{"id":11188,"date":"2021-04-28T03:29:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T03:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=11188"},"modified":"2021-04-28T03:29:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T03:29:57","slug":"greens-demand-investigation-into-western-sydney-airport-offsets-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/04\/28\/greens-demand-investigation-into-western-sydney-airport-offsets-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"GREENS DEMAND INVESTIGATION INTO WESTERN SYDNEY AIRPORT OFFSETS SCANDAL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Greens say an investigation is needed into the offsets for the Western Sydney Airport, after revelations that consortiums including advisors to the NSW government made millions from the development.<br \/>\nAn investigation by Lisa Cox at The Guardian revealed that over a quarter of all offsets sold in the NSW scheme were collected by the consortiums.<br \/>\n<strong>Greens Leader, Adam Bandt said:<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cPublic trust is paramount for major projects and the revelations published in the Guardian this morning puts a massive question mark over the environmental value of offsets for the Western Sydney Airport.<br \/>\n\u201cThere needs to be an investigation into any conflicts of interests and possible insider trading.<br \/>\n\u201cThis is happening on the Morrison government\u2019s watch. Our national environment laws are too weak.<br \/>\n<strong>Greens Environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young said:<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cThe offsets system is an utter rort. Just another scam for the Morrison Government to give their big developer and mining mates a green light for the environment wrecking projects.<br \/>\n\u201cThis is just more proof the Morrison Government and their state counterparts can\u2019t be trusted to protect the environment and our wildlife. We need stronger laws, not weaker ones.<br \/>\n\u201cNext week the Senate will be reviewing the Morrison\u2019s Government\u2019s moves to scrap environment laws. I will pursue this scandal with the Government officials. The Government must be held to account.<br \/>\n<strong>Greens Co-Deputy Leader, Larissa Waters said:<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cEven the rorts are stuffed with rorts! This isn\u2019t the first time serious questions have been raised about who\u2019s profiting from the Western Sydney airport project.<br \/>\n\u201cLast year we discovered that the federal government had paid a Liberal Party donor 10 times the fair value of a parcel of land earmarked for a second runway, handing over $29.8 million of taxpayer money for property valued at $3.1 million.<br \/>\n\u201cAnd now we learn that a consultant has made a motza by advising governments to purchase environmental offset properties he had a financial stake in.<br \/>\n\u201cClearly there are problems with the governance of this project and both the NSW and federal governments have a lot of questions to answer. It\u2019s yet another reminder why the Greens continue to call for a strong and independent national corruption watchdog.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Greens say an investigation is needed into the offsets for the Western Sydney Airport, after revelations that consortiums including advisors to the NSW government made millions from the development. An investigation by Lisa Cox at The Guardian revealed that over a quarter of all offsets sold in the NSW scheme were collected by the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/04\/28\/greens-demand-investigation-into-western-sydney-airport-offsets-scandal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;GREENS DEMAND INVESTIGATION INTO WESTERN SYDNEY AIRPORT OFFSETS SCANDAL&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}