A chapter in Helen Pitt’s ‘Luna Park’ revives claims that Neville Wran blocked a lease for personal reasons, but official tender records point elsewhere.

Helen Pitt’s history, Luna Park (Allen and Unwin 2026), devotes a chapter to an anecdote reported by The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007. The newspaper relied on a claim by Leon Fink, a property developer and restaurateur, that in 1976 he approached the newly elected Labor premier, Neville Wran, to lobby for a renewed lease of the fun fair. The lease had expired before Wran’s election.

“While my bum points to the ground, your partner will not get that lease”, Fink claims Wran told him. According to Fink, his business partner Nathan Spatt “had been overheard in a restaurant criticising Wran on his use of a private plane belonging to Sir Peter Abeles in the midst of an airline strike”. In May 1977 Wran and his wife Jill beat an air traffic controllers’ strike to return from a Noumea holiday by accepting seats on a TNT-chartered plane. Wran had publicly apologised.

Fink’s company did not get a renewed lease. Nor was it successful when the lease for the park was tendered after the deadly ghost train fire in June 1979.

Pitt should have examined the timeline. The Noumea trip was in May 1977, one year after Wran was elected in May 1976. If she accepts Fink’s version, the conversation must have occurred after May 1977. Given Fink claims he had already reached agreement with the previous government, it defies belief he waited more than a year to try to close the deal with Wran.

The reason for Wran’s anger is disputed. The more........

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