Redfern Aboriginal Housing Company Website

Redeveloping The Block
Broadcast: 17/12/2004 ABC, The 7:30 Report
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Reporter: Matt Peacock

MAXINE McKEW: The future of one of Australia's best-known Aboriginal landmarks, the Block in Sydney's Redfern, is up for grabs following the passage last week of controversial legislation in the NSW Parliament allowing for the complete redevelopment of the inner-city suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo.

NSW Energy and Utilities Minister Frank Sartor has been given extraordinary powers to drive the urban renewal of one of the country's most disadvantaged areas.

The move has been hailed by developers as a long-overdue measure to clean up an urban slum and to provide additional much-needed housing close to Sydney's city centre.

But already Aboriginal and other community leaders are up in arms over what they see as a naked land grab by the top end of town.

Matt Peacock reports MATT PEACOCK: Australia's biggest city is bursting at the seams and just near its heart an urban slum, say developers, whose time has come.

KEN MORRISON, PROPERTY COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA: Sydney is - has 1,000 people coming to it every day.

We're going to need to find accommodation for another 1 million people over the next 20 years.

We need to look for areas like Redfern, Waterloo, which we can transform and see it as an opportunity to create some social good in there.

MATT PEACOCK: But the big blockage, say developers - Redfern's notorious Aboriginal Block, site of February's extraordinary riot following the death of Aboriginal teenager TJ Hickey.

KEN MORRISON: If that Redfern station area is going to be the hub of a new commercial zone then the Block will just have to go.

MATT PEACOCK: The NSW Government's response has been to give its Minister, Frank Sartor, extraordinary powers to redevelop one of the country's most impoverished inner-city suburbs.

FRANK SARTOR, NSW MINISTER FOR REDFERN-WATERLOO: It's not one of the easier jobs I've had.

CLOVER MOORE, SYDNEY LORD MAYOR:; It's not about urban renewal or overcoming social disadvantage.

It's about land development, and it's about land development for the State Government because they're strapped for cash.

MICK MUNDINE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, ABORIGINAL HOUSING COMPANY: Hey, you won't be moving us.

MATT PEACOCK: Just metres from the spikes that killed TJ Hickey, an alliance of public housing tenants, Aboriginal residents, politicians and City Councillors, all united in their opposition to what they see as a plan to force the poor out.

CLOVER MOORE: It's not about urban renewal, and it's not about addressing the social issues in our area, it's about development.

However unattractive Waterloo's crime-ridden high-rise housing estate might be to others, these ageing Russian immigrants still call it home.

AUCTIONEER: And certainly this particular area is one of the areas that's definitely in the hot spot and definitely in the limelight at the moment, ladies and gentlemen.

MATT PEACOCK: But the pressure of gentrification in the area is on with a vengeance.

People with the money to buy are on the way in - if only they can be sure that those without it move out.

WOMAN: Everyone you talk to says that Redfern's the place to put your money for the future - that with the redevelopment of Redfern it could only be good for buying in this area that's already feeling like a safe place to be.

MATT PEACOCK: But Redfern is first and foremost a national Aboriginal icon, warns the Aboriginal Housing Company's Mick Mundine.

The only way I reckon we can fix the issue is if we can get an equal partnership, because they'll never get rid of Aboriginal people.

MATT PEACOCK: Redfern Block, granted by the Whitlam Government to the Aboriginal community 30 years ago for low-cost inner-city accommodation, is now a pale shadow of its former self - most of its houses demolished as one part of a battle against local drug dealers.

But over the past five years, the housing company has drawn up award-winning plans to revitalise the original concept with 62 new homes.

But it's a vision for the Block not shared by Minister Sartor, who wants to half the planned number of Aboriginal residents actually living on the Block, replacing it with something that both white and black Australians want to visit.

FRANK SARTOR: My vision for Everleigh Street is to create something of special interest, for the Indigenous community, that everyone comes to on weekends, if not during the week.

That people come to, because they either want to look at things, buy things or participate.

MICK MUNDINE: Well, I believe like, if you do the way that Frank Sartor wants us to do, we're depriving our people of good affordable housing and no way in the world are we going to change our mind.

MATT PEACOCK: Mr Sartor rules out using the big stick of resuming the Block, committing instead to consultation for as long as it takes - consultation he'll formalise by regulation, which might also soothe these elderly Russian public housing tenants, who fear they'll be moved as well.

EVGENIA SPECTOR, PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENT: How can my 88-year-old husband move to other areas without doctors, without the transport?

CLOVER MOORE: They've been thrown out of their homes already once in their lives and they're scared it might happen again.

And again they're being told that won't happen, but the fear is the legislation allows that to happen.

KEN MORRISON: What this is going to deliver us is a new planning framework which really provides opportunity rather than just wishful thinking down there.

And a government framework that can actually see outcomes on the ground, and that's the big change with this.

CLOVER MOORE: It's not about addressing social disadvantage and it's not about urban renewal.

It's about land development, and it's about pushing ahead bulldozer fashion and perhaps riding roughshod over that very interesting and complex and diverse inner-city community that we have.

On December 6, 300 people rallied in the inner- city suburb of Redfern to protest against the sale of Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) land and the local public school under the NSW Labor government plan to extend the city's commercial business district out to Sydney Airport.

The protesters were addressed by local Aboriginal community leader Shane Phillips, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, Greens member of the NSW Legislative Council Sylvia Hale, Democrats parliamentarian Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, Gary Moore from the NSW Council of Social Service, and Geoff Turnbull from REDwatch, the Redfern-Eveleigh-Darlington-Waterloo community action group that organised the rally.

Moore told the rally that the government's bill to establish a Redfern-Waterloo Authority to administer the redevelopment plan was ‘‘the worst bill I have ever seen in my 20 years as an elected representative.''

