Newspoll: 59-41 to Coalition in NSW

The latest bi-monthly New South Wales state Newspoll result is about what you’d expect. Conducted through November and the first half of December, it has Labor’s primary vote down four points to 26 per cent, the Coalition up two to 44 per cent and the Greens vaulting five to an unprecedented 17 per cent. Labor’s primary vote equals the record low set in November-December last year, which is three points lower than the next worst ever major party result (as I illustrated at the time with this chart). The Coalition is up from 55-45 to 59-41 on a two-party measure that tells you less than the primary vote, due to optional preferential voting and a combined minor party and independent vote that exceeds Labor’s.

For all that, Kristina Keneally’s personal ratings are better than she might have feared. From a sample of the 637 most recent respondents, she leads Barry O’Farrell as preferred premier 35 per cent to 34 per cent, and more say she will be a better leader than Nathan Rees (24 per cent) than worse (16 per cent). The former ratings are about the same as Nathan Rees’s towards the end, but they have been achieved against an O’Farrell whose approval rating has improved six points to 44 per cent, with disapproval down seven to 30 per cent. Approval and disapproval ratings for Keneally are not provided.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

222 comments on “Newspoll: 59-41 to Coalition in NSW”

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  1. [what can the ALP do to save some furniture.A. Go hard on schools and hospitals, jobs? B. Be as quiet as possible to take out the heat or C. attack the opposition for lack of policies.
    My guess is B for next year, 6 months out switch to A and a bit of C]

    I suppose they’ll try all the above, fail miserably and head for a wipeout.

  2. Hamish Coffee

    The problem of the NSW ALP government is well known to anyone living in NSW, I know of a lot of people who will be voting Liberal for the first time in their life

    If you name something, they have screwed it up

    Cross city tunnell, they closed off city streets to force people to use the tunnell, leading to congestions in the city, government is being sue by developers for agreeing to close those street, and then reopening them. The operator has promise to never do business in Australia again

    Lack of rail infrastructure means gridlock in the north west – esp Paramatta road and Victoria road

    Lack of Power infrastructure means that electricity is expected to raise by 50% in 3 years

    Government agree to new Orange (?) hospital, but the floors does not have enough support for medical machinery, some operation room was too small, plan and hospital will have to be remade costing millions of dollars more

    Hospital nurses had to buy their own hospital supplies

    Rail time table was changed so they can say more trains are on time, instead of solving the problem, they used spin

    Rail maintenance corruption cost state millions of dollar more, no one looked at it for 15 years

  3. I think it is possible to conclude that the following are myths:

    1. Traditional Labor voters, feeling disappointed with Labor, will never vote Greens.
    2. Traditional Labor voters, feeling disappointed with Labor, would prefer to stay away from the booths or vote informal, rather than record a vote for Green or Liberal.

    There may be some people who will act like the myth dictates.
    1. Possibility up to 30%.
    2. Negligible and hardly measurable.

    In up to date news, projects for the $35million electorate stimulus package have finally been announced, albeit 2 weeks late.
    Unusually caucus (pronounced by the Premier as a slang term for the male organ followed by “us”), is meeting today. Interesting to see if she announces any plans today.

  4. I like Keneally’s accent.

    Yes, I saw the stimulus, called a Community Building Partnership isn’t it? It’s paying for a shade roof to be made and installed for my niece’s pre-school.

  5. dovif (and in answer to Hamish) – and you could add:

    1. Hugely expensive desalination plant that wasn’t needed (designed only to counter Debnam’s proposal, which had a “yuck” factor, but was perfectly safe)
    2. Garling commission of inquiry.
    3. Department of Community Services failures

    (I interpose that IMO the practice of blaming the minister every time an abused child dies or someone is mistreated by a hospital emergency room is very unfair, but it’s grist to the mill of an opposition.)

    4. The power fiasco, the only enduring effect of which has been to destroy the government’s standing in the polls. In particular, the timing of the announcement was egregiously cynical. Particularly after going to the 2007 election attacking Debnam on the basis of “Ooh the Libs will privatise stuff”.

