The Forum > Article Comments > Trashing Sydney's Botanic Gardens > Comments
Trashing Sydney's Botanic Gardens : Comments
By Peter West, published 9/4/2014With good reason, former Prime Minister Paul Keating has condemned the planned changes as outrageous.
- Pages:
-
- Page 1
- 2
-
- All
They don’t earn much revenue. But they are a big cost to taxpayers and ratepayers. I think we can reasonably assume that they don’t pay their way, by a long way, in most cases.
I am a professional botanist. In the last three years I have had the opportunity to visit botanic gardens all over the country, from Sydney’s Royal BG and other major ones in Canberra, Perth and all our large cities, to many gardens which barely fall under the definition of a botanic garden in small country towns.
While the Sydney Royal BG is very nicely maintained, many of the smaller ones are in poor condition and are clearly starved of funds and TLC.
It seems to me that privatisation of many small ones could potentially be a good idea. But then, the revenue-raising potential of small gardens in small towns would render them unattractive to potential private concerns.
Privatisation of large gardens is much less clear. I would think that the rate-payer and taxpayer base for Sydney and NSW, along with the enormous significance of these gardens, and the fact that they do generate a fair bit of income (if only from the exorbitant parking fees), would mean that privatisation should not happen. Or at least not unless there are very strict parameters emplaced, which we can have confidence will be upheld far into the future.
Privatisation is fraught with dangers, as you point out. But is certainly not a case of government management always being free of nasties while private management is always full of them.
continued