As Gary Highland from the Aboriginal Metropolitan Land Council explained to Green Left Weekly, the Redfern Block might become the first piece of land to be sold off by the new authority. The Block was the first land stolen from Aborigines to be handed back to them — by the Whitlam government in 1973.

This land is held under freehold title, only protected by the NSW Heritage Act. However, under the Redfern-Waterloo Authority legislation, passed by the NSW upper house on December 9, Frank Sartor, the new minister for Redfern-Waterloo, has draconian powers to override the heritage law.

The AHC wants to replace the 19 remaining houses of the Block with 62 new apartments under its $27 million Redfern Pemulwuy redevelopment project. Premier Bob Carr's government wants to have more businesses in the Redfern-Waterloo area, one of the poorest and most welfare-dependent areas in Sydney.

The December 9 National Indigenous Times reported that members of the local Aboriginal community vowed to fight any plans to reduce housing in the area. “They can say what they like out there in the government but we are not going to be moving, the people are not going to be leaving — it’s our Mecca, it’s our Gaza Strip”, said Richard Green, a youth liaison officer at the Alary-Tony Mundine Gym.

The new State Government body that will oversee the redevelopment of Redfern and Waterloo will be able to bypass heritage laws and consent to its own development plans despite amendments to the Government's proposals yesterday.

The new authority will have to consult the Heritage Council before it demolishes heritage buildings, under changes to the proposals which were put forward by the Government itself.

But the authority is still exempt from heritage laws and can go ahead with demolition if the Minister for Redfern-Waterloo, Frank Sartor, is satisfied that it is necessary to improve the area.

The Redfern-Waterloo Authority Bill was expected to pass through the Legislative Council last night with support from the Opposition.

Sydney's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, said the Government's amendments were very weak and did not go far enough. "My view is that the bill needs to be amended so the minister can't annexe lands without coming back to Parliament," she said.

Mr Sartor will still have the power to annexe land outside the Redfern-Waterloo area without the oversight of Parliament.

There are also specific provisions to allow Mr Sartor to claim levies paid by the developer of the Carlton and United Breweries' site in Chippendale, even though the site is outside the areas of Redfern, Waterloo, Darlington and Eveleigh that the authority has been formed to administer.

A new amendment to the bill makes it clear that the funds will have to be used within a reasonable time and for their intended purpose - affordable housing.

Further details about the Government's secret plans for Redfern and Waterloo are likely to emerge in the next two weeks, after a successful motion by the Greens MP Sylvia Hale seeking tabling of the plans. "Before developers start sizing up the valuable land in Redfern, the public has a right to see what they intend to do," Ms Hale said. "Community groups, members of parliament and the public were lied to when the Government told us there was no plan."

Geoff Turnbull, a spokesman for the local resident group REDwatch, said the tabling of the plans would give residents a chance to see how advanced the plans were and "give the community a chance to go into the discussions with the Government over the setting up of the Redfern-Waterloo plan with the same lot of information that the Government has".

Mr Turnbull was disappointed there had been no amendments to the bill to clarify the way the community would be involved in making and revising the plan.

Councillor Moore said the fact that the Government had been willing to amend its own bill showed it had responded to the widespread criticism that came after Cabinet documents were leaked to the Herald showing secret plans for the area.. "I think they're sensitive to the leaking of the Cabinet documents," she said.

"I think they're sensitive to the very large rally of traditional Labor voters and I think they're sensitive to all the Aboriginal groups getting together to oppose what they're going to do to the Block."

In a massive property grab the Carr Labor Government in NSW has set up the Redfern-Waterloo Authority which is designed to allow the Government to bypass decision making by local councils and communities. The two inner city suburbs have Aboriginal communities which have long been seen by the Government as a hindrance to plans by developers.

In March 2002, the Redfern-Waterloo Partnership Project was announced to address serious social problems in the area. That was the stated intention, at any rate. But there was no movement to address the problems, which arise out of poverty and long-term racial discrimination.

Now the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, under Minister for Energy and Utilities, Frank Sartor, is to control key sites, administer a Redfern-Waterloo Fund and develop a ten year plan.

Sartor, a former Sydney mayor, will have unprecedented powers to override normal planning controls, take control of areas at will, choose developers for areas adjacent to such sites, and override the Heritage Act.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore is also an MP whose electorate takes in Redfern and Waterloo. She described the plan as "nothing but a grab for development-related cash" by the Government.

In Parliament Ms Moore moved amendments to the proposed Redfern-Waterloo Authority Bill, warning that it sets up a new super-authority with extraordinary powers that will be above the law.

"The Minister will be accountable to no one and will have the capacity to annex other suburban areas at will, to cherry pick the most valuable development sites, and to act as the consent authority for his developments without being hindered by inconvenient planning laws, such as the Heritage Act."

For starters, heritage laws will no longer apply to four sites in Redfern: the Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh Railway Workshops, the 23 hectares of public housing estates, and the Block and its surrounds, where the area's Aboriginal community lives.

Sartor claims it is "not about dispossessing Aboriginal people and sending them off somewhere else". But there will be no place for them in Redfern and Waterloo as it will be changed into a high-income-only residential and retail area.

There are already plans for the construction of three shopping, residential and office towers over Redfern station and for residential development of Eveleigh.

It has also been revealed that another, separate, body along the lines of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority is being formed to take over what the Government describes as "run-down corridors" throughout Sydney. Although details of this body are as yet only sketchy the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Craig Knowles, has already earmarked Parramatta Road from City Road to Granville, and set up a Parramatta Road Task Force.

