I’ve got not issue with the City Farm. My issue is with the City of Sydney having anything to do with the running of it.

I’m not sure how the City of Sydney is going to run a farm when it can’t even run the #1 Fruit and Florist Kiosk in Circular Quay.

Acknowledging that we shouldn’t be running anything we’ve outsourced the running of the Kiosk to Brookfield Johnson Controls.

But in a poor reflection of our commercial skills, it appears City Rangers and City Property Staff have appeared to perform functions, which should have been discharged by Brookfield Johnson Controls and have struggled to reconcile the proper functions of the respective parties.

The result is that there has been problems since 2003, a mess since 2008, the operator has lost his house, is operating without licence and hasn’t paid rent for six months.

We can’t run a 10 x 4 Fruit and Florist Kiosk even with a third party involved and we’re going to run a multi-million dollar city farm. We might as well bury the money and turn it into compost.

The great example of a City Farm is Fairfield Council. It lost millions before it was recently privatised. I spoke to an ex Mayor of Fairfield. She said if a City Farm is what we want, the only chance to have it work and not haemorrhage cash, is to keep bumbling bureaucrats well away.

The project contains the usual hallmarks of City of Sydney grand plans. It has more administrators than farmers and a myriad of flow charts and diagrams to make us feel better about losing Ratepayers money.

I particularly noted that the report said we could, supply food to the city hungry. We could also just go out and buy it for them for a lot less made by people who know what they are doing.