Misguided beliefs cost dearly in Newcastle rail plan

SMH Letters to the Editor

Photo: AAP

Where in the world would anyone close a heavy transport link without costing an adequate replacement, then spend $200,000 trying to discover who had leaked details to a long-suffering travelling public (“$220 million per km? Document leak casts doubt on rail plan”, September 21)?

NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance and his hapless Premier must wear the Captain Smith ineptitude award for this fiasco and their misguided belief in their always right “unsinkable” government.

Chester Meurant Keiraville

Revelations about the cost benefit analysis of the Sydney to Newcastle rail and light rail not being completed before the project was started is another nail in the coffin of the state government. This coffin will eventually have so much metal in it that the only way to lift it into its very big hole will be by a crane. Constance is prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on weeding out someone who has a conscience and obviously puts NSW above the Liberal-National Party interests. He is not prepared, however, to do the job of a minister by being diligent in his duty to provide best practice when spending enormous amounts of taxpayer’s money.

Whoever is the leaker has done their own personal cost benefit analysis and knows that they can’t just walk away unlike the ministers in this government when they lose the next election.

Many projects undertaken by this and the previous state government have questionable costings, benefits and management practices. These may never be referred to ICAC as mismanagement and incompetence is not corruption. But who stands up for us? Where is our recourse? We can’t walk away.”

Read more of the letters on The Sydney Morning Herald.