The inner-city suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo, home to the Australian Heritage-listed Redfern Block, which has historically been a centre of Black empowerment and organising, faces a $5 billion state government “redevelopment”. The plan involves seizing control of the Block and letting private developers take over two-thirds of the area’s public housing estates.

Indigenous activists have pledged “peaceful” yet “determined and united resistance” to stop the theft of Indigenous land and the threats to public housing.

The Redfern Organisation of Aboriginal Unity and residents group REDwatch (Redfern, Eveleigh, Darlington watch) have organised a protest on December 6 at the Waterloo Green, angered at the lack of consultation from Premier Bob Carr’s state Labor government.

While the state government is establishing the Redfern-Waterloo Authority to “guide the redevelopment”, it has refused to rule out overriding Sydney City Council planning regulations or taking over control of the Block.

The government has also claimed there will be no reduction in public housing in the area and that no Indigenous residents will be forced out. However, public housing towers in Waterloo are slated for demolition, and energy and utilities minister Frank Sartor has said that ‘‘whether we are able to finance the redevelopment ... is one of the challenges”.

According to the Socialist Alliance’s Susan Price: “Having public housing demolished, and then ‘discovering’ there isn’t enough money to build replacements, would not be the first disgraceful tactic used by this government to try to drive out Indigenous people and public housing tenants.

“The Block has been under threat for many years and ever since Redfern youth rose up against police involvement in the death of Gail Hickey’s 17-year-old son, the Carr government and the ‘opposition’ have stepped up their bipartisan support for the Block’s destruction. State Coalition leader John Brogden called for the Block’s ‘bulldozing’, while Carr countered that it had already mostly taken place, with 70 out of 90 houses demolished.”

Price argued for “massive support to Indigenous programs and Indigenous control — not a grubby grab for land”.

There is a kind of reverse entropy in the textural life of cities today, a relentless drift from authentic to synthetic, from down and dirty to schmick and span, from wholegrain to lip gloss.

Paris to Singapore, Kings Cross to Green Square. From wabi sabi, that is, to lifestyle.

Wabi sabi? Sounds like some icy-looking green paste that shoots fire from your nostrils while you are eating sushi. In fact, it's a concept from 16th-century Japanese aesthetics, peripherally associated with Zen Buddhism, that celebrates the humble, the worn, the ambiguous, the shadowy and the derelict. Some say it's the next big thing in Western misappropriation of Eastern ideas. Next after feng shui, that is.

In tourism, wabi sabi translates into something like "authenticity" or "local colour" How ironic, then, that we traverse the globe in search of local colour but when it comes to our own, our knee-jerk reach is for the bulldozer.

Nothing new in the bulldozer mentality, of course. The '60s attack on Woolloomooloo was driven by the same mixed motives - expand the CBD, maximise yield and "clean up" (the houses of) the poor. That plan, like Bob Carr's Redfern-Waterloo proposal, would have doubled resident numbers and added 35,000 workers.

It didn't happen, but that's not the point. The question is why we persist in this city-cleansing thing, as if there's a refresh button somewhere to make it all innocent again. As if, in reborn houses on newly paved streets, people will drop their bad habits and behave. Like nice folks.

The 'Loo might have escaped the sanitising, but we've done the Cross and next in the cleansing line is the 'Fern. It's understandable. Look at the lingo. Once "sore-talk" moves in - once we habitually hear "running sore" for The Block and "eyesore" for Waterloo - we know demolition will soon seem the only, the-once-and-for-all final solution.

And at first glance it's a tempting idea. A glance, though, is about the length of its shelf life. Slum-clearance is the proper name for this demolition reflex, and now, quite as much as a century ago, it flags a deep mis-take.

As the City of Sydney historian, Dr Shirley Fitzgerald, puts it: "The idea that poor environments generated poverty, immorality and human misery justified the removal of housing which offended bourgeois notions of what a prosperous city should look like ... [ignoring the fact] that poverty was endemic, and that demolishing substandard housing in one place would only encourage its emergence somewhere else."

This is axiomatic. The surprise is that we still need to say it. All together now: you don't solve social problems with bulldozers.

But surely, you argue, something needs to be done? Surely we can't just let the drug-taking and the violence continue unchecked? Surely, with things this desperate, this ugly, police powers are necessary? Surely market forces offer the best hose pressure? Surely whatever-it-takes is what it takes?

Well, yes and no. A number of confusions are operating here: conflating ethics and aesthetics, cause and effect. And a number of answers are begging to be made.

You don't stop people peddling drugs, getting drunk or beating women by giving them nice houses to do it in. Redfern's terraces are no different, physically (excepting a little dereliction) from those of Woollahra and Paddington. Waterloo's towers are hardly distinguishable from those of Blues Point or even Green Square, now that architecture's gone so retro. (Woollahra and Paddo were saved by the '60s heritage push, and Blues Point by the property sacrament. But just try taking the bulldozer to any ugly North Shore tower today, however saggy in the slabs. You'll need more than a disapplied Heritage Act in your barrel, I wager.)

No, the difference between Redfern and cleansville is not hardware but wetware. Same old stuff: education, wealth, ethnicity, access. We want elegant environments to generate elegant behaviour, just like we want the beautiful princess to be good, and the ugly sisters bad. But the evidence is not with us. The causality is, if anything, the other way around. Social problems have social causes; it's the behaviour that generates the slum.

But cities, like ogres, have layers. And underlying all this hoo-ha is a classic big-city dynamic: small knot of intractable social difficulty (the urban poor) in direct path of great globalising juggernaut (city of mammon). The city must expand, since that is what cities, like economies, do. Can't go east, can't go west; won't go north (need-to-eyeball syndrome). South is it.

