PARLIAMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES

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  4. 15th October 1992

Red Water Fever

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SpeakersWebster The Hon Robert
BusinessQuestions Without Notice

RED WATER FEVER

The Hon. R. J. WEBSTER: On 23rd September the Hon. J. R. Johnson asked a question about the outbreak of red water fever and what the Government was doing to control and eradicate this disease. Red water fever is in fact not a disease but a symptom of a number of diseases, specifically tick fever and leptospirosis. Red water fever, as it relates to tick fever, is essentially confined to Queensland, although one could be forgiven for thinking there had been an outbreak of the disease further south, specifically in the
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Sussex Street region of Sydney. Symptoms of the disease are a reddening of the face, which appears in the wake of poor property purchases. This first symptom of the disease appeared on the face of the vector of the disease into the Sydney region, Senator Stephen Loosley, following his clever dabble some years ago in the property market at 289-305 Sussex Street.

The second stage symptom then appeared when the owners of the site, the New South Wales Labor Party, plunged into the red. The level of this plunge - $9 million - was not helped by the fact that the purchase price for the site was $3.8 million, while its value today is only $1.6 million. This plunge into the red leads to the third stage symptom of the disease which prompts the reds, that is, the left-wing of the party, to begin seeing red and calling for the blood of the vector of the disease. The final result was that there was much red water in Sussex Street around the time of the Australian Labor Party conference in June this year as the vector, Senator Loosley, was killed off. The day after the Hon. J. R. Johnson asked the question in this House honourable members read in the Daily Telegraph Mirror of a trial treatment for this outbreak of red water fever in Sussex Street. The Labor Party is getting into the accommodation market with plans for an 18-storey apartment building on the site of the outbreak. To do this, however, it needs the land from its mates next door, the Seamen's Union and the Federation of Industrial Manufacturing and Employees Union, who all seem too eager to catch the same disease which my colleagues opposite know only too well.
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