TAHE is a ticking budget time-bomb - Greens recommit to defuse TAHE following Auditor-General report

Today’s scathing Auditor General’s report into the Design and Implementation of the Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE) lays bare, in forensic detail, the true enormity of the damage that Perrottet’s pet project will inflict on the state finances.

The Greens NSW have reiterated their commitment to dismantle the disastrous TAHE boondoggle, calling for honesty and transparency with state finances and an end to cynical budget trickery.

Quotes attributable to Abigail Boyd, Greens NSW MP and Spokesperson for Treasury, Finance and Economy, and Spokesperson for Transport:

“This report confirms what the Greens have been saying for years - the TAHE structure was concocted as a flimsy accounting trick to try and deliver a short-term sugar hit to the budget. The result is a lasting headache when it comes to future governments needing to spend billions of dollars and jump through hoops in order to prop up the accounting treatment at the expense of passenger safety. Unless we unwind Perrottet’s mess, this sloppily concocted plan will burden future governments for decades.

“TAHE was a scheme based on incorrect assumptions, its design dictated by a political motive rather than the safe and responsible management of our state's vital rail assets. It was hubris and a fear of being found out as poor financial managers that led the Liberal-National Government standing stubbornly by a structure that could never work. The best time to pull the pin on this budget time bomb was years ago, the second best time is now.

“On its current course, it stretches the limits of imagination to think that TAHE will ever generate a sufficient rate of return to justify its shonky accounting treatment. Is it any wonder then, that TAHE’s attention appears to now be on creating a developer’s paradise out of our public assets in its scramble to make a profit? The solution to the TAHE problem is not to flog off our precious public spaces and commercialise our train stations with high-rise multi-use developments - the solution is to return our rail assets to direct government ownership and control.”

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

NSW is missing out on tens of billions of dollars. By introducing a progressive coal royalty structure similar to the one in Queensland, we would have raised an extra $20 billion last year.

The NSW Government owns and controls, on behalf of the people of this state, the rights to the minerals and materials that naturally occur in NSW land.

Huge fossil fuel companies are only able to extract and sell these commodities with the consent of the State. It’s time they paid a fair price for that privilege.

The fossil fuel industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their cosy relationship with governments. Granted permission to extract and sell coal, these large multinational fossil fuel corporations pay just over 7% in royalties back to the people of NSW – keeping the rest as mega-profits for themselves. These companies have a track record of taking more than their fair share and leaving communities suffering and stranded with poisoned groundwater, devastated landscapes and a stranded workforce when it suits their business models.

Globally, the hyper-inflation of fossil fuel prices driven by price-gouging opportunism and war profiteering from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delivered record windfall profits to these already obscenely wealthy corporations. In the last year, NSW coal exports totaled over $70 billion dollars, but the people of NSW will only see about 7 cents in every dollar, or about $6 billion dollars of that amount.

Rather than going toward schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, billions of dollars went into the pockets of multinational mining corporations. The Greens believe there should be more money for schools and hospitals and less for mining billionaires.

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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TAHE is a ticking budget time-bomb - Greens recommit to defuse TAHE following Auditor-General report

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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