Barangaroo rush shows government is doomed

CRITICS of the Barangaroo project have always said the government would do anything to get bulldozers ripping up concrete before the election.

Yesterday's decision by the Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, proves them right.

If ever there was a decision that shows the government has given up trying to win the election, and maintaining a semblance of good governance, this is it.

After all, a big reason the government will almost certainly be demolished at the polls is the entrenched perception it is in bed with developers and has hijacked the planning system to suit their ends.

More recently it has made some attempts to redress that perception, including banning donations from developers, but Kelly's order will unravel that work and leave a stench hanging over one of the biggest urban renewal projects in the country.

Above all else, it is the timing of yesterday's move that condemns the government.

As Jeremy Kirk, counsel for the anti-Barangaroo forces, told the Land and Environment Court, the claim against the government was filed on November 26, more than three months ago. If the minister had an honestly held view that the planning laws on remediation should not apply to Barangaroo, then that was the time to do something. And if not then why not in December, or January, or even early February, when the first of six days of hearings began?

To wait until yesterday, until the judgment is largely written and due to be delivered in 48 hours, simply destroys any faith one might have in the independence of the minister.

Kelly sought to justify his actions as overcoming a ''legal technicality'' but made no attempt to justify the timing.

The only conclusion a reasonable person could draw is the government knew it would lose the case and was simply not prepared to suffer another humiliating defeat and leave

the developer, Lend Lease, in the lurch.

After all, the Planning Department is still licking its wounds from its spectacular losses in the Catherine Hill Bay and Huntlee cases, when the Land and Environment Court found the department had acted unlawfully in approving huge housing estates for developers who had donated so generously to the Labor Party.

That it was the Environmental Defenders Office that represented community groups in those cases and that briefed Kirk in this matter would only have added to the government's fears.

Clearly the government wants to ensure the opposition will have little chance to revisit the Barangaroo development once earthmoving is under way without exposing itself to claims for serious compensation.

That is just one of the many parallels with the rushed and politically damaging sale of the electricity assets.

But in neither case has the once critical question been answered: why?