    5. Other cynical stuff, like the timing of the abandonment of the new Spit crossing (5 weeks after an election?).

    6. The total waste of funds on the City Metro that should never be built and few people want or will use. The Darwin to Alice Springs Railway (itself no shining example of proper transport policy) cost about $1 billion for 1500 km of railway. The NSW Government can give us 7 km of white elephant railway for a mere 5 or 6 times the cost.

    7. The northwest railway/metro, which has been announced and pulled 3 times now, by my count. But who cares about those idiots in their McMansions, they don’t vote ALP anyway.

    8. The trains more generally, slowing down all timetables by 10-20 minutes over the route, so that trains now run on time.

    Ultimately, state government is about quality of life issues. In my view, the one thing that REALLY p’s people off is sitting in traffic. Realistically, if you live and work in 70% of Sydney and your commute is greater than about 10 km, it is likely that you spend a considerable amount of time every week stuck in traffic or sitting on a bus or train going nowhere. Obviously it doesn’t affect Hamish Coffee and in fairness I wouldn’t have a clue where he lives, but I make the point that the swinging voters in the critical marginal seats surrounding Sydney (Miranda, Menai, Camden, Wollondilly, Blue Mountains, Penrith, Riverstone and Londonderry) do grapple with this issue. It’s not easy to get to Parramatta from Narellan or from Llandilo to Bankstown or from Lugarno to the CBD or from Blaxland to Uni of NSW. Unless you have a car and a high degree of patience.

    Transport is the real retail politics quality of life question – which affects more Sydney residents on more days than any other issue. And having completely stuffed up the last two transport PPPs (CCT and Lane Cove) and crying poor over the budget (help us Kevin, please!), the current government has shown no aptitude for fixing it.

    The few proposals they can generate seem, to say the least, politically motivated (the CBD metro could-have-but-now-won’t save Verity Firth, and the pie in the sky Western Metro extension of the CBD Metro, the proponents of which include identities not a million miles away from the NSW ALP).

  6. Here’s my favourite.

    There’s a newsagent across the road from my local railway station. You can buy a bus weekly there. You can buy a bus/rail weekly there. But you cannot by a rail weekly. You have to join the snaking queue at the railway station to buy a rail ticket.

    What or who do you think is stopping the government from allowing newsagents to sell weekly rail tickets?

    Sydney’s private bus companies are all basically broke, so broke the government now buys their busses for them. The government could take them all over and introduce the same ticketing that applies to the public bus system. Why doesn’t it do it and who’s stopping them?

    Here’s a hint. Carl Scully while transport minister took over the Parramatta-Ryde bus company because it was insolvent. The TWU hit the roof. Is it a union coverage issue that’s stopping sensible rationalisation of the system?

    Why does the government stick to a point-to-point fare structure rather than rationalise the system into a zonal system. That’s what’s happened in Perth and Brisbane in recent years, and happened in Melbourne 25 years ago, and appllies in every big city in the world. Why do you still sit on busses in Sydney watching the driver and a passenger engaging in coversation about how far they are travelling and therefore how far a passenger is going and therefore how much the fare will be. Even if you use the travel tens, you still have to know how many sections you are going so you can use the right coloured ticket. Why do they maintain this complex point to point ticket structure?

    Why can’t you get an equivalent of a travel ten for trains, or even a London style carnet to cover a standard fare you might travel a couple of times a week. Why if you don’t have a weekly, but you travel a certain number of days a week, do you have to queue to buy a ticket on each day of travel.

    Why can’t you buy a daily equivalent of a weekly. There is one that costs $17 and covers the entire metropolitan area, but is priced to make it uneconomical for people in the public transport dense inner city buying it.

  7. They already have a zonal system for their TravelPass and other mixed-mode tickets (e.g. red zone, green zone, purple..). When I lived in Sydney I just got a red Travelpass and could use train, bus, and ferry. You’d think that system could easily be expanded into a full zonal fare structure.

