It's slowly dawning on the public that maybe, just maybe, the selling off of public assets has mysteriously failed to provide the high-service, low-cost future we were promised - almost like putting previously government-owned services like electricity grids and water mains into the hands of the for-profit sector would see them run for-profit rather than as services.

Still, state governments have spent much of their recent history assessing public assets as though casing the estate of a distant and recently-deceased relative and wondering how much the silverware would get on Gumtree.

However, attitudes do seem to be slowly changing - which makes it edifying to look at the differences in approach between the plans for two iconic buildings owned by the people in two different states: NSW and South Australia.

In Adelaide, the state government has taken a massive piece of publicly owned property on a prime piece of real estate - the Royal Adelaide Hospital on North Terrace - and is determined to use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make something extraordinary out of the site for the culture of the city.

In Sydney, the state government has taken a massive piece of publicly owned property on a prime piece of real estate - the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo overlooking Darling Harbour - and seems determined to sell it to developers for apartments.

You might notice some subtle differences in these approaches. One assumes that public assets are assets owned by the public and the other figures selling stuff off is a cool way to strip culture out of the city in order to make a??? um, multimillion-dollar loss?

But we'll come to that in a moment. First up, the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

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The fancy New Royal Adelaide Hospital has been a mightily controversial project and has the dubious honour of being the nation's most expensive building. It's also over a year late and millions of dollars over budget, but despite that is scheduled to finally open its doors early next month.

There are ambitious plans for the old site, which was at one point earmarked for a new school, but now looks set to be a mixed use site with tantalising suggestions of Adelaide building a MONA-style contemporary arts gallery. As Lord Mayor Martin Haese reasonably put it: "You've got the Art Gallery, you've got the South Australian Museum, you've got the State Library, you've got our universities, and to have something of cultural significance facing right on to North Terrace, we believe it's very important."

Among the other plans are some more facilities for the universities, handing some space back to the Botanic Gardens and??? well, a limited number of apartments. And most of the plans do rest on the developers footing the bill for the cool stuff in order to get to flog off apartments, which history suggests is a matter of over-promising in the bidding phase and non-delivering in the eventual construction.

See, the plan is to move the Powerhouse - an enormous purpose-built museum and research facility - to Parramatta, which will involve building a new purpose-built museum and research facility on another site, which is estimated to cost around $2 billion.

It's somewhat ambitious to think that the current Powerhouse site will turn a sweet profit for the taxpayers of NSW, especially since the upward estimate on the sale price of the site is $200 million, the NSW government's idea appears to be to spend literally 10 times the sale price in order to??? um, get more luxury apartments in Ultimo?

And while Sydney's housing crisis has officially moved from "socially problematic" to "citywide game of chicken", the solution is not more luxury developments. Families struggling to find a place to live aren't going to have their problems solved by plonking down a million they don't have on a one-or-two bedder they can't fit within.

And one might reasonably assume that the reason the government is planning to sell off the Powerhouse for a tenth of what it will cost to relocate it is because they have no intention of going ahead with the eye-wateringly expensive relocation bit of the plan, but that would be cynical.

Incidentally, the "powerhouse" building in question was built in order to power the city's tram network. London had a similar thing going on, and when they repurposed the building it was converted into a public arts space. You might have heard of it: it's called the Tate Modern. Fun bonus fact: the City of London have no plans to bulldoze it and sell it to developers.

So, one state is taking the opportunity to make a cultural investment in its city, and the other is flogging public assets off to remove existing cultural investment.

Remind me: why is Adelaide the national punchline, again?