Training for Disaster

There is still not a lot going on in NSW politics - which is probably why this story got so much airtime:

Full story on the ABC website

Indeed, the NSW government was able to act with remarkable speed to change the law and make the cameras legal:

Also from ABC Online

Now, I have feelings about CCTV cameras, but rather than repeat them here I'm just going to link to a piece I wrote for The Drum on that very topic.

The only thing I would add is that simply changing the law to create an exemption to privacy laws makes somewhat of a mockery of the privacy legislation as a whole. Whilst almost no rights can be absolute (given that many rights of yours can come only at the expense of someone else's right), one would have thought that the government would at least pause to reflect on the decision from the Administrative Decisions Tribunal before diving in and just changing the law.

Anyway.

The other incident this week has been another disastrous morning for CityRail. For details, I encourage you to take a look at the always outstanding Transport Sydney that provides, amongst other things, a nifty table of the nature of the disruptions:

The Shadow Transport Minister was, as usual, busy that day reporting on her commute and the associated dramas:

Penny's twitter account is here

Along with John Robertson, there was a press release and even a press conference.

Whilst I've commented before about whether Labor has any right to criticise about the O'Farrell government's performance in the rolling out of new CityRail Infrastructure, these delays are a different issue. On the Transport Sydney blog:

The cuts may not be to blame - but it is clear that insufficient (or, at a minimum, poorly directed) maintenance is. On this issue, Labor's opposition has generally been good, and appropriate.

And yet we have this:

Polls that swung towards O'Farrell in the last few months. Obviously those polls don't take into account this week's train dramas, but there have been plenty dramas up to now, and they don't appear to have made even a bit of difference.

I don't really have an easy solution for Labor - at least not at this stage. But they would want to be finding one - and fast.