The Government - any government - has two choices. Let rip (terribly sorry, love to help but - shrug - market forces, can't argue with them, what can I do?). Or get creative, subtle even, in defence of all the small, endangered, wabi-sabi uses that enrich city centres the world over but cannot defend themselves against the tearing land-value impact of heritage-free, high-rise zoning. The Carr Government's Redfern-Waterloo Authority is the first masquerading as the second. Let-rip dressed as sensitive social engineering.

The irony is, of course, that the let-rip option doesn't require government - except Thomas Paine's "best government ... which governs least". Indeed, the only good reason to involve government in city-making is to protect the wabi sabi from the juggernaut. Otherwise, you just change the zoning and stand clear.

Which is more or less what is proposed for Redfern-Waterloo. The Carr Government calls it thinking outside the square. Herd mentality calls it getting the job done, alpha male stuff, grunt. In planning terms, though, it's child's play. The much harder, subtler thing is to nurture the undergrowth, sustain the diversity, feed the scuttlers and the squawkers - and still grow a canopy forest.

So, what will happen? Under the proposals, Redfern-Waterloo will be the next Green Square, only higher, smoother, shinier. Why? The new Redfern-Waterloo Authority must overdevelop in order to fund itself, but tower buildings are like eucalypts; impressive in themselves but death to all other species - except banks and chain stores.

Yes, yes. Honest attempts will be made to redo the Block as indigenous housing, and they'll fail, as paternalism always fails, leaving a sanitised facade of urban black culture as designer remnant. The public housing will be apologetically forced out to Woop Woop, great regret but the dollars are irresistible - five out there for one here. Ditto heritage, leaving only a plaque or two to mark, so sadly, its passing. And with it all, baby-in-bathwater, will go some of the city's last pockets of wabi sabi, plus the eccentrics, creatives and dysfunctionals (spot the difference) that shelter in its folds, starved out as they have been from Glebe Point, Surry Hills, Woolloomooloo and the Cross.

Wabi sabi is dangerous, of course. Sen no Rikyu, the subversive tea master who took the idea to its 16th-century apotheosis, was forced, like Socrates, into ritual suicide at almost 70. No less now. To modernism's slick, synthetic monotheism, wabi sabi opposes the unpretentious, the overlooked, the contradictory. To modernism's unwavering forward faith, wabi sabi answers, all progress is illusory. Subversive? Sure. Then again maybe, when everything we add seems to diminish rather than enhance Sydney's inherent beauty, it's time to wonder whether Onward Christian Soldiers is the only tune. Time to nurture wabi sabi, in the very tyre tracks of mammon.

Labor councillors have rebelled against the NSW Government's plans for Redfern and Waterloo, attending a residents' protest against the proposed redevelopment.

They have also written to the minister responsible, Frank Sartor, to suggest changes to a proposal that would give the minister sweeping powers to demolish public housing, override heritage laws and defy the local council in the redevelopment of the area.

In spite of the revolt, the proposal looks likely to pass the Legislative Council this week with tentative support from the Opposition Leader, John Brogden.

"I said the day after the riot at Redfern that the real solution to this was to bulldoze the Block," Mr Brogden said.

"I can hardly argue when the Government comes forward to do that and so much more."

The Opposition was nonetheless worried that the Redfern-Waterloo Authority Bill would give Mr Sartor enormous power to go about Sydney knocking down buildings, he said.

About 150 Waterloo residents, many of them elderly Russians, assembled on the grass outside their high-rise homes yesterday to protest against the plans.

The rally was attended by some councillors from the City of Sydney, including Labor councillors Verity Firth and Tony Pooley, a former South Sydney mayor.

Cr Pooley has written to Mr Sartor on behalf of local Labor Party branch members, suggesting changes to the bill such as a guarantee of community consultation, no sale of public land and no compulsory acquisition of the Block.

Cr Firth said the main concern for residents was consultation. "All we are asking is that the minister comply with the same legislative provisions when it comes to public notification, advertising and acceptance of submissions as other bodies have to comply with."

Not all the residents who attended yesterday's rally agreed on the best course of action.

Waterloo resident Lynn Denford, who has lived in high-rise public housing for 17 years, wanted the buildings to stay and said the Government was using February's Redfern riot as an excuse to redevelop the land.

"Putting rich people in here isn't going to help the people who live here," she said. "This isn't about us, it's about helping themselves to the last remaining land near the city."

Fanya Teslerf said many Russian residents like herself lived in the area and wanted to stay. Her friend, Cilyla Rozenbaum, said they were accustomed to the area and the central location made it easy for their children to visit. But a former resident, Lee Wallace, who lived in Waterloo until bricks were thrown through her window, wanted to see the towers torn down.

Mr Sartor expressed concern that residents had been misled about his plans for the area. "There will be no moving out public tenants and we're debating the form and nature of public housing in the future and whether we can give them something better than they have now," he said.

Last night, the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, told the council that urban renewal was urgently needed in these disadvantaged areas, but the level of power that would be given to the minister was not justified and was counter-productive in the circumstances.

Liberal councillor Shayne Mallard was the only councillor who did not vote to support Cr Moore's sentiments.

Aborigines today pledged to adopt the tactics of human rights campaigners Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr to stop a plan to redevelop some of Sydney's most troubled areas.

The Aboriginal community will protest next week against the NSW government's proposal for a major overhaul of inner-city suburbs Redfern and Waterloo, which contain large numbers of indigenous people and public housing tenants.

The plan, revealed this week, involves selling government land, redeveloping public housing and attempting to attract jobs to the area.

The government will establish the Redfern-Waterloo Authority to guide the redevelopment, which it has been claimed will have the power to override Sydney City Council planning regulations.

Indigenous groups, coming together under the name Redfern Organisation of Aboriginal Unity, today labelled the plan a "land grab" and attacked the Carr government for failing to consult them.