    #165
    Scrapping the metro and promising to use the money to fund NW and/or SW rail link was a no-brainer for the Liberals. Might tip the balance in Londonderry and Riverstone.

    Also interesting to note Rees’ promise to duplicate the M5 tunnels. WHile I agree the existing tunnels are woeful, I wonder how well this will go down in seats like Rockdale, and I’m curious to see what O’Farrell will say about it.

  8. MDM – but that zonal system only applies for weeklies, and it does not extend beyond the reach of the current government bus system. It does not apply in the outer suburbs where the private busses run. The only place you can buy a combined bus/rail day ticket is in the eastern suburbs, a system introduced when the eastern suburbs line was opened in the 1970s and the busses were terminated at Bondi Junction and Edgecliffe. Despite the success of those combined tickets, they have never been extended elsewhere in the system.

    The whole structure of the multi-mode ticket system is built around weeklies. So if you don’t travel every day and so don’t buy a weekly, you have to go point-to-point fares. If you change bus or change mode, you have to buy another ticket.

    Where I live in the inner city, i either cycle to work or catch the bus. Thankfully I have only a single bus, but if I ever end up on a bus that terminates at the QVB rather than go to Circular Quay, I have to pay an extra fare because I changed bus, where it would cost me no extra if the bus had gone straight through. I get the same multiple ticket/mode problem every time I go to Bondi Junction. If I go on a straight through bus its a single fare, if I change bus or change mode, its another fare. The distance is the same either way but the fare changes depending on the mode.

    Is it any wonder people find public transport in Sydney confusing.

    On weekends I tend to like catching the train into the CBD because the busses get caught in the abysmal traffic jams that clog the inner-city outside of peak hours. I catch the Newtown-City train dozens of times a year. But every time I do it, I have to queue at the station to buy a ticket. You can only use tickets on the day of purchase.

    In Londond, the train ticket machines at tube stations are pretty standard, seeling the same collection of zonal tcikets. The equivalent machines in Sydney are different at every station because the tickets are point to point, so at every station you have a different combination of buttons. You have to work out which range of stations your destination lies in so that you can select the correct button on the machine.

  9. All that may sound nit-picking, but if you want to run an effecient public transport system, you need an effecient fare structure that makes it easy for people to pay. That is a simple administrative/management task, but it seems to be completely beyond the wit of government to fix.

    Before the 1991 election Bruce Baird had a complete plan to re-work the fare structure of Sydney public transport. Unfortunately, the Greiner government lost its majority in 1991 and completely lost the will to take on such a politically sensitive task.

    Those plans still sit in someone’s draw in the transport department. I don’t doubt the Opposition also has a copy, given barry O’Farrell was Baird’s chief of staff.

    Those plans will carry pain for some people who catch public transport on strange cross-subsidised fares. They will also carry considerable pain for people whose current job is to sell tickets.

  10. I should add, Melbourne managed to introduce a full zonal system in 1984 that covered trains, trams and busses, both public and private, in 1984 with a paper ticket system. You don’t need fancy technology to do it. But as NSW discovered with the TCard, if you don’t start with a rational fare structure, technology won’t solve the problem for you.

  11. No noos yet out of the ‘caucus’ meeting.
    However, it looks like Keneally has been unable to avert a 24 hour bus drivers strike over pay. Buses will be off the road for 24 hours from 4am Friday 18 December.

  13. Name names truthy. Feel free to contribute to the “Buy a Labor politician a swimming pool” appeal.

    I’m sure William will match you dollar for dollar.

  14. I don’t know what hysterical means, perhaps it’s so unbelievably tragic that it’s laughable whats happening in NSW.

    At least here in Queensland we know we are being robbed (30% increase in rego’s and scrapping of fuel subsidy a month after the election, thank you Anna!),

  16. MDM at 157

    Ahh yes, the M5 East tunnel. Thanks for reminding me. Traffic modelling, design, engineering and construction all carried out on the basis that it would be a toll road. As an election stunt (for 1999?) Carr decides that it will not be a toll road. No change to the actual road though.

