Daniel Wills: Gillman land deal collapse leaves Government on shaky ground
THE Gillman land deal has been a car crash in slow motion for three years, and on Tuesday it finally hit the wall.
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THE Gillman land deal has been a car crash in slow motion for three years, and on Tuesday it finally hit the wall.
Despite the consistent denials of the State Government and frequent reassurances that the troubled Gillman land deal was on track, the inevitable conclusion has been realised in its collapse.
Premier Jay Weatherill has now been forced to return to the drawing board and will take the land out to tender in the way his critics say the Government should have done on day one.
Seeking to downplay the obvious embarrassment of the failure of a $100 million deal that was promised as a jobs saviour, Mr Weatherill yesterday said nothing was lost in the process.
“We’re now the proud owners of some swamp. Nothing’s lost, we still have the land,” he said.
But that is transparently not true.
The Government has burnt three years of public sector time and the patience of investors on a project that has now collapsed. Taxpayers have handed over an unspecified amount of money, understood to be about $2.2 million, in legal costs to the companies which brought court cases.
The State Government’s brand as being one able to handle possible investments and the transfer of public assets has also been battered, and must make others now think twice.
Politically, the Government has now lost paint on two fronts. Not only have its credentials as economic managers and deal makers taken a hit, at a time when it is launching a multi-decade plan for the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site, public trust has also taken a battering.
Like the Families SA Royal Commission and the disaster currently unspooling in the state’s energy market, Labor has again been mugged by a brutal and pitiless reality.
The next time voters are told that all is well with a particular development or that the Government has flashy plans to create thousands of jobs, they will be quickly forgiven for reflecting on the wreckage of Gillman and wondering why they should believe a single word.