David Rood
State Political Correspondent
May 19, 2011




http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/baillieu-government-cant-account-for-savings-2...

This is the same John Brumby who forced the police to release incorrect crime stats before an election.

The same Brumby that arrested people on their own land.

The same Brumby that built a de-salination plant that is in mothballs and has every Victorian in debt for over a decade to the tune of billions of dollars.

The same Brumby that wrote blank, un-dated cheques whilst in caretaker Government against the rules to carry favours to try and win the election.

The same Brumby that said he wouldn't resign if he lost the election and then when he lost...resigned from politics.


Just checking, we're talking about the same guy right??

Sounds a great bloke. As straight as a boomerang.

Did you say debt?
A de-sal plant that nobody wants nor needs and we're lumbered with the cost.

Frankly the guy was a fking idiot.



BRUMBY TRIPLES VICTORIAN DEBT TO $39BN
Sadly, the Victorian Labor government again has proved that it is possible to describe black as white and get away with.

The media, almost without exception, has declared that Victoria is in surplus when the truth of the matter is the state is back on a debt path that will parallel the efforts of John Cain and Joan Kirner in a few short years.

Jeff Kennett inherited state debt of $33 billion from Labor in 1992, plus an overall deficit approaching $2 billion. After a remarkably successful austerity and rejuvenation program, which is precisely what Greece needs now, Kennett handed Steve Bracks and John Brumby total debt of only $12 billion in 1999. The biggest contributor was a world-leading $33 billion privatisation program.

The first eight years of Victorian Labor managed to keep debt steady (see bar chart here, at $12 billion-$13 billion, largely because its spending spree was financed by running down the $1 billion-plus overall Budget surplus (that’s after capital spending). It also helped riding the credit bubble by using off-balance financing vehicles for key infrastructure projects such as ConnectEast, the Royal Children’s Hospital and the world’s second biggest desalination plant.

With PPPs now under severe pressure in a post-GFC world, the challenge for all state governments is delivering key infrastructure investment without building unsustainable debt burdens for future generations.

Tuesday’s Victorian Budget include claims of an $872 million “surplus” predicted for 2010-11, but this only covers operating activities and ignores infrastructure investment.

The reality is that debt will rise by another $3 billion in 2010-11 and is now expected to hit a whopping $39 billion by 2014, as Terry McCrann politely pointed out in Wednesday’s Herald Sun.

Treasury Corporation of Victoria, the state’s central debt management authority, is not exactly being open and transparent about this.

The federal government’s equivalent body reveals every single bond issue (see full list here) and loudly declares that total debt has ballooned $138.58 billion on its home page.

Yet TCV is still yet to reveal anything on its website about the funding challenge identified in the fine print of the state Budget. This is the equivalent of a public company not releasing its annual profit to the ASX.

The state-based media is not exactly pushing hard on this issue as most state government are equally tardy in their disclosures about debt.

Why are we in debt?
Ask John Brumby - bargain, thanks John.

"Not my problem guv, I've resigned"

$15.8 BILLION COST OF DE-SAL PLANT


VICTORIANS will pay an average $570 million a year for the next three decades to have the southern hemisphere's largest desalination plant - even if no water is needed.

Detail buried in a barrage of reports tabled in Parliament on Wednesday contained highly sensitive figures that the Brumby government has fought to keep secret: the real cost of the massive Wonthaggi plant, one of the largest public-private partnerships undertaken worldwide.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment report shows that in cash or nominal terms taxpayers will pay at least $15.8 billion to the Aquasure Consortium to operate and maintain the plant for 28 years after it begins operation at the end of 2011

According to the government's calculations, the so-called water security payment is equivalent in today's dollars to $4.6 billion. In all, the government says the plant will cost $5.7 billion in today's money for the construction and operation of the site.

Revelation of the payments comes at a difficult time for the government in a surprisingly wet election year that has allowed it to ease water restrictions but raised tricky questions about the cost of major water projects including desalination and the contentious north-south pipeline.

Now, with reservoirs filling and taxpayers liable for hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for desalination, doubters both without and within government are questioning whether the plant was a costly overreaction to Melbourne's water woes.

Last night Nationals leader Peter Ryan seized on the figures and demanded answers from the government. ''On the face of it this is a staggering obligation to which Melbourne Water ratepayers have been committed by John Brumby,'' he said.

He concluded that each year, on average, every Melbourne water ratepayer would pay $345. ''John Brumby has in effect signed up every household and business in Melbourne to a debt which averages about $9560. John Brumby must come clean. He has consistently refused to tell Victorians the magnitude of what he has done.''

After denouncing at the last election the opposition's plans for a desal plant one-third the size, Labor backflipped in mid-2007 as drought gripped the state and announced that Victoria needed a plant to avert a water disaster.

This week in Parliament Premier Brumby on Wednesday again refused to answer questions about the water security payment after Mr Ryan asked if it was in excess of $300 million a year, even if no water was delivered.

''When you build any capital project you have a stream of payments,'' Mr Brumby said.

''It is no different whether you buy a farm or you borrow $1 million to buy a house, you have a stream of payments that are associated with that. So it is with the desalination plant.''

Mr Brumby said the bid for the Wonthaggi plant ''went out to tender amongst some of the biggest and most effective and successful companies in the world. They bid for it; we chose the lowest price.''

In June Aquasure chairwoman Chloe Munro, when addressing a parliamentary committee, also would not say how large the payment was.

''The water security payment is an annual payment that is there because it recognises that the plant is being maintained to be in a condition capable of delivering water at any time,'' she said.

Ms Munro said the payment did not represent Aquasure's actual maintenance costs and said it was determined by a ''complex formula to arrive at that for each year and it allows for the passage of time and so forth''.

The project has been hit by bad weather and complaints from some local residents.

The Age reported in late August that construction of the plant was as much as three months behind schedule due to heavy rain and unforseen environmental problems.

Last month a senior government insider have told The Age that with hindsight the government would not opt for such a big desalination plant.

Among the investors in the project are an HSBC fund, Korean banks, a Japanese trading company, a subsidiary of French utility giant Suez Environnement and Australian investors Macquarie, Thiess and UniSuper.

More than 30 international and domestic banks are providing financing for the heavily geared project



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/desal-plant-a-570mayear-drain-20100916-15enu.html#ixzz1MqUf72Gq

buzzanddidj wrote on May 18^th, 2011 at 4:18pm:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/20/3222570.htm?site=melbourne

buzzanddidj wrote on May 20^th, 2011 at 10:26am:

buzzanddidj wrote on May 20^th, 2011 at 3:28pm:


She also made a commitment to no carbon tax . . . go figure!