NSW planning: Right wing and a prayer?

Given growing distrust over the nexus between decision making and political donations, the meteoric downfall of Frank Sartor, and public disdain for nearly every major development booked by the New South Wales Government in the last three years, newly-minted Planning Minister Kristina Keneally might have been hoping for a saintly fanfare. Instead the pilgrims are getting restless.

Little is known of Labor’s rising star, Kristina Keneally. She met her husband at World Youth Day in 1991. This year, she ran World Youth Day. Perhaps you recall the bubbly American proclaiming your joy in surrendering your rights for the Pope. Media commentators have identified her as belonging to “the Terrigals”, the power-hungry, right-wing sub-faction of NSW Labor that brought you Michael Costa, Joe Tripodi, Mark Arbib and Morris Iemma, for whom her husband was, until recently, Deputy Chief-of-Staff.

Keneally now inherits the PR-challenged Planning and Redfern-Waterloo ministries from fallen cement czar, Frank Sartor.

She described her new role as “one where you need to evaluate a variety of views and certainly it's one that requires both integrity and honesty”.

“It's something that the previous minister Frank Sartor had and I hope that the community sees that in me as well,” she said.

Under Sartor, section 3A of the Environmental Planning & Assessment Act became a source of near absolute power. Lord Mayor Clover Moore looks forward to working on her 2030 Vision for Sydney with Keneally, but wants corrective action taken in state parliament.

“The controversial legislative changes introduced by her predecessor need to be repealed so that multi-million dollar developments can't be approved behind closed doors without public accountability or contestability,” said Moore.

She maintains the panel of public review appointed hastily by Sartor fails, by its very nature, to restore public faith in sensitive planning decisions - especially now that “appeal rights have been virtually abolished”.

When claims of corruption first surfaced in the media earlier this year, discussion turned to technical and legal definitions before ex-Premier Morris Iemma chilled journalists with the spectre of legal action.

Moore maintains questions remain that Planning Minister Keneally needs to address as a matter of priority.

“This is a sensitive role in a high risk area of government, and in addition to disclosing donations, the government needs to reverse the disturbing and unnecessary concentration of planning power vested in the Minister with inadequate transparency.”

Barely a week into her role, Keneally did announce new disclosure laws.

Due to come into effect from October 1, they require anyone lodging or commenting on a D.A. to declare any political donations or gifts made in the previous two years.

Keneally promoted these as part of a post-Iemma culture shift, saying “they form just one part of the Rees Government's reform on political donations and it's all about bringing the process of donations in planning out into the open”.

But the initiative is not Keneally’s under Rees but Sartor’s under Iemma, prepared before his ejection from the ministry in early September.

And three days after Kenneally’s announcement, the NSW Greens have stolen her thunder, referring six development approvals made by her predecessor to ICAC. Three of these, claim the Greens, were granted contrary to departmental recommendations.

Rosecorp and Stockland are two of the parties named by Greens MP Sylvia Hale, with donations of $143,500 and $137,500 respectively made to NSW Labor while planning decisions were allegedly pending.

Hale is critical of the choice of Ms Keneally for Planning Minister.

“With Mr Sartor removed from the Ministry there was an opportunity for Labor to appoint a new Minister with no connections to developers and their donations,” said Hale. “Ms Kenneally is the wrong choice for this portfolio. Her appointment suggests that while the faces may have changed, the system hasn’t. Political donations will continue to corrupt the state’s planning system.”

Research by Norman Thompson, director of the Greens Democracy4Sale research project, identified Ms Keneally as receiving donations from Frank Sartor’s campaign as well as developers and hoteliers during the lead up to the March 2007 elections. At the same time, her campaign was making donations to candidates of the ALP left faction - Carmel Tebbutt, Verity Firth, but most notably over $21,000 to Sydney ALP candidate Linda Scott, whose platform proclaimed non-contamination by donations from developers and hoteliers.

“One thing to be aware of is that many candidates raise money through the parties’ head offices,” said Thompson. “Labor candidates started doing it in 2007 and more probably will from now on. It hides the money trail.”

Hence, tens of thousands of dollars in disclosed donations are small change, creating a false sense of transparency.

“For example,” continues Thompson, “Iemma and Sartor had huge money-raising dinners in the lead up to the 2007 election. The net from Sartor's was over $700,000 and the net from Iemma's was over $900,000. None of that money shows up in their individual returns - it was reported by Sussex St.”

Answering generally, the Pacific director of NGO Transparency International concurred that opacity feeds distrust, saying that “without disclosing the source and amount of political donation, people cannot judge whether there is a conflict of interest in the public procurement of projects granted”.

No textbook corruption - “here is my money, where is my favour?” - has been proven with regard to any sitting Labor, or Liberal MP, in the current parliament. But when major construction firms donate half a million dollars to both sides of parliament, it begs the question “where do the failures in democracy lie?” In an individual legally demonstrable to have acted corruptly, or in a process so clouded by potential for bias and antisocial outcomes that nobody can be blamed for doubting its legitimacy?

Substantive questions remained unanswered by the Minister’s office and the Department of Premier and Cabinet at the time of going to press.