Job creation claim ludicrous

Godfrey Franz' claim (PN, 11 Jan 2016) that the ATO office in Gosford will create 2.5 times as many jobs as the number of tax workers employed is too ludicrous to be taken seriously.

As any econometrician will tell him, a multiplier effect of 0.25 is a good figure for a highly productive employment generator, and the ATO office is far from that.

I would suggest that 0.025 would be a realistic figure but I'm open to any proof that Mr Franz can provide to the contrary.

For instance, can he offer any plausible reasons as to why accountant and lawyer numbers will increase as a result of the transfer of ATO staff to Gosford?

Lawyers and accountants rely on local clients, not ATO employees, and the amount of work will be exactly the same as it is now, regardless of where the ATO office is located.

As for his obfuscation that the site was not public land but belonged to the Department of Education, the last time I checked, the Department was a public service and its assets belong to the public (i.e., us).

The Department is not entitled to maximize the value - code for getting the highest price - if maximizing the price is contrary to the general public interest.

In any case, is there any evidence that the Department achieved the maximum value for the site?

Mr Franz completely avoids the issue of how the ATO came to be involved in the first place [in the tender process] - assuming, as Mr Franz is keen to point out, the land belonged to the Department of Education.

If the Department passed the land to the ATO for the purpose of running a tender, whereby a private developer came into possession of the title, subject only to a 10-year lease by the ATO, we are entitled to know the terms of this undercover transaction and to see the evidence that it produced the maximum value.

Finally, Mr Franz attempts to confuse the issue by pretending that anyone who opposes the idea of the tax office being on the old school site must be against any development in Gosford.

The real issue is that there are better, cheaper and more accessible sites in Gosford for the tax office and that the waterfront is too valuable an amenity to be alienated for such a silly purpose as a building that has no direct community value.

Incidentally, if Mr Franz is correct and there will be 1500 jobs generated in Gosford by the new office, it must mean that 1500 jobs will be lost in the location from which the ATO jobs are being transferred.

Mr Franz presumably approves of this beggar my-neighbour attitude and cares little, if at all, for the hardship being visited on the community in the losing position.

I take it that this would only be a concern for "left-wing whiners" and that hard-nosed economic realists, such as Mr Franz, would consider that it serves them right for not living in a marginal electorate.

Email, 19 jan 2016

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy