Interview

Friends State Their Case

Barry Cotter talks to Peter Lewis

Friends of Currawong member Barry Cotter outlines his objections to the Corporate Renaissance plan and his own plans for the facility.

What's wrong with the Corporate Renaissance proposal?

There are two elements. The first is about who the organisation is and who they are associated with and their whole philosophy. The second is that Currawong is a unique environmental situation which needs to be dealt with sensitively and needs to be dealt with in a minimalist way.

To the first point, I have a very grave difficulty in essentially privatising Currawong and giving it to an organisation which will repatriate all its profits overseas because the structure is that all the money comes back to the Maharishi; it goes through a long loop but it all goes back to him. The business that is run is an immensely profitable business which also provides funds to the Natural Law Party; they share headquarters in America with the World Plan Executive; they have common office-holders in Australia and despite some freshening up around the edges, they have, in my view, political philosophies which are incompatible with anyone we would want to be associated with. At the heart of those is that they don't believe in a democratically elected Parliament, they have policies which quite explicitly state that they are working towards polices that will eradicate the need for unions; they have polices that I believe are offensive to women in particular that women shouldn't be part of the workforce; and I can't believe in an age where we are finding it difficult to convince people of the benefits of joining the trade union movement that we would do the biggest commercial arrangement for the Labor Council with an organisation such as that. It will destroy the reputation of Labor Council as a forward thinking and progressive organisation and will confirm a whole lot of prejudices about that organisation and how it looks upon the broader community.

Where's the difference between this and doing a joint venture with a business organisation or, for that matter, another political party like the Greens?

Where strategic alliances are leading to a political end, that's understandable; but this is leading to a financial end. In fact I think an alliance with the Greens would be enhanced by our proposal because it's a green proposal. That's to basically keep the site as it is; to incorporate a range of environmentally progressive features and to use it as a little bit of a showcase for the environment. Corporate Renaissance say they are going to do that as well, but they are going to bulldoze everything and intensify the use.

That's not quite right; they're leaving several of the cottages as they are.

They're leaving Midhome in place and Blue Cottage, everything else is bulldozed. They will have to carry out major ground works to build the buildings they want to build and they are very large structures -- some of them have eight bedrooms. So there are very major differences between the two proposals and that's partly reflected in the rent. We can't possibly generate the income they can offer because of the scale. But what we can offer is something that keeps the place as a peaceful and unique environment; but that can meet a whole lot of other aspirations: TUTA, kids, those sorts of issues. We see our proposal, if properly used by Labor Council in a marketing sense, as enhancing its credentials amongst two of the areas I think they are lagging in. One is the environmental groups and the other is younger people. Young people think unions are on the nose and they won't join them. We see by promoting a schools program that we will be working with kids who are not that far from the workforce, who will remember the days they were at Currawong. You would be creating a pool of people who would become walking talking ads for the trade union movement. That won't happen with the Maharishi's organisation, because they'll be training the very people, the corporate managers whose job is to screw the unions; they train the big organisations.

Are you claiming they're training people to screw workers?

They're training senior management, right? And if you're training senior managers, at the end of the day I don't think there are too many corporations that the trade union movement would say are their champions and who train their managers to enhance the trade union movement. There will be a couple who are sympathetic, the Lend Leases of this world, but they're just a handful. So I have grave difficulty in being involved in an organisation and having a situation where trade union training is taking place on the very same site as people who are opposed to us. What I find extraordinary about the Labor Council's position is that when a proposal in the past came up to allow TUTA facilities to be used by management it was vehemently opposed by the Labor Council because its wrong. But now we want to get into bed with them in a business relationship.

Can you understand the enthusiasm for a deal which has the sort of flow-on benefits that this one has -- $200,00 a year, improved facilities for TUTA?

Of course I can, I can understand the enthusiasm for a whole range of things that would be immensely profitable. It would be immensely profitable to cut down every forest in Australian and sell the wood; the Labor Council doesn't support that nor should it. It would be very profitable to put an 80-room five-star hotel there, but the Labor Council doesn't support that, now, they have in the past. You have to weigh up how you are getting your money. You could put a nuclear dump there, in the extreme, and get a lot of money for it, but that would be irresponsible. So you've got to weigh it up. And what we think is missing from the debate from the Labor Council executive's point of view, is that yes, there are a lot of things you can do that make you money, but that there's an ideological gap that has to appear that can not be lost. I'll give you an example; the NSW Government has just had a sweeping victory. If it wasn't for a number of the trade unions standing up to Bob Carr 12 months ago and saying privatisation of electricity is not on; there's no doubt we'd be in opposition now. Chikarovski tried to bribe the electorate with $1000 and a shopping list of promises, but the electorate said: we won't cop this because there's greater ideals here than a pure financial return. Michael Costa hasn't seen that lesson and he doesn't understand it. And if his colleagues on the Labor Council executive haven't seen it , then we have a fundamental problem.