    Unsurprisingly, traffic well and truly exceeds projections, and is currently operating at something like 150% of its intended capacity. It’s the worst road in Australia for congestion and pollution

    And is duplicating the M5 East without expanding General Holmes Drive and Southern Cross Drive going to achieve much?

  17. As for the ticketing system

    In Hong Kong, they have a system, where all you need is a cash card and scan it on the buses, scan it on the trains and at the end of your ride, the computer calculate how much you pay.

    This would decrease ticketing queues, people missing train and allow people to have 1 card which will operate on all transport, it is even used in supermarkets

    Another plus it is technology produced by an Australian company

    The state govenment was looking into it. I believe union pressure forced the govenment to keep us waiting in queues to buy tickets

  19. [ In Hong Kong, they have a system, where all you need is a cash card and scan it on the buses, scan it on the trains and at the end of your ride, the computer calculate how much you pay. ]

    Yeah, we’ve had that in Perth for years – the Smartrider, it’s an excellent little thing. Barry O’Farrell could pretty much take a Transperth promo video, overdub it with his voice and use that as a campaign advert, and get elected on the promise to build the stuff featured. Maybe the Telegraph could steal that TV special they did on the new Mandurah line and rebadge it “Castle Hill, this could be you”.

  21. [Millions go missing from sale price of union cottages]
    The plot thickens even more on the sale of Currawong, if that is possible. It has now emerged that the sale to the two mates of the ALP (apparently Robertson’s) was not for the oft-repeated 15 mill, but was actually for 11 mill. This is exactly the price National Parks was prepared to pay a couple of years ago to take the site back into the Kuringai national park. Is there no end to the evil-doings of the NSW party?

    I’ll be there in a couple of weeks for one of the last stays before it is bastardised by the new owners. Sad.

    http://www.smh.com.au/national/millions-go-missing-from-sale-price-of-union-cottages-20091217-l01w.html

  22. #167

    I think that’s what melbourne’s long-awaited MYKI is supposed to be, although the government has made a bit of a mess of its implementation.

  23. [The QLD fuel subsidy was a disgrace. Imagine subsidising motorists; what kind of message is that sending out to people?The QLD fuel subsidy was a disgrace. Imagine subsidising motorists; what kind of message is that sending out to people?]

    Christ you southerners aren’t too bright.

    It wasn’t subsidising jack, the government already charges about 48 cents in tax on fuel, whoopsy doo’s they gave us a measily 9 cents of that back.

    If Anna Blight wanted to scrap the fuel subsidy why didn’t she announce it at the election rather than putting it and the 30% rego increase in place a month after the election?

  24. Perth has switched to a zonal and timed ticket system like Melbourne. Except for weeklies, Sydney doesn’t have zones and its tickets aren’t timed. The electronic ticket system they tried to introduce fell in a screaming heap because of the point to point fare structure.

    In Perth you buy a three hour zonal ticket and you hop on and off modes. In Sydney every different mode is a seperate fare. There are no timed or day fares on Sydney public transport. You can check the zonal map in Perth to work out how much your ticket will cost. In Sydney uou have to ask the bus driver or ticket seller.

  25. In fairness to the Qlders, the real story is well known, and as follows:

    1. Most states (but not Qld) implemented a “franchise fee” system under which a state-based excise was charged on fuel sold within each state.
    2. These systems were declared an unconstitutional excise by the High Court in August 1997. The “other” states faced the loss of $5 billion revenue (that figure may include alcohol and cigarettes).
    3. Howard and Costello immediately moved to replace the stated based fuel excise with a constitutional federal fuel excise (a supplementary excise, I’m sure there already was a federal excise at a lower level). But federal excises must apply equally to all goods sold throughout the land.
    4. This meant revenue neutrality, and motorists in states other than Qld weren’t going to be pinged, or at least not much.
    5. Qld motorists were going to be pinged, about 8c a litre. Borbidge introduced an excise rebate system. The only way to do it (for other constitutional reasons) was at the bowser.
    6. The system has simply continued up until now, and Beattie in particular did not have a bar of suggestions that he reconsider the rebate.