The organisation warned there would be "determined and unified resistance" to any government attempt to forcibly acquire land at Redfern owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company.

Indigenous leaders have planned a rally on Monday at Waterloo Green, adjacent to two public housing towers slated for redevelopment.

"We're appalled that the government has refused to rule out the forcible acquisition of Aboriginal land," indigenous representative Shane Phillips said.

"If they were to try and take our land we'd do what any other reasonable people would do. We'd adopt the tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King to try and stop them."

Mr Phillips said Aboriginal people were not against the Redfern-Waterloo Authority or development.

"We want Redfern and Waterloo to become secure and prosperous, but Aboriginal people should be able to share in this, not be pushed out.

Redfern was the site of a race riot this year sparked by the death of Aboriginal teenager Thomas "TJ" Hickey.

The NSW government said it would not compulsorily acquire land or force out public housing tenants.

A spokeswoman for Redfern-Waterloo Minister Frank Sartor said there would be no reduction in public housing in the area.

"There's no intention to push out any indigenous residents or public housing tenants," she said.

"There's no intention to use compulsory acquisition powers to resume the Block, and that seems to be one of the main concerns (of Aboriginal groups)."

She said Redfern-Waterloo was an "unusual" area with "unique problems" and the government believed "something's got to be done down there".

Mr Sartor had not made up his mind about how the redevelopment would proceed and wanted to consult widely to come up with the best plan.

There would be determined and unified resistance to any attempt by the Government to forcibly acquire land at Redfern owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company, Aboriginal leaders warned today.

In a document sent to NSW Premier, Bob Carr and Redfern – Waterloo Minister, Frank Sartor, the Organisation of Aboriginal Unity, which represents the leaders of every Redfern Aboriginal organisation, said that any attempt to forcibly acquire Aboriginal land would be met with peaceful resistance.

Community representative, Shane Phillips said that local Aborigines would be joined by Aboriginal and non Aboriginal people from around Australia and the world to stop a Government land grab.

“We’re appalled that the Government has refused to rule out the forcible acquisition of Aboriginal land,” Mr Phillips said.

“If they were to try and take our land we’d do what any other reasonable people would do. We’d adopt the tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King to try and stop them,” he said.

Mr Phillips said that he hoped common sense would prevail and that the issue could be resolved by discussions between the community and Government.

“It’s not just Aboriginal people who will be affected by these plans. Our concerns are shared by the residents group REDwatch, the Redfern Chamber of Commerce and many other residents of Redfern and Waterloo of all cultures.”

“We’re committed to working with all these groups and the Government to achieve the best outcome for the local area, but this will only happen if the Government works in partnership with us,” he said.

Mr Phillips said that Aboriginal people were not against the creation of the Authority or development in Redfern Waterloo.

“We want Redfern and Waterloo to become secure and prosperous, but Aboriginal people should be able to share in this, not be pushed out.”

Mr Phillips said the Organisation of Aboriginal Unity was concerned about some aspects of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority Bill.

“We’re worried that the Bill puts too much power in the hands of the Minister. We feel we can talk to Frank Sartor, but the Authority will be in power for 10 years. The Bill would give the power to a future Minister or Government to ride roughshod over our community and take our land,” he said.

Aboriginal people are appalled that detailed plans about the future of our community have been developed without any attempt to consult with the organizations that represent us.

We are concerned that a new all powerful Authority has been created that could ride roughshod over our needs and aspirations. We are worried that this Authority could undermine the work that is currently being carried out by our community controlled organizations.

We agree that the Government has to take a coordinated approach but this must occur in partnership with Aboriginal people.

We are particularly concerned about suggestions that the land currently owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company could be forcibly acquired by the Government. Aboriginal people would regard any forced acquisition as once again the dispossession of our people and occupation of our land. We would fiercely resist this in a unified, determined but peaceful manner.

We would be joined in this by Aboriginal and non Aboriginal families from throughout Australia and indigenous people from around the world.

However, we welcome the Government’s assurance that no decisions over the future of Redfern Waterloo have been made. We also welcome the Minister’s commitment to consultation.

We hope that the Minister’s understanding of consultation is the same as our own. Consultation in our sense of the word means sharing ideas with an open mind to come up with a joint agreement on the best way forward. It means listening as well as speaking. It does not mean telling our people what is happening after decisions have already been made.

If a genuine approach is adopted by all parties, we are confident that a plan for Redfern Waterloo could be agreed on that is in the best interests of Aboriginal people, the broader community and the state of NSW.

We want Redfern Waterloo to become secure and prosperous, but Aboriginal people have to share in that security and prosperity.

When new homes are built, Aboriginal families who currently suffer a housing crisis should have access to a fair share of these.

The Aboriginal Housing Company has produced a plan to redevelop the Block. This plan is based on five years of solid research and an award winning design. It has the support of our community and we urge government to embrace it.

If 20,000 new jobs are to be created in our community, Aboriginal people should be given the opportunity to participate in this growth.

We also want to ensure that a growing, multicultural Redfern Waterloo retains its Aboriginal identity. Redfern is the home of Aboriginal people in NSW and it has great historical significance to our people around Australia. It is recognized by many as the hearth of the Aboriginal struggle for land, justice, coexistence and recognition.

Aboriginal people won’t be forced out of Redfern Waterloo by governments, developers, or anyone. But we want to transform Redfern so that it is once again a site of Aboriginal hope and achievement.

The State Government is considering setting up a body to take charge of some of Sydney's run-down corridors and employment and industrial centres as it fine tunes plans to cope with the city's projected growth.

The body would not need to replicate the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, which is likely to be given unprecedented powers to transform inner-city suburbs through compulsory acquisition of land, the sale of government assets and exemptions from heritage constraints.

