Keneally budget delivers for the big end of town
 
Media release: 8 June 2010
 
Premier Kristina Keneally and Treasurer Eric Roozendaal have delivered
a budget for the big end of town, according to Greens NSW MP and
Treasury spokesperson John Kaye.
 
Dr Kaye said: “Developer donors to the ALP have received a big windfall
from this budget.
 
“The benefits from the big ticket items in the NSW 2010-2011 budget
flow almost entirely to the big end of town.
 
“The cost of this largesse has been borne by real cuts to important
areas of education and community services.
 
“Treasurer Roozendaal and his department can take no credit for the
$773 million surplus. Increased activity in the NSW property market has
driven up revenue, highlighting to on-going vulnerability of the NSW
budget to global economic circumstances.
 
“Treasurer Roozendaal is squandering the opportunities of an economic
recovery. Real cuts in spending on important areas such as public
education will impose untold long term social costs on this state.
 
Developer gain, community pain
 
“Developers have received a massive boost. Treasurer Roozendaal pushed
the industry’s products to the front of the housing market delivering
windfall profits.
 
“Capping developer contribution levies will hamstring local councils
and inflict poorly serviced new developments onto lower income
homebuyers.
 
“This is a further blow to an already over-stretched local government
sector.
 
“Treasurer Roozendaal is pushing the state towards a two-tiered housing
sector.
 
“Pumping up the developer model is an irresponsible move that will only
contribute to another housing bubble, further pricing people on modest
incomes out of the market.
 
Keneally government abandons public education
 
“While NSW government funding for private schools continues to run well
ahead of inflation, Treasurer Roozendaal delivered cuts in real terms to
service funding in both public schools and TAFE colleges.
 
“NSW’s Independent and Catholic schools, already exceptionally well
funded by the Commonwealth government, will see their state subsidies
jump by 4.9 percent, which equates to a 2 percent increase in real
terms.
 
“The same budget cuts public school recurrent funding by 0.6 percent
and TAFE by a savage 1.3 percent in real terms.
 
“The state’s public education budget has lost $73.16 million, while
private schools have gained $16.6 million.
 
“Treasurer Roozendaal has made life much harder for public school and
TAFE students while continuing to prop up luxury conditions in wealthy
private schools.
 
Roads given priority over public transport
 
“The massive $2.8 billion being sunk into major capital works on roads
dwarfs the $655 million slated for development of the rail network in
2010/11.
 
“The Keneally government continues to undermine the importance of
public transport and bikeways.
 
Community to bear pain from developer and big business handouts
 
“The major beneficiaries of the move to across the board cuts to
payroll tax are large corporations. The lost revenue will undermine the
delivery of services.
 
“The Greens support cutting payroll tax for small to medium sized
business. Treasurer Roozendaal is using the tax system to pump up the
profits of large corporations at the expense of the community.
 
Poor priorities on job creation
 
“Spending $75 million chasing 1,500 defence jobs at a special precinct
in north-western Sydney amounts to $30,000 per job created.
 
“Defence has always offered a poor employment return on investment. It
locks the workers into an inflexible industry.
 
“While squandering $75 million on low return defence projects, the
Keneally government struggled to muster $21.7 million for major
renewable energy projects, where the real job creation of the future
will occur.
 
Risk of further privatisation
 
“The Keneally government is risking the future of the budget bottom
line by sacrificing the revenue from enterprises slated for sell
-off.
 
“The budget continues the myth that electricity privatisation is an
urgent priority while failing to acknowledge the important contributions
of publicly owned retailers and generators to the budget,” Dr Kaye
said.
 
For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
 
 
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Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: “Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels.”

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts. Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said.

Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: “Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products – livestock now consumes much of the world’s crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides.”

Both energy and agriculture need to be “decoupled” from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found.

Achim Steiner, the UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UNEP, said: “Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation.”

The panel, which drew on numerous studies including the Millennium ecosystem assessment, cites the following pressures on the environment as priorities for governments around the world: climate change, habitat change, wasteful use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilisers, over-exploitation of fisheries, forests and other resources, invasive species, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, lead exposure, urban air pollution and occupational exposure to particulate matter.

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday.

Last year the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said that food production would have to increase globally by 70% by 2050 to feed the world’s surging population. The panel says that efficiency gains in agriculture will be overwhelmed by the expected population growth.

Prof Hertwich, who is also the director of the industrial ecology programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that developing countries – where much of this population growth will take place – must not follow the western world’s pattern of increasing consumption: “Developing countries should not follow our model. But it’s up to us to develop the technologies in, say, renewable energy or irrigation methods.”