    But the argument has been – Qld never had franchise fees on petrol, why should Qld motorists pay extra just because the other states imposed an invalid unconstitutional excise and had to be bailed out by the feds? And there is some merit to that argument. Less merit in these days of great concern about emissions, but some.

  26. [whoopsy doo’s they gave us a measily 9 cents of that back.]
    But what if you are queued up at a petrol station on a Tuesday night in a Tarago, with 5 kids and a wheelchair in the back? Ask yourself, would that 9 cents a litre make a difference?

  27. [But what if you are queued up at a petrol station on a Tuesday night in a Tarago, with 5 kids and a wheelchair in the back? Ask yourself, would that 9 cents a litre make a difference?]

    That 5 cent per litre made a huge difference to the QLD budget. Money that could, nay should have been spent on hospitals, education, public transport etc.

  28. Antony at 174: so that’s why a ticket from Parramatta to city was different to one from Parramatta to Newtown, then… that was annoying. (Come to think of it, my attempt at getting from Newtown to Parramatta ended me up in flippin’ Cabramatta somehow. Damn tourists, eh… :P)

    Also, the Perth fare structure has an even better feature: there’s single tickets (last for two hours in zones 1-4, three in zones 5-8), but there’s also day tickets which cost about as much as a zone 6 or 7 ticket. Therefore if you live in somewhere like Mandurah, it makes more sense to buy a day ticket. The beauty of the Smartrider is that it automagically raises the number of zones on a single ticket to whatever it needs to be, and caps the fare for any day at the price of the day ticket. Here’s an example:

    I used to live in Armadale (an outer suburb), and every Thursday one semester I had lectures at both UWA and Murdoch uni. I would catch the bus from my house to Armadale station, and be charged a zone 1 fare (90c); catch a train Armadale-city (4 zones), and be charged the difference between a z4 and z1 fare; then catch another bus to UWA for free. Total cost: a z4 ticket, about $1.60 I think. (As you can see, it gets rid of the problem of buying one ticket, then realising “oh bugger, it won’t get me far enough”.) Later in the arvo, I’d catch another bus back into the city (z1) and then another bus down to Murdoch uni in zone 2 (again, getting charged z2-z1). Total cost: a z2 ticket, about $1.30, so I’m up to about $2.90 for the day. After that lecture, I’d go back home, and because the day fare was about $3.20, it only cost me about 30c to get home. And if I wanted to go out later in the evening, it’s a free ride. (Being a student in Perth, you don’t even have to budget for public transport… I’d just put $20 on the card and that was my week sorted.)

    Anyway, imagine trying to do those sums in your head, and trying to figure out on the fly whether you should get a zone 4, zone 2 or day ticket. That’s why I love the card so much, it does the thinking for me and saves me a heap of money in the process. Melbourne should be even simpler, with only 3 zones… I don’t know what’s taking them so long. C’mon easterners!

  30. [That 5 cent per litre made a huge difference to the QLD budget. Money that could, nay should have been spent on hospitals, education, public transport etc.]

    Didn’t blight just put Queensland into massive deficit?

    Yep another few billion pissed up against the wall. The less tax we are pay the less the government wastes is my motto.

  31. Yesterday, I spent a few hours experiencing part of the failure of the last 30 years of public administration in Sydney’s transport.

    First I went out west on Parramatta Road. Traffic on Saturday afternoon was a such a shocker from the CityWest Link to the M4, that I had plenty of spare time and no forward momentum that would make me worry about a crash, to think about the decision to cancel the inner urban freeways in Sydney back in the 70s. Now I am not at all unsympathetic to the argument that they should never be built, given the urban blight they cause etc (indeed, I have this wonderful DMR artist’s rendition of the F7 which replaces my own current abode with a freeway offramp).

