North West Metro - Garbage In Garbage Out

When it comes to the North West Metro no one quite knows if it's on the agenda or not.

While next month's NSW mini-budget may be the final nail in the coffin for the project, Premier Nathan Rees reassures us that it's still on the agenda - right up until it's not.  Meanwhile, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd denies allegations he told Rees to leave it off his funding wish-list because it wouldn't win votes.

In June this year the NSW Government sent a 70-page submission to Infrastructure Australia's infrastructure audit and I can only assume IA can't be very happy with it.  If I was conducting an infrastructure audit to catalogue all of Australia's existing infrastructure and came across a state government submission that didn't actually contain a list of existing infrastructure, I'd be peeved too.  The submission doesn't even acknowledge the existence of the Harbour Bridge.  Most of the submission is made up of motherhood statements outlining NSW's infrastructure plans, priorities and pinch points.  They do emphasise that they have committed to the North West Metro and that it will ease congestion.  Can we have $12bn please?


Meanwhile, with the upheaval in the NSW ministry and the revelation of the billion dollar black hole, NSW Premier Nathan Rees is "stepping back from the [North West Metro] project."   Since then he has announced a November mini-budget to bring the State's finances under control.  He has emphasised a couple of times that the NW Metro hasn't been ruled in or out.  Clearly they will be playing their cards very close to their chests until the mini-budget is released.  In fact, they probably don't really know what cards they hold until the NSW Treasury tells them, so ten out of ten for plausible deniability on that one.

The next shock came last week when the Sydney Morning Herald reported that NSW has submitted a key funding wish-list to IA and the NW Metro wasn't on the list.  The SMH then submitted a theory that Rudd refused to consider funding the project because there were no marginal seats along its route; A theory quickly picked up by the Hills district local paper - Hills News.  Hills News went on to quote a government spokesperson saying that the metro was left off the list because it was already fully funded by the government.  However, the Camden Advertiser used the same quote to lament the South West Rail Link being left off the list; This project being on the other side of the city.  Clearly people are emoting too much to listen to spokespeople.

Then there's IA's opinion on the matter.   Infrastructure Co-ordinator, Michael Deegan, weighed in last week on the matter of the infrastructure audit submissions.  According to Deegan, the overall quality of submissions, excluding the Nigerian scams thrown into the mix, were pretty poor.  Very few, he said, followed the guidelines to provide a cost benefit analysis and national economic impact statement.  Having read the NSW submission, I'd have to agree.

The whole matter makes me think Nathan Rees has two very large paper trays on his desk, but instead of 'In' and 'Out' his are labelled 'Garbage In' and 'Garbage Out'.