Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This weekend the citizens of Wentworth have a very clear choice to make. If they vote for the Liberal candidate, Dave Sharma, it is business as usual—more chaos, more division, more privatisation of public assets. It is continued attacks on public health and public education. It is continued attacks on the rights of gay and lesbian Australians and it is continued attacks on the independence of the ABC. It is more cover-ups like Senator Cash and the AWU raids; the Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, and the au pairs; and Assistant Treasurer Stuart Robert, who expended almost $40,000 of public money on home internet bills.

Most alarmingly for the voters of Wentworth, it is more cosying up by the Liberal Party to One Nation and the racist, divisive, anti-Semitic policies of the far right. Just today, in The Australian newspaper, we read that a gaggle of Liberal and National politicians recently attended a conference that included events organised by neo-Nazis espousing hate towards the LGBTI community and other minority groups. Coalition MPs and senators, including the member for Hughes, Craig Kelly, the member for Dawson, George Christiansen, and Senators Amanda Stoker and James Paterson, attended LibertyFest last month. They were joined by Senator Fraser Anning, the former One Nation member, who actually addressed a neo-Nazi rally and whom the Liberal government relies on for his vote in the Senate.

Also in attendance was the vile racist, misogynistic and homophobic neo-Nazi group the True Blue Crew. As part of LibertyFest the True Blue Crew held a rally opposing the Safe Schools program, which supports at-risk gay students. Speakers at the rally said the most vile and offensive things about Senator Penny Wong, one of the most prominent and respected women in the country. These racist, homophobic and obnoxious rantings were then posted on social media. These are the people the modern Liberal Party appease and share platforms with—racist, homophobic, demented neo-Nazis. So, make no mistake, a vote for Dave Sharma this weekend is a vote for a Liberal Party that is beholden to the far right and the most divisive and toxic politics this country has ever seen.

Alternatively, Wentworth voters can make a departure from the chaotic and nasty politics of the past few years and not reward the Liberal Party for toppling Malcolm Turnbull. They can vote for Tim Murray and, in doing so, elect someone who is a local, someone involved in the local community, someone who will speak up against racism, homophobia and misogyny and someone who will support the ABC. Unlike North Shore import Dave Sharma, they can vote for someone who understands grassroots issues affecting the local community—issues like the secretive and outrageous sale of the Bondi Beach post office. The sale of this valuable public asset has shocked the local community and was being pursued by Tim Murray long before he decided to run for Wentworth. I joined Tim in the prepoll booth last week, and I was astounded to hear about the process that was undertaken to sell the post office. The Bondi Beach post office is an important community asset. It is heavily utilised by local businesses, older residents regularly use the post office service, and it's used by thousands of tourists who help drive the local economy at Bondi Beach. It is bizarre that the sale of a heritage listed building by Australia Post did not go to tender, given the value and demand for real estate in close proximity to Australia's most famous beach.

In 2016, astonishingly, Australia Post entered into an agreement with a Mr Jamie Nemtsas for a $10 million option to purchase the post office. Mr Nemtsas on-sold the post office to north Sydney based construction company Taylor for a reported $15 million. As noted in a November 2017 Financial Review article, Mr Nemtsas flipped the property, making a staggering profit of $5 million. Indeed, there is only one Australia Post in a lifetime for Mr Nemtsas. Taylor has since lodged a development application for an apartment block on the site which has received 1,000 objections from locals. The initial development application was rejected in July, with Taylor requested to do further work on the heritage and structural plans. So here we have a valuable and important public asset, a community asset that is heavily utilised by residents, sold off for a pittance without going to tender, behind closed doors, and the guy that buys it on-sells the property, pocketing a hefty $5 million that should have been returned to the community.

Is it any wonder Bondi residents are up in arms about the sale and the prospect of losing their centrally located post office? The $5 million pocketed by this Melbourne based businessman cum property developer would go a long way towards providing important community infrastructure in Wentworth and ensuring an alternative post office could be built for the Bondi Beach community. Parking, public amenities, football fields and playgrounds could also have been funded with that $5 million windfall.

To add insult to injury, in March this year Australia Post's general manager of procurement and property, Adam Treffry, who was responsible for the sale of the site, left Australia Post and joined Cushman & Wakefield, the international property giant managing Australia Post's New South Wales property portfolio. In light of all this secrecy and manoeuvring, Australia Post needs to explain to Senate estimates if there are any links between Cushman & Wakefield and Nemtsas or between Treffry and Nemtsas.

This, of course, is not the first time Australia Post has sold lucrative public real estate in secret. In March last year it sold the Martin Place GPO to Singaporean international property developer Far East for $150 million and never announced the deal. What is going on at Australia Post, where these multimillion-dollar deals involving public assets are being done behind closed doors?

Waverley Mayor John Wakefield has pursued this outrageous private sale of public property on behalf of his community. He is outraged by the secrecy and says there is enormous community concern about the sale and that he has found it extremely difficult to get any information from Australia Post about the process. If the Mayor of Waverley Council can't get a straight answer as to why this public asset was flogged off behind closed doors, what hope have the ratepayers and residents of Bondi Beach got? The answer is none, and that is exactly how the architects of this dodgy sale process designed it to be.

The sale of this valuable public asset was, of course, made possible by the corporatisation of Australia Post by none other than the coalition government. All of this does at least give us some insight into how public assets are managed under the Liberals, and it resembles something you'd expect to see in postcommunist oligarchy Russia. While the methods might be a bit more nuanced in Australia than they are in Moscow, the results are exactly the same: spivs getting rich on the proceeds of public assets facilitated by public officials. This whole story has a nasty whiff about it. I look forward to Tim Murray being elected on Saturday so that he can continue to pursue this outrageous sale of a valuable community asset.