Let's look at your proposal, you're talking about a 300 per cent increase in revenue -- how can that be achieved?

It's not hard to achieve; we've never maximised our income form the site. The constraints have been that there's not sufficient accommodation on the site to make it financially viable. Our proposal addresses that in two ways. It provides additional accommodation that can be used for both recreational use and accommodation for trade union training. In addition a key part of our proposal is to build a facility that will allow school kids to use it as part of their educational needs. We did quite a lot of market research and we identified a key area as part of the schools program is that smaller schools, which are often the most disadvantaged schools, find it very hard to get into the camps, because they are geared for 60-90 kids. We're pitching ours at smaller classes of 30 kids. We know through our contacts with providers of these types of facilities that they are very profitable to run and we believe there is a great deal of scope with proper management to do that. the Labor Council budget for promoting Currawong at the moment is zero. We propose a very heavy budget while the rebuilding is going on to promote the place so that the day the buildings are one, there'll be people in there and then a modest, but sufficient budget to promote the place.

This involves Labor Council borrowing more than $1 million. Can you understand reticence at a time when the movement is in decline, for taking that financial risk?

Yes I can, and that is something we've addressed in our proposal. $1 million in the grand plan of things for Labor Council is not much. They've just got $3 million from the sale of 2HD and what they do with that is their business. We say that $1 million is insignificant because over time there will be asset growth and it becomes a minuscule amount. We also think our figures are sufficiently realistic to have significant down side on income and still be able to make a very profitable operation out of it. The independent assessment, which I haven't seen a final copy of, but on the construction side, it had no criticism whatsoever. On the construction side, the quantity surveyor couldn't fault our figures; on the income side, there's been no assessment whatsoever, so its very hard to call it an independent assessment. It's interesting to see that eco-tourism is now being recognised by the state government - it's the same marketing advice we've received.

Why has it taken this Corporate Renaissance proposal for you to come up with an alternate plan to make Currawong pay?

It's simple, the Labor Council wouldn't let us, the money wasn't there. We've been trying to put together a marketing strategy for some time and many of the elements in our proposal, members of the Currawong Committee have floated for some years. We floated the schools program, we floated the cabins, but we couldn't get the funds. We have had ideas, we have had proposals and we would have happily put the work in.

What's your view of the usage of Currawong at the moment? Do you think it's being broadly used across the trade union movement?

Certainly in terms of the number of unions that are using it, no doubt. A very large number of unions are represented. I think it's not promoted by some unions and it's used, I believe, quite widely. If you look at the postcode analysis there's a huge number of places people are coming from. Some places are represented more than others. I've heard it said that it's dominated by people from the north side and the inner west; that may be so, but I don't think it's a crime to live in the inner west and I'm pleased that so many unionists live there. But we're saying that was then, this is now and we want to get a facility that will appeal to people across the community, people should be able to come whether they live in Bankstown or Edgecliff.

How much of this is about holding onto your holiday spot?

For me not a lot; I can only get there once a year on a holiday because of my work pressures. I go there a lot more than that because I do a lot of work for free for Labor Council. I don't think that's a factor at all. We're trying to extend the usage.

If the Corporate Renaissance proposal is passed, will the Friends of Currawong accept that decision, or will you attempt to play a spoiling role?

I don't see there will be any role for the Friends of Currawong helping anyone if the Labor Council accepts the proposal because it then becomes the responsibility of the TM organisation to get the approvals form the various consent authorities. There might be individuals who will exercise whatever rights they have, but I don't see there's a spoiling role that can be played. Here you've got one of the largest corporate entities in the world seeking to create this with almost unlimited funds to pursue it up against a bunch of ordinary rank and filers. But Pittwater Council are never going to approve this proposal, never and its naive of anyone in Labor Council to think otherwise; because it is an overdevelopment of the site. So the thing will go to the Land and Environment Court and it will be up to the TM organisation to get approval. the tragedy will be if they go to the Court and lose, what will happen to Currawong in the interim. That's happened once before, when the Labor Council tried to sell it to CRI, the place was allowed to run down and it became a ghost town, and that's the risk we would take with TM.

  View entire issue - print all of the articles!

  Issue 7 contents

»	Labor Council to Vote on Currawong Proposal
»	The Story So Far ...
»	Costa: What I�ll Do With The Dough
»	Friends of Currawong Plan: Borrow To Grow
»	Independent Evaluation Backs TM Plan
»	How the Voting Works

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	A Real Aussie Preamble
»	The Get Stuffed Tax
»	Laboring for Education
»	Tipping: No One Got Close

Notice Board
- Check out the latest events

Latest Issue

View entire latest issue
- print all of the articles!

Previous Issues

Subject index

Search all issues

© 1999-2000 Labor Council of NSW

LaborNET is a resource for the labour movement provided by the Labor Council of NSW

[ Privacy Statement | Disclaimer | Credits ]

LaborNET is proudly created, designed and programmed by Social Change Online for the Labor Council of NSW