However, it would be similarly styled, officials suggest, and would put the Government at the centre of development decisions in areas considered vital to accommodating the anticipated surge of new residents.

Already the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Craig Knowles, has created a special body to rejuvenate the Parramatta Road corridor, from the corner of City Road to Granville.

Under the leadership of David Richmond, former head of the Olympic Committee Authority, the Parramatta Road Task Force has brought together the mayors of the eight councils bordering the 20-kilometre strip, along with senior government bureaucrats and heritage officials. Plans for light-rail services and a new medium-density housing and commercial park are reportedly being developed.

But government sources say the task force could be the forerunner to a separate commission or authority being set up to bring other centres and corridors to life.

Apart from Parramatta Road, three corridors have been identified under a planning strategy being developed to deal with the expected 1000 residents a week who will move to Sydney in the next three decades.

These are the city-airport strip and sections of Canterbury Road and the Hume Highway.

A spokesman for Mr Knowles, Paul Perry, said the Government's present emphasis was on the Parramatta Road strip but other areas could be considered in time.

The eight-kilometre stretch from the city centre to the international and domestic airports has been identified as ripe for government intervention. This would require absorbing planning controls from the City of Sydney.

Government plans to reshape the South Sydney Development Corporation and put it in charge of the airport strip development were shelved a few months ago after a hostile response from the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, one of the biggest critics of the Redfern-Waterloo proposals.

The South Sydney Development Corporation is struggling to survive as a legal entity. It has not held a meeting for more than a year and a host of projects in the Green Square area are languishing.

Earlier this week, the Herald published details of cabinet papers outlining sweeping changes for the Redfern-Waterloo area, including plans to demolish public housing towers, and sell Redfern Public School and Rachel Forster Hospital, partly to fund urban renewal.

The minister responsible for the Redfern project, Frank Sartor, has insisted that the plans are still being developed, and have not been finalised.

But the documents reveal the Government is well advanced in its thoughts on how to maximise jobs and investment returns in the Redfern-Waterloo area.

Redfern-Waterloo provides a chance for smarter urban regeneration, writes Caroline Pidcock.

Social researcher Hugh Mackay says people are lamenting society's degenerating morality and loss of their sense of community. He thinks the real challenge is about connecting people through better urban design.

"We need greater emphasis on public spaces," says Mackay, who also believes good urban designers are some of the most important people in society and rival psychiatrists for their impact on our good mental health.

He notes that people still care passionately about neighbourhoods and about community. His research finds that while people tend to glaze over about some globalisation issues, they want to be involved with the things they can touch - the tangible in their neighbourhood where they can make a positive difference.

This is the important glue that will empower and enable a meaningful strategy for the future development of the metropolis of Sydney. So what is good urban design? Many agree this has been achieved when a place is easy to get to and move through, and has:

Its own identity.
Public and private spaces that are clearly distinguished.
Appealing, attractive and successful outdoor areas.
A clear image that is easy to understand.
The ability to change easily and incrementally.
Variety and choice.
A balance between natural and built environments.
Created value to sustain the desired mix of uses and quality of townscapes.
Something for everyone where a diverse range of users' needs are met.

The Redfern-Waterloo area is a high priority area in urgent need of attention that will deliver these attributes. Particularly in regard to such complex and sensitive areas such as the Block, the Waterloo Towers, Redfern station, its existing strip shopping streets, the Australian Technology Park and the Eveleigh railway yards.

Even more complex are the problems to do with realising the potential of the area while maintaining the diverse social mix of the current neighbourhood. The situation allows one of the very few urban Aboriginal communities and many low income people (from people on various pensions through to students and artists) to live within easy travelling distance of the city. Such diversity is something that is critically important to every city and becoming increasingly rare in Sydney.

So how can good urban design be achieved in this instance? How do we overcome apparently conflicting and complex community interests and what often appears to be impenetrable barriers of bureaucracy and red tape to make such places?

Some basic attributes that would seem requisite to deliver good urban design include: Thorough consultation and research into the issues of a particular place. Skilled community/social workers, planners, urban designers and architects to devise a responsive vision and the specific solutions that will be required to resolve them. Leadership that will find a way through the maze of conflicts, mixed land ownership, multiple planning rules, etc, to ensure implementation. A community that has been appropriately consulted and feels ownership over the ideas to assist with their implementation.

This long overdue process would seem to be what the new City of Sydney is/was following. The authority proposed in the bill before the upper house suggests the Carr Government has decided a very strong hand - some would say autocratic - is required to re-develop the Redfern-Waterloo area.

For many of us who have laboured under the planning system in NSW, the idea of an authority that does not get bogged down in the requirements and details imposed on us by this system might sound attractive.

However, we must remember the system is a reflection of the community expectation that unfettered development is not a right of landowners and developers, and that the community rightly expects consultation and engagement as well as checks and balances are in place.

There are many development sites around Sydney that ably demonstrate outcomes focused mainly on profit, and with little regard for the community, that do not deliver built environments that a city like Sydney can be proud of.

In Britain there is an alternative model in place for achieving good urban design. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment is an independent body that looks to inspire people to demand more from their buildings and spaces, thus creating a market force for such solutions. Its website - http://www.cabe.org.uk - says: "We use our skills and resources to work for a higher quality of life for people and communities across England, with particular concern for those living in deprived areas.

"We do this by making the case for change, gathering hard evidence, providing education opportunities and through direct help on individual programs and projects.

"We motivate those responsible for providing our buildings and spaces to design and develop well. We demonstrate to those clients that investment in excellence will pay back many times over through a more productive workforce, more contented customers and a healthier bottom line."

