teachers Club in Surry Hills, is free.
It’s unlikely the organisers of the events chose different
nights so guests could attend both. But they do have a few things in common.
They might have some of the same winning entries. And the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, is guest of honour at the former
function, while last year the latter named an award after him: the Frank Sartor Destruction of Community Award.
The Toasters are the idea of the Greens MP, Sylvia Hale.
Nominations have not yet closed and there’s a strong field. The Aussie Home
Loans chief, John Symond, has been proposed for Most Environmentally Damaging
Development, for the mansion that swallowed Point Piper. He faces stiff
competition from Lend Lease and the Catholic Church for the Spring Cove housing
estate at Manly.
The Urban Taskforce is an interesting Sydney phenomenon. Not a taskforce at all,
it’s an industry group set up in competition with three existing groups in 1999
to improve the relationship between big developers and the Labor Party. Its
founding patron was Neville Wran.
The relationship between this state’s developers and its
government is a key element of what might be called the political business
model. Developers appear to pay political donations to government to get the
access they need to stay in business. Some might survive without making
pay-offs, but most seem to think they should. In 2004-05, at least 164
development companies contributed a total of $1.4 million to state Labor.
According to the Greens’ wonderful website,
democracy4sale.org, this makes developers the largest donor group by far after
the unions. Clubs and hotels, often thought of as having significant influence
on government, contributed a mere $203,600. (Fairfax, publisher of this
newspaper, gave $2475.)
Access is particularly important to the property industry
because its members live and die depending on government zoning and regulatory
decisions affecting land use. Perhaps no other industry is so dependent for its
daily survival on the decisions of government. Few others of its size operate
in such an uncertain environment, where so much activity depends on how a vast
range of often changing regulations will be interpreted by bureaucrats and
their political masters.
In practice, thanks to policies such as urban consolidation,
zoning is one of the last examples of the rationing of something many people
desperately want. Whenever this occurred in the past, as with bans on gambling
or various forms of sexual behaviour, corruption resulted. In the 1960s people
had to pay off politicians if they wanted to run a casino. Now it appears as if
they have to pay political donations to build almost anything.
The great conceptual leap that’s occurred is that the
process has been brought out into the open and legalised. Sometimes the safest
place to hide something is where everyone can see it.
The more government decisions involved in a process, the
more a business person will feel the need to ensure access. Ironically, given
the Greens’ good work in publicising political pay-offs, many of the layers of
regulation developers now have to deal with were created by environmentalists.
The proposed “biodiversity bank” will add to their number.
Environmentalists often ask why we have all these laws if government flouts
them so often.
The model applies to local government, too. A small
developer has told me how an official of the local Labor Party branch will call
just after an entrepreneur has lodged a development application to ask if he
“needs any help with the paperwork”.
If this account seems to be sympathetic to developers, it’s
because they deserve some sympathy. Naturally they’d rather not have to pay
government in order to do business. But things have to be built, money must be
made. We pass this way only once, and have to play by the rules as we find
them.
The model involves many ex-Labor politicians acting for
developers, but this is not just a Labor phenomenon. The Coalition is as keen
to accept money from developers as Labor.
It’s not as if the political class was short of a quid or
two. Not only does it extract political donations from businesses (and
therefore all their customers), it funds much of its campaign costs from the
public purse. After the state election of 2003 we gave politicians $10.3
million.
Why were these public payments introduced to Australia by
NSW in 1981? To stop political parties needing private donations. They are a
gift from the people, made with the intention of cleaning up our political
process, which our political representatives have abused.
As well as campaign funding, there is another form of public
funding, known quaintly as the Political Education Fund, which goes to every
party annually. The total for all state parties is about $1.6 million a year.
Expenditure of this money has little to do with political education.
It’s a sad fact that government in this state involves a
business model based on a legal form of payola.
Any readers concerned about this might like to have a look
at democracy4sale.org. It makes harrowing reading.
Source: Payola:
a state-sanctioned business model
Mentioned in Article: http://www.democracy4sale.org/
2005 Bad Developer Awards Slide show: http://www.sylvia.nsw.greens.org.au/specials/bda2005/img1.html
Nomination form for the 2006 Bad Developer Awards: www.sylvia.nsw.greens.org.au