Andrew Gee MP

If you ask most people what they expect of their politicians you’d probably get “honesty” and “action” and in that order.

If you ask them what they don’t expect, a lot of them, now fully schooled in the new corporate age of political PR, would definitely say “spin.”

But that’s what the people of the Orange region have been getting in quite big doses lately from their federal and state MPs.

We have the federal member for Calare John Cobb telling us the incoming carbon tax will raise the price of just about everything under the sun from July 1, without any real detail or depth to something that, for all intents and purposes, reads like a spurious election leaflet. (See JOHN COBB’S “100 DAYS” TO CARBON TAX CALAMITY – ONN March 26)

And now we have our state MP, Andrew Gee, putting even more spin on his claim of “greatest achievements” that the O’Farrell government has come up with in its first year of office.

Says Mr Gee in an anniversary review faithfully unquestioned, of course, by the Central Western Daily: “It’s been a very busy year and a constructive 12 months.

“A highlight has been the 30 percent increase to roads funding the electorate achieved.”

And he’s acclaimed regional roads funding and more nurses, police officers and firefighters as the government’s “greatest achievements.”

COUNCIL “ACHIEVED” IT, NOT THE GOVERNMENT

To take roads first, what was more realistically “achieved” was Orange City Council’s $1.06 million in NSW government funding for roads, its share of the total $163 million in funding that was given out in the 2011-12 budget to 152 councils throughout the state.

And even then that $1.06 million constituted less than one-third of the $3.1 million that the city council has allocated to road repairs after the torrential rains and damage of summer.

But even though any government funding at all is a blessing for local councils, surely it’s an achievement for the councils that go begging and negotiating for government money– not as Andrew Gee claims, one of the “greatest achievements” of the NSW government itself.

A truer picture of the O’Farrell cabinet’s attitude to local government funding as a whole is contained in a recent blunt statement by the Minister for Western NSW and member for Barwon, Kevin Humphries, to a symposium of residents and MPs from Orange, Bathurst and Dubbo.

Some of those at the meeting wanted to know what’s going on with the RTA’s plans to turn the Bells Line Road from Richmond to Lithgow into a new cross-mountains expressway to the Central West, and why it wasn’t a government priority.

Mr Humphries’ reply was that councils would have to sell off regional assets to pay for major infrastructure projects.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s Bells Line or any other major infrastructure, governments can only spend so much,” he stated.

DEMOS, ACTIVISM FORCED INCREASED PERSONNEL

The same closed-coffer attitude by the state government – blaming it on the budgetary “black hole” left by the previous Labor administration – was behind the “greatest achievements,” as Andrew Gee sees it, of “more nurses, police and firefighters.”

True, there have been increases allocated to Orange and elsewhere – but very grudgingly and only after huge demonstrations against the state government by civil servants in Sydney.

And drastic action had to be taken by the overworked nurses at the new Orange Hospital, particularly, who had to close down beds in defiance of the government to force urgently needed staff increases – 18 new graduates .

It’s significant, on that score, that Mr Gee declines to say whether or not he supports an increase in nurse-to-patient ratios, the trigger point of the bed closures at Orange Hospital.

Readers of Orange News Now will also remember how he failed to persuade his own party coalition, own government and own minister to support the need for a daily air ambulance helicopter service between Orange and the specialist hospitals in Sydney.

As outgoing Greens city councillor Jeremy Buckingham commented:  “Andrew Gee dropped the ball.”

ONN has written before how unfortunate Andrew Gee is to be an MP in the O’Farrell government  – having to go to his own people to try to get funding for projects in Orange when he knows that the government’s policy is to cut back on as many social, community and infrastructural services as it can to “balance the budget.”

He deserves a certain sympathy and understanding on that.

But it’s also unfortunate that he has to put out such blatant spin – neglecting the real background to events – to portray his government and his own performance in the best possible light.

As we’ve commented in the case of his federal counterpart’s spin on the carbon tax, the people of Orange deserve better.

More honesty;  more action.