Caroline Pidcock is NSW president of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

A residents' action group has called for the state upper house to tighten legislation next week handing one NSW minister sweeping powers over planning in Redfern-Waterloo, saying there are fears that people living there will be stripped of rights enjoyed by residents of local government-controlled areas.

The legislation creating the Redfern-Waterloo Authority will set a precedent giving its minister, Frank Sartor, "place-based" powers never seen before in NSW, the spokesman for REDwatch, Geoff Turnbull, said yesterday.

In a meeting with Mr Sartor yesterday, members of the group covering Redfern, Eveleigh, Darlington and Waterloo, suburbs that are the target of the Government's city CBD expansion plans, asked for the public to be given guarantees that locals will be consulted on development proposals.

"We want to make sure that the mechanisms that apply allow opportunities for notification of development plans and time for the community to respond, so that you've got those normal processes that one would have expected in terms of any local environment plan or development project," Mr Turnbull said.

The group, which includes the secretary of Darlington's Labor branch, Trevor Davies, the South Sydney Greens convenor, Ben Spies-Butcher, and the Liberal Party president for Bligh, Ian Thomson, will lobby the Opposition and cross benches to amend the legislation, which has already passed the lower house.

The Parliament should require the new authority to set up a statutory community advisory council representing residents which would advise the minister, they have argued.

Mr Turnbull said Mr Sartor had assured the group that as minister, he would consult residents and there was no need for that to be legislated.

But a committee needed to be enshrined in law "so that there is a definite place where the community is involved in making representations to the minister rather than being at the whim of the minister", he said.

"The reason you need to put it in the act is no matter how much faith you might have in the experience of Frank Sartor, he is not going to be there all the time. He might be called to sort out the problems of the trains, or become premier," Mr Turnbull said.

However, Mr Sartor told the Herald last night that legislating for such a committee would not help because what was needed was goodwill between himself and those he was consulting.

He also denied that his power to override heritage laws would be too strong, as suggested by the group.

"The minister has said that he needs this provision for a particular problem with the oldest toilet in Sydney at Redfern station. If this was the only problem we would suggest the minister should seek a specific exemption for this site," the group said.

That a single body through which to control the redevelopment of the vast tract of land through Redfern, Waterloo and Alexandria is a sound idea is unarguable. The central business district is restricted geographically, and ambitious new plans are needed for its future expansion and growth.

When looked at closely, the new plan is much more than providing room for the CBD to grow. Rather, the Redfern Waterloo Authority is a grand plan in social engineering, to boost the population of the area south of Redfern, change the mix, tear down the Waterloo housing commission towers and bring in jobs.

Apart from the breathtaking ambition of the scheme, this is a natural evolution for an area which has excellent infrastructure and service links, that lies between the CBD and the airport, which also has ready access to the eastern suburbs and to much of the inner west.

But the State Government is going about this the wrong way. In its initial public statements just over a fortnight ago, it highlighted the job-making role of the proposed makeover, with the new authority to have responsibility to develop the policies and plans needed to revitalise the area.

Yet much of the detail of the plan looks to be a fait accompli, with considerable effort already completed into finalising policy detail. Of perhaps greater importance, the new authority is to have absolute planning control over the area if, indeed, that is the correct word, since it seems that there will be precious few planning controls at all. Rather, control will reside with Frank Sartor, the Minister for Utilities, and not with the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, where final consent for such a major undertaking should lie.

It is the social engineering aspect of the revamp that is the immediate lightning rod for much of the public debate. Bringing in many more people may help improve the socio-economic mix of the area, but what will happen to the large numbers living in the Waterloo housing commission towers that are to be demolished, for example? They will have to be moved somewhere, and they need to be consulted.

Suspending planning controls opens the Government to immediate criticism from those redeveloping the neighbouring area of the old glass works and the Reschs brewery site. What is so different about the area they are working on from what is just over the road?

A revamp of the scale proposed for Redfern-Waterloo is not unusual, especially as a growing city seeks to maximise the use of scarce resources - the stock of land and buildings. But traditionally we have had open discussion and debate, rather than ceding control to a private cabal before the public is fully aware of what is going on.

For reasons best known to itself, the Government has decided the public is not to be trusted in discussing the issues involved with such an ambitious plan, which will feed concerns, possibly ill-founded, that the Government does in fact have a secret agenda - to force out many of the socially disadvantaged living in the area.

The plan to create a powerful authority to take control of Aboriginal-owned housing at the Block in Redfern would only help a few black people while sweeping aside self-determination, a Sydney indigenous leader has said.

"The State Government puts $27 million into Redfern, which will accommodate about half a dozen Aboriginal families, and in the meantime every other Aboriginal family in Sydney can go jump," said Marcia Ella-Duncan, chairwoman of ATSIC's Sydney regional council.

Secret cabinet papers have revealed that the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, to be established soon, will redevelop the largely derelict Block and help bail out the Aboriginal Housing Company.

In return, the housing company must give it a 10-year lease over its land. This meant a "pillar post" of self-determination for decades would be sacrificed, Ms Ella-Duncan said.

"It won't touch the tip of our housing needs. The Sydney Aboriginal community is in housing crisis," she said.

Local Aborigines yesterday expressed mistrust over the plan, which envisages a $5 billion development. It would privatise 15 hectares of public housing land.

The plan "reeks of phasing out problem communities", said a community worker, Shane Phillips. "It's really close to the city and they want to move the CBD out, but I hope they are not going to do it at our cost - not just Aborigines, but working-class people and battlers. They built the foundations of the place."

Frank Sartor, the minister responsible for the new authority, said the plan would bring significant gains in infrastructure, education, health and safety.

The options for the Block were "not about dispossessing Aboriginal people and sending them off somewhere else".

"Certainly there is no plan at the moment to use any compulsory powers to take control. The current model and our approach has been to consult and to see if we can gain agreement out of people." There was no intention to reduce the number of public housing tenants, nor to get rid of existing tenants, he said.

