Published On: 23/11/2015

This item got me thinking about the Kingdom which is the City of Sydney and its values.

What values would you expect from a Kingdom? I thought Peace, Joy, Harmony, and most certainly justice - just behaviour and treatment of stakeholders and constituents being very important.

From the City of Sydney website, we state our values are collaboration, courage, integrity, innovation, quality and respect.

So if I overlay the city’s values, we can say that just behaviour would come from collaboration, integrity, quality and respect.

The T2 cycling activity centre, from the start has been marred by it being rushed through before the community realises a great piece of historical property is being squandered. I can’t see this project being anything other than a financial disaster but if it works, I was wrong and we can put it down to the city being courageous.

But the rush has stopped.

We’ve had three near identical tenders in terms of price and we’ve decided we can do better by rejecting them all. Presumably we’re going to put some sort of squeeze on the tenderers or by pass tender processes and go to some friendlies.

So what went wrong? Why are our estimates so wrong? Is it part of being in a rush? Tenderers spend tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands on tender responses. We are the City of Sydney we are supposed to get our documentation right and we are supposed to display just behaviour and treatment.

If I try and align our values over this, that is integrity, quality and respect, they look like we have thrown them out the window.

With the scant information Councillors have been provided, it appears Council is acting contrary to its own values, isn’t displaying just behaviour and needs to be pulled up with a “No” vote.