    The failure of public administation was to simply cancel this form of urban transportation without replacing it with anything else. The population of Sydney was still to rise (and the long-term forecasts of Sydney’s population have been very accurate). This population would require a form of transport. But the (lack of) decision from the state was to do nothing and save [sic] money. Result, is that we have a modified Cumberland Plan based Metro designed around significant car use, without an urban freeway system, nor an alternate transport network.

    On the return, I drove along the M2, Lane Cove Tunnel (receivers appointed) and Harbour Tunnel, which as urban drives go, was a delightful experience of an affected bushland parkway at an average speed of about 90km/hour. However, at cost of $13+ in tolls. For an everday commuter, this would be $130/week, or $6,500pa. I think this is a reasonable amount of coin and stretches my definition of affordabe urban transportation. So from the northside/hills we have a very nice technical achievemnt of the road/tunnel (though on a workday I suspect the average speed is far lower than 90kmph) but a failure of public economics in deliverying an affordable transport system.

    Yep the short Greiner government was a disappointment, but the reality is that Labor Party has been in power for the vast period of the decline (debauchment?) of public administration of this state, and worse, give no confidence of any plan of going forward. I love voting generally, but I will be heading to the state poll in March 2011 with an unusual alacrity.

  32. Antony Green

    I attended an open for inspection on a Saturday in Newtown once, I was interested until, I tried to get to the city by car (about 2 km down the road) It took me 30 minute, I do not know how anyone lives in the area

  33. dovif – I live in Newtown and I sold my 14-year-old Commodore to a kid in Villawood for $1000 because it was more trouble than it was worth in the area. I joined GoGet car share and haven’t had any parking problems since – because of dedicated parking pods!

    I would love to see Japanese-style ticketing introduced in Sydney. It’s sort of point-to-point except there are no beginning and ending destinations marked: “This is the basic cost to get from A to B, which applies to all regular train tickets. The basic fare depends on the travel distance between your departure and destination station. The cost per kilometer is around 20 Yen for short distances, and decreases to under 10 Yen for long distances.” The Suika card system is brilliant too.

  34. I would like to comment on the current state of affairs of NSW Politics. It is not surprising that NSW Labor is doing badly. The only surprise is that their poor showing is not even worse. The Labor Party in NSW is to be despised because of all the damage and suffering they have done to the people of NSW. Really.

    How many failed Labor Premiers are we up to right now ? We had Iemma who wouldn’t even support the Labor Pledge. He was run out of town along with half his cabinet. Next we had Nathan Rees, the guy who couldn’t even be bothered getting a Driving License. Some Labor man supporting the people. Now we have Kristina “I’m going to do all of Nathan’s stuff” Keneally apparently in charge of the state.

    Labor in NSW is a disgrace to the platform they believe in. Let’s look at the CBD Metro. Expensive, unsafe, unworthy. A burdon on every member of the public of NSW. NSW Labor is not even respecting the Department Of Planning. The CBD Metro has NO approval as a construction project, yet the Keneally Government is acquiring properties in Rozelle, Pyrmont and Park Street, City. They will demolish the iconic Woolworths building on the corner just to try and get votes.

    NSW Labor is probably the most sickening and unfair Government there has ever been.

    Rig the CBD Metro Kristina Keneally and David Campbell, we need more pain, unemployment and unhappiness.

    Please continue to accept campaign donations from the failed Balmain Leagues Club and protect the new developer. They won’t be making onebit of sacrafice for the CBD Metro. I always thought the Queensland Gerrymander was the worst in Australian Politics. Now we all know that’s wrong. It’s NSW Labor and the CBD Metro.

