A solution for Sydney's house pricing crisis

I felt I should perform a civic duty, so I wrote this to help my Premier.

Premier Berejiklian,

I note your recent appointment of Mr Glenn Stevens as an advisor to your Government with
regards to Sydney's housing affordability problem.

I am firmly of the belief that you have the capacity to achieve this aim yourself, without expending funds on external advisors.

I have, over the last few years, watched with keen interest, as your government has consistently and successfully devalued rural property in a number of areas of NSW. It would appear that all that is needed to achieve this is the random placement of wind turbines and wind farms throughout a target community. This procedure has been ruthlessly efficient at devaluating surrounding rural land values where deployed within NSW to date. I should declare I am an affected rural resident in the Tarago locality, and my property values are under attack from the proposed Jupiter wind farm currently before your Department of Planning and Environment for approval. But I digress from the topic at hand……

I propose that you instruct the NSW Department of Planning and Environment (D0PE - I LOVE that acronym by the way) to immediately approve a number of wind turbines for construction throughout the Western Sydney Basin, and the North Shore. This would have the following effects, and subsequent flow-on actions:

All property values of land within a significant radius of each turbine (circa 10km) will suffer an immediate devaluation. Please note, this will be significant, and properties closest to the turbines will suffer (up to 40%) devaluation. Also, please note, that the mere threat of such a development will also trigger a smaller, yet significant devaluation on its own, regardless of whether the development actually proceeds or not, as has occurred in my and a number of other localities.

Unfortunately, devalued property prices due to the visual impact of wind turbines does not necessarily free up properties for sale. Fear not! The use of wind turbines has a cunning ploy that almost ensures success!

Well known information (peer reviewed and all that other apparently irrelevant scientific guff) increasingly shows that these wind farms exhibit noise that persons living close by may become highly sensitised to. In some cases, this may be so severe, that many are driven from their properties in a desperate attempt to sleep and function, hence maintaining any semblance of a quality of life. (Please note that this phenomenon also occurs to hosts, who have a vested interest in the operation of the windfarm, negating the Nocebo effect). Fortuitously, this will render the already devalued properties vacant, and ripe for the plucking by those who previously were unable to afford the market, pre-devaluation.

Have no fear that the Department or your Government may be accused of any wrong doing. You will be guaranteed nation-wide support from the ABC, and other left wing wind-aligned organisations. All that is required is to make continual references to one particular section from the NHMRC Statement “Evidence on Wind Farms and Human Health”. By stealthily miss-quoting one statement from this document and choosing the context from which it is (inaccurately cited) and ignoring a number of paragraphs from the same document that advise that a precautionary approach is prudent, you may allay any fears of the public that these industrial machines are not as benign to humans health as the wind industry would have the public believe. (This document is only 1 page and is not a difficult read in its entirety)

Your Government may choose to continue to disregard warnings from the same document such as:

"There is consistent but poor quality direct evidence that wind farm noise is associated with annoyance. While the parallel evidence suggests that prolonged noise-related annoyance may result in stress, which may be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, annoyance was not consistently defined in the studies and a range of other factors are possible explanations for the association observed." or:

"NHMRC urges authorities with responsibility for regulating wind farms to undertake appropriate planning, in consultation with communities, and be cognisant of evidence emerging from research."

By selectively with-holding this information, you should be able to ensure a consistent stream of property vacancies, along with an equivalent supply of ignorant new buyers of this conveniently devalued property, whilst appearing to hold a moral high ground. Simples!

Now here is the clincher…. If you look carefully, you don’t even need any new infrastructure in order to put this in place. As long as the recently privatised “poles and wires” are available, then you can directly connect at will. Since the current criteria for siting a wind farm in NSW appears to be primarily focussed with the availability of 33kv transmission lines (You know, the ones that immolate ravens) , the same transmission lines are available all throughout the Sydney Basin (strangely where ravens don’t seem to immolate often), meaning an almost endless supply of potential connection sites.

So, in summary, your Government has already proven:
• That property devaluation is guaranteed through the ruthless deployment of wind farms;
• That it has a proven track record of cunningly miss-quoting selected NHMRC references whilst ignoring other warnings from within the same document;
• That it has demonstrated that rural public safety and security (economic and health) is a distant second place to altruistic green targets; and,
• That all that is required to define a suitable site for a wind farm is:
a. Wind (available everywhere), and
b. 33kv transmission lines (available everywhere), sans ravens.

Premier, I suggest to you that the solution and glory is yours to claim without the need for any compromise from your Federal counterparts or outsourcing for advice. Now is the time for you and your Government to seize the day.

There is of course one minor drawback and that is the substantial hit to the bottom line of the NSW budget due to reduced land tax collection. However, given the likely short term repeated turn-over of these properties, along with your ability to plead to the Federal Government for an increase in GST distribution to overcome this small hiccup, this should remain in equilibrium. Conversely, in the interests of being a Liberal team-player, you may prefer to duck shove this minor inconvenience to the Federal Government.

Carpe Diem!

Regards,

Aussie Fester