Since arriving in Tasmania eleven years ago, I have become aware of many existing, and witnessed a plethora of new Government backed projects.

Each and every one has proven to be a complete and utter failure and a financial disaster. It seems that they have invented the Sadim touch. It is the opposite of Midas, and everything touched turns to crap.

I cannot think of one single project that has lived up to the hype and the expectations, and for each and every one of them they have opened the Treasury doors and poured the contents into the waste bin.

Here are just a few pearls in the very long string.

Hydro – billed as the saviour for Tasmania. Abundant cheap electricity was the sales pitch. Ha ha! This was then coupled to –

Bass Link – a one-way stream of money out of the country costing a $100 million a year – and again to –

Bell Bay Power Station – bought and then converted to gas. Followed by the building of an identical gas-powered station next door, all of which has cost us a fortune and is barely used.

Spirit of Tasmania III – supposed to bring a bounty of tourists to these fair shores. They sold it a year later after making a loss and lost a further $10 million on the sale price.

Broadband Network – something that will turn Tasmania into the business capital of Australia – if only they can get anyone to use it.

Meander Valley Dam – designed to boost food crops in the Meander area – only the farmers didn’t want it and now the land has largely been turned over to plantations. $30 million down the drain there.

The RFA – Possibly the less said the better. This has brought about the destruction of the forests, has been a killer for the tourist industry and turned Forestry Tasmania into an insatiable money guzzler, unable to return a profit in over ten years.

Then the Mersey Hospital fiasco – which is still ongoing despite several attemps at resuscitation. This was followed by the –

Launceston General Hospital and a multitude of mismanagement and costs, but both these were outstripped by the

Hobart Waterfront Hospital – which has absorbed millions in planning costs without a single brick being laid, and now abandoned for an upgrade to the existing building running into further millions.

Football sponsorship – another costly error. A couple of return matches in Launceston were supposed to bring the tourists flocking here in their thousands, but they forgot in their calculations that there is no adequate transport to get them here.

The Midlands Foodbowl – A Bartlett wet dream for the driest part of the island and expensive irrigation systems being put in when the North-West, which is the real foodbowl, is struggling, with companies like Simplot pulling out and going to New Zealand.

Then who stopped the wood supply to Scottsdale and forced the largest closure in the timber industry? None other than our own GBE, Forestry!

Now we have $12.5 Million spent on another racetrack without going through any due process and without a profit plan. But then, that is small change from what was given to –

Federal Hotels – who got a monopolistic gaming right worth a few hundred millions for a mere three, and were supposed to build a very large hotel in the Freycinet National Park in part exchange for this generosity, but failed to meet the promise.

And who bought an airport at an inflated price way above anything it could ever return to the taxpayer and sold water and sewage rights to private corporations with immediate price rises for the consumers?

Then there was that other lovely piece of legislation involving Planning with the PAL Policy disfranchising about 30 000 Tasmanian citizens and depriving them of their basic Common Law rights to own and develop their property, just so that the MIS conspirators could collar their land and turn it into a disastrous Ponzi get-rich-quick plantation scheme using Federal largess and tax avoidance.

Then we have a Fox eradication farce that destroys imaginary foxes at a cost of over a million dollars each, and this has been chasing its tail for the last ten years.

And of course, the BIG one. The Pulp Mill Assessment Act that assessed absolutely nothing before fast-tracking it through parliament and opening the State coffers for a private, largely mainland-based company and spruiking it at public expense to this very day. Meanwhile writing specialised laws at their behest and gifting them things like culverts and new roads and infrastructure and compulsory purchasing them an access right over private land for their pipeline. As part of the deal they also get massive water supplies at miniscule rates, and they even went as far as building special dams to ensure their supply. If that wasn’t enough, they then gave them a FREE 20 year access right to all Tasmania’s forests, and when they discovered, that with all these free gifts, they still could not be commercially viable, they offer to buy back this free gift for possibly $200 Million. They did not consider that by NOT using it, Forestry and the people of Tasmania LOST $200 million and the non-fulfilment of the contract clause was waived without a cent changing hands!

And now this whole thing is being set up so that history can repeat itself with the financial backing of a new kid on the block called Aprin. Lots of chutzpah. They have managed to procure about three million in ‘start-up’ grants, retooling grants and now a loan to buy a dilapidated chip mill. And Forestry has apparently already signed a wood supply agreement with them despite the ongoing ‘Forest Agreement’ negotiations, and all before they actually got their finance for the chip mill purchase. Can anybody else see why there is such desperation to tread the same rocky path again?

Meanwhile, we are having trouble with our prisons – possibly because they contain the wrong group of people – our nurses, doctors and hospital services are under financial pressure, our most successful schools are being closed and they are cutting back on police numbers.

Unless I have overlooked something, on the positive side there is – NOTHING!

Except possibly, that the force of 30,000 bureaucrats, who are largely responsible for advising the government, are having their own numbers pared back by 1700. I would suggest that this is probably far too little far too late and with leaders and advisors like we have – the Titanic looks a safe bet.

The Sadim Touch