    David
    Local Rozelle Shopkeeper (Fighting for his job against the CBD Metro)

  35. No zones in Adelaide, you can travel as far as you want and then within two hours catch connecting buses for free. Red tickets for peak, black tickets for off peak and green free tickets for seniors during off peak. Each ticket comes with 2 or 3 lame words of wisdom or sayings on the back. They work on bus, train, trams and obahn. You can buy a single or a ten use ticket with no expirery (once when I’d seen they’d raised the price I went to a deli which still had tickets at the old price and bought up heaps). A multitrip with ten rides is for a student $13.?? for a peak and $7.?? for an off peak. I suppose managment gets harder in bigger cities. Our system seems quite good after reading what Sydney is like, although those auto-zappy things that you don’t even need to take out of your wallet look good.

  36. 185

    Adelaide has the most expensive short trip PT of Australian capitals because of the flat fare.

    Do they have periodicals (dailies, weeklies, etc.) in Adelaide?

  38. deconst

    [ would love to see Japanese-style ticketing introduced in Sydney]

    Never to be, but I would love a Tokyo style subway. A Japanese friend of mine was visiting Sydney and found the whole system of buying tickets (“Seriously? You go to a window in the wall to buy a train ticket?”) so comical that she thought it a joke.

    David Hunt…

    [(Fighting for his job against the CBD Metro)]

    Hopefully your Xmas present must be improved confidence that this silly project will never proceed

  39. Deconst at 183, etc: having a smallish number of well-defined zones works well enough. In Perth, it’s very simple: they’re defined by circles, multiples of 10 km from the city centre. That effectively makes the outer zones kinda oblong shapes, because Perth has such an long narrow metro area. In Sydney you might want to base your zones around major regional centres (CBD, Parramatta, Strathfield, Hornsby etc), because Sydney metro area is less elongated. Same principle though… the only complication would be making sure no shortish journey near a point where three zones meet gets a more expensive fare; that could be done by clever design of zone boundaries. Run them along the freeways or something.

    Another cool thing Perth has is the free transit zones. In the CBD, the CAT buses are free and so are any other buses once they get into the FTZ. From the bus stop nearest to my house, the bus that comes down from Morley costs a 2 section fare (that’s like half a zone), but get on down the other side of Newcastle St and it’s no ticket required. Central Fremantle and Joondalup have a similar thing. (That’s for the CAT buses anyway… not sure about regular routes there. William, you’d know this: does something like the 920 need a ticket if you’re going from, say, the train station to the hospital?)

  40. Finally, Keneally has made an announcement. The development of Bangaroo. However, it seems in her haste to get some runs on the board, she has overlooked some “minor” details. The planned White Bay domestic shipping terminal may be a “white elephant”. Claims have been made that many cruise liners will not be able to use the terminal for the simple reason they are too large to fit under the Harbour Bridge. Thus an additional terminal east of the bridge is necessary.

    http://www.smh.com.au/national/white-bay-hiccup-new-ships-too-tall-to-fit-under-bridge-20091221-la2b.html

  44. Gusface.

    LOL.. I was actually talking about my observations of the construction work being done, and done again, and redone ……..and my conversations with some of the trades people.

  45. MDMConnell

    [It’s like the Chatswood-Epping rail link which most newer trains can’t use because they built it too steep.]

    …because of a rather strange last minute change from a bridge to a tunnel

  46. Some extracts from the SMH on Barangaroo…

    [the city’s biggest hotel in what critics have dubbed the worst of ”Dubai architecture”.

    a series of other public spaces that could be ”a bit like the Ivy in George Street”.

    The proposal was warmly embraced by former prime minister Paul Keating, who has fought successfully for the northern headland to be returned to its pre-settlement shape. ”The scheme is a scheme right outside the paradigm – this is what Sydney needs,” he said. ”It needs to be grand to do the job.

    Developer groups were enthusiastic about the plan to fill in part of the harbour. ”We do support the plan for the infill of the harbour,” said Stephen Albin, NSW chief executive of the Urban Development Institute of Australia.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/national/grand-slam-for-barangaroos-grand-plan-harbour-makeover-looks-like-worst-of-dubai-20091221-la26.html?autostart=1

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