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September 4th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“It’s likely we are going to pay for this for the next decade, let alone the next year” … Mike Baird. Photo: Michele Mossop
THE Treasurer, Mike Baird, has ratcheted up warnings about the parlous state of NSW finances a day before he hands down his first budget, announcing the discovery of another potential ”blowout” of up to $700 million.
Mr Baird told the Herald the threat to the state’s bottom line was a result of new advice in relation to the former Labor government’s $5.3 billion sale of electricity assets.
He said preliminary advice commissioned from the accounting firm Ernst Young indicated contracts to supply coal from the state-owned Cobbora mine would leave taxpayers about $300 million out of pocket. The government has been advised the sale contracts quote prices below the cost of production.
Information gleaned from the finalisation of the sale also suggests that the cost of running the state-owned electricity distribution networks after the sale has blown out by more than $400 million, Mr Baird said.
The former government sold the bulk of its electricity trading rights, meaning the government will have to prop them up to keep them viable. Mr Baird said there was ”an understanding that we will fix the stranded costs within the next 12 months”.
He said the new advice reinforced the poor quality of the former government’s asset sale.
”This was a dreadful transaction, not in the interests of the state,” he said. ”It’s likely we are going to pay for this for the next decade, let alone the next year.”
New details of the health budget were made public yesterday, including a promise to hire 900 nurses in the coming year and a record capital works program of $4.7 billion over four years.
Tomorrow’s budget will include $1082 million on health capital works in 2011-2012, $343 million of which is on new works.
On roads, $468 million has been allocated to upgrade the Pacific Highway, $80 million for the Princes Highway, and $25 million to widen the F5.
Hospitals receiving funding include Campbelltown ($139 million), Royal North Shore (an extra $55 million for an expansion of services estimated to cost $147 million) and St George Hospital ($35.5 million for a new emergency department). Dubbo, Wagga Wagga and Port Macquarie base hospitals will also receive upgrades.
”This is all about building the capacities of our hospitals so we can open more beds and employ more nurses, and that’s how you increase the front-line services that we promised before the last election,” the Health Minister, Jillian Skinner, said.
The general secretary of the NSW Nurses Association, Brett Holmes, said the government was struggling to meet its recruitment targets for nurses and there would need to be ”substantial efforts” to hire 900 new staff.
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