If you seek their monument …

IT WOULD be a pity if Frank Sartor's attack on the Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid through an open letter in this newspaper diverted all attention from his other comments about what will be a permanent monument to Labor in Sydney. The former planning minister has criticised the $6 billion Barangaroo project as a gross overdevelopment, and essentially a tribute to profit-seeking rather than creation of a fine urban environment - ''brass'' over ''class'', as he put it.

Judging by the response from Herald readers on a quick website poll yesterday, the overwhelming public response is one of agreement. For their part, the developers, Lend Lease, contend that they have received ''extremely positive feedback from the thousands of Sydneysiders with whom we've engaged over the past 12 months'', and people are eagerly looking forward to the completed project.

Sartor makes it clear that decisions about Barangaroo were closely interwoven with power play within NSW Labor as it headed towards the train wreck of last Saturday's election. Sartor himself came to be seen as the wrong person for the planning portfolio by Obeid and the party secretary, Karl Bitar, apparently after resisting their lobbying for a particular company to get an overview role in the project. The former premier Morris Iemma confirms that the two did criticise Sartor to him, though to no effect in terms of which company got Barangaroo.

His replacement as planning minister, Kristina Keneally, went on to approve much higher density for Barangaroo and the controversial hotel built on a pier out into Darling Harbour from the existing shoreline. Sartor attributes this to Obeid's influence, commenting: ''Brilliant public policy, Eddie. Well done, mate!'' Keneally would no doubt continue to insist that she was nobody's puppet and took decisions on merit. From the outside, it still looks like a project endorsed by the whole of Labor.

On Barangaroo itself, Sartor has elaborated that the steady expansion of the project meant the ''buildings are bigger than they need to be and the public domain has been diminished, the public spaces have been lowered in quality''. He singles out the hotel in the water as a Dubai-style gimmick that should never have been allowed, and the creation of a new Barangaroo Delivery Authority as unnecessary. Sartor predictably comes under fire for speaking out only after the deal is done, and as having approved other ''over-developments'' elsewhere. The question now is whether Barry O'Farrell wants to try picking apart this deal and its background, or continue to tacitly accept Labor's work.