Piers Akerman: Voting Labor will demolish all the good work

With good reason, Christchurch’s sickening terrorist atrocity dampened electioneering in NSW this weekend. But with pre-polling underway, it is more ­important than ever that voters understand the choice they make, Piers Akerman writes.

• Voters need to face reality or suffer the consequences
• Voters get sinking feeling they still can’t trust Labor

With good reason, Christchurch’s sickening terrorist atrocity dampened electioneering in NSW this weekend.

But with pre-polling underway for next Saturday’s vote, it is more ­important than ever that voters understand the choice they make.

There is one overarching reality attached to this election and that is a key determinant, the redevelopment of the Sydney Football Stadium, has been attacked by Labor and its Green-Left fellow travellers with a campaign based on outrageous lies.

Most voters don’t seem to have an understanding of the issue, which suits commentators at the former Fairfax media and the ABC. The lie, like Labor’s outrageous false Mediscare campaign, relies on dupes like Peter FitzSimons who for months has been peddling absolute garbage about the planned redevelopment without regard for the facts.

NSW Labor leader Michael Daley on the campaign trail. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

In his ill-informed attempt to block the long overdue overhaul of the football stadium, FitzSimons has tried to paint the Moore Park facility as a haven for rich eastern suburbs types who are being gifted a new facility at the expense of long-suffering lower income voters in Western Sydney and other parts of the state.

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The facts so notably absent from FitzSimons’ writing are actually not hard to find.

First, it is important to understand that the stadium has been recognised internationally as a death trap. It just doesn’t have the exit facilities necessary to service its audience. Second, but fiscally important, its poor access makes it a very expensive venue for events which would produce revenues for the state.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian deserves a change to keep NSW going forward, Piers Akerman writes. Picture: AAP/Joel Carrett

For the record here are the readily available facts prepared by Infrastructure NSW.

Doing the minimum refurbishment of the current stadium would require $714.5 million for a relatively poor outcome. A rebuilt stadium for $729 million would last for an estimated 50 years and deliver materially improved financial results.

Labor has claimed that this money would be better spent on other infrastructure but the Berejiklian government is already spending more on roads and hospitals and other infrastructure than any other NSW government.

Should Labor win office next Saturday you can safely bet that its ministers will be fighting each other to stand front and centre when the new Berejiklian government constructions are completed and opened.

Michael Daley may strike voters as a different sort of politician but he’s not. He’s been part of the dud union-controlled Labor Party man-and-boy and has clawed his way up through the sordid ranks of local government and into Macquarie Street along a familiar and distasteful route.

Next Saturday, voters will decide whether to keep NSW going forward or throw it into reverse.