What’s the scam with American asset jugglers and infamous tax shysters from Brookfield? They pick up the privatised Northern Beaches Hospital for nicks, whisk it off to the Caymans, and just won the redevelopment nod for the old Manly Hospital via Bermuda.

The scam is the NSW Government appears to be a glutton for punishment by the cuff-linked buccaneers of private equity. They bought retirement village and aged care operation Aveo for $1.3B in 2019; and 5 years and not much tax later (Aveo is controlled now in Bermuda) are touting it for sale in today’s AFR for $3.5B. Nice work if you can get it, but you can only get it with the assistance of gullible politicians and bureaucrats.

A leak to the Tele yesterday had the Boys from Bermuda turning the Manly site into a “health and wellbeing precinct” (upmarket retirement village), which is funny because former NSW Premier Mike Baird was contemplating a vision of an adolescent hospice back in 2016.

And funny too that Brookfield, despite its promises to add youth mental health capacity to Northern Beaches Hospital to address the mental health crisis, has failed to deliver.

Good thing the NSW Auditor-General is doing an inquiry into ownership of the NBH. Not that anything will come of it though as the history shows you can spin our elected representatives any old yarn and they’ll believe it. Irony is the Government closed Mona Vale Hospital as well as Manly Hospital to siphon the 30k residents of the Beaches into the privatised NBH.

Caymans Privatisation: Northern Beaches Hospital limps into financial triage

This post was originally published on Michael West.