Back-room boys still hold the real power

AFTER 13 years of Labor government, the people of NSW have in Nathan Rees a second premier they did not vote for, heading a cabinet whose members were selected by unelected Labor officials, promoting policies voters have never been asked to endorse.

And, contrary to the Budget speech delivered by Michael Costa on June 3, the state is broke. The Government was relying on the sale of the electricity sector to cushion it from the worst of the fiscal disaster it was presided over. Rees' claim to be responsible for the selection of his Cabinet is similarly hollow. ``I chose these people. This is my Cabinet,'' Rees said. But Karl Bitar (NSW Labor general secretary) did the process, he worked the factional numbers, balanced the incomings and outgoings, nailed together the wretched raft on which the Labor Government now relies. Maybe he let Rees allocate actual portfolios. In the background, Unions NSW boss John Robertson, another unelected figure, can look at the wreckage of the parliamentary Labor Party and take credit for using his muscle at the state Labor conference to undermine the overdue reform of the electricity sector and initiate the process that swept Iemma from power. While it is easy to point to the incompetence of the Carr government, which received record revenues from stamp duty on property transactions, and from the GST, and even easier to point to the dysfunctionality of the Iemma government, it must be noted that little has really changed over the past four days, despite the headlines. First it must be recognised that the overwhelming majority of Cabinet members were members of the previous cabinet and some date back to the Carr years. Just six are first-timers. Given that the most senior positions have been given to the old lags, there can be no real expectation of change no matter what Rees says. The Sussex St boyos and John Robertson will make sure of that. There may be a blizzard of new promises but they, too, will end up in the same maelstrom of mismanagement that has seen millions frittered away on the scandalous Tcard fiasco. Mention a state government department, any department, and there will be howls of protest. Health? Waiting lists are longer than they were when Carr promised to quit should they grow longer. DOCS? One tragedy after another. Land? Scandal after scandal. Planning? The same. Education? Excuse after excuse. Transport? How long do we have to detail the cover-ups? Department after department, minister after minister, empty apologies, wordy explanations and the bottom line has always been no change. For not only does NSW suffer under what must surely be the worst performing government since the convicts landed at Farm Cove, a gallery consisting largely of the same senior public servants has reigned since the days of Carr. To say that Labor has politicised the state public service would be too kind, Labor has all-but captured the senior public servants and made them members of the club. Labor's ferocious persecution of public service whistleblowers has cowed most into subservience but more than a few have willingly gone along with the ALP's ever downward spiralling standards. The public is entitled to ask why Treasury officials like secretary John Pearce failed to point out the clear flaws and obvious untruths in the NSW Budget three months ago; why Health officials have failed to alert the public to the inadequacies of their department; why Transport officials have continued to find excuses for their endemic failures. The people of NSW deserve a better government. The sight of Rees humiliatingly waiting for lists of possible Cabinet members to be delivered from full-time party officials and unelected union chiefs was reminiscent of the famous ``36 faceless men'' photograph of former federal leaders Gough Whitlam and Arthur Calwell waiting outside Canberra's Hotel Kingston in 1963 for the Labor Party's 36-man federal executive to deliver Labor's policy on the US base at North West Cape in WA. Costa was an agent of reform, as was Iemma, but they were effectively executed by the unelected last Friday. Will the new Premier have to attend weekly meetings of Unions NSW to discover what policies he will be expected to deliver? NSW, once the proud Premier State, now reeks of political squalor. Its tarnished, recycled Cabinet cannot be taken seriously. The people of NSW deserve a new election and a root-and-branch clean-out of the crippled public service to restore confidence in the state's administration.