The Greens' Sylvia Hale said government officials had denied to MPs that a plan for the authority existed. She said the first many knew about it was when they read it in yesterday's Herald.

Her party would now try to delay upper house debate on the legislation for the new authority - scheduled for next week - until full details were released.

"To maintain there was no plan when it's obvious there was one I just think is a wilful and deliberate misleading of members of Parliament," she said.

The Urban Development Institute of Australia, representing developers, supported the "courageous" establishment of the authority, and its ambitious plans. The institute's executive director, David Poole, said urban renewal would never be achieved without "some fairly blunt instruments of reform".

The Exodus Foundation chairman, Bill Crews, who has a long association with the Block, welcomed the plan and said a single, strong authority was needed to deal with the many egos and vested interests in Redfern.

"Everybody and his dog" would attack any plan at the beginning. "Everybody wants to see something done there, but everybody wants to see their thing done," the Reverend Crews said.

Two new road tunnels, a $35 million upgrade of Redfern station and a new residential development in the Eveleigh goods yards are central to the State Government's transport plans for the inner-city suburbs.

Families, businesses and shops will share three new towers built on Redfern station, transforming it into the suburb's town centre and business hub, similar to Chatswood.

The $200 million tunnels will follow Cleveland Street, freeing east-west traffic and improving access near the station, the site of nearly 100 road accidents in the past five years.

The plans are spelled out in the cabinet papers revealed by the Herald yesterday, reaction to which has been strong.

The Minister for Redfern-Waterloo, Frank Sartor, said the plan to renew Redfern was still a work in progress and no final decisions had been made. "The Premier has asked me to think outside the square, to come up with new ideas and that is exactly what we are doing," he said.

The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, said the plans, the details of which she did not know, only intensified her concerns about the creation of the Redfern Waterloo Authority, which she called the "most draconian" agency she had encountered.

The authority, which will be led by Mr Sartor and have Councillor Moore as a board member, will drive the redevelopment of 340 hectares and have the power to override councils and heritage laws and to annex land.

"This sets a frightening precedent and threatens to spread amoeba-like throughout the city," Cr Moore said. "He [Frank Sartor] can cherry-pick the most valuable development sites, and then act as a consent authority without having to comply with planning laws."

The director of the NSW Council of Social Service, Gary Moore, said one proposal to sell two thirds of public housing land in Redfern-Waterloo to private developers was not acceptable.

"What came as a surprise was the scale of the plan and the specifics of it," he said. "The authority should be required to do a robust social impact assessment."

Architects have drawn up several plans for Redfern station. The most favoured would see it flanked by three 10- to 14-storey office and residential towers.

The largest tower would be built on Lawson Street, "with retail space on the ground floor, seven levels of commercial space and five levels of residential development", the papers reveal. Nearby, a 12-storey residential tower would sit at the front, curving on the edge of the station, with another 10-storey tower on Gibbons Street. Linking the towers would be a retail plaza covering half the station.

The project would cost close to $35 million, but this could be covered by the sale of government assets, and the involvement of private-sector developers. In fact, the Government might even turn a profit, the papers say.

At Eveleigh, the goods yards would be gutted to make way for a village with room for 518 one, two and three-bedroom homes, and 44,000 square metres of commercial floor space.

The papers also show there are six tunnel options. The preferred northbound two-lane tunnel would divert traffic from Gibbons Street, go under Rosehill Street and part of the Block before emerging 580 metres later on the corner of Dangar Place and Abercrombie Street. It would have a likely speed limit of 70 kmh and require an emissions stack. The second tunnel would start at Regent Street, near Mortuary rail station, and end 480 metres further along near the intersection of Boundary Street. It would not need a stack but would still have fans.

After hearing the tunnel plans in August, the Premier's Department asked the Roads and Traffic Authority to come up with a cheaper alternative.

The RTA came up with a $20 million pedestrian ramp, 135 metres long and three metres wide, which would straddle Gibbons Street and Regent Street, with pedestrians alighting on Redfern Street.

The State Government has a $5 billion plan to redevelop Redfern and the surrounding suburbs that involves seizing control of Aboriginal housing on the Block and letting private developers take over two-thirds of the area's public housing estates.

Under the 10-year plan, the Government will tear down the residential towers in Waterloo and privatise $540 million worth of public assets in a bid to double the area's population to 40,000, create 20,000 new jobs and give the central business district room to expand.

In a major piece of social engineering, 20,000 new private renters and owners will be brought in to balance out the 7000 public housing tenants in the area, many of whom are poor, old and disabled.

The Herald's investigations team has sighted details of the plans in cabinet documents dated October 2004.

The southerly expansion of the CBD into 340 hectares of Redfern, Eveleigh, Darlington and Waterloo will be overseen by the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, the establishment of which the Premier, Bob Carr, announced last month.

According to the papers, consultants have told the Government, which owns almost one- third of land in the area, that the redevelopment of the notorious Block would increase certain property values by 30 per cent.

"The NSW Government is the largest landholder in the ... area. The estimated market value of developments in the area is approximately $5 billion," the papers say.

"In order to maximise social and economic returns, the Government must be able to offer planning certainty to the market within a strategic planning framework."

The papers contain masses of comprehensive costings from government departments advising on specific aspects of the project, right down to details on the possible political and legal risks. The papers describe the plan as a "a radical departure" from previous initiatives.

The Government rushed legislation to set up the Redfern-Waterloo Authority through the lower house 10 days ago and, according to the papers, expects the authority will be in place by January 1.

The authority will have powers to override local councils and heritage laws, to grant concessions to private developers, including the $34.5 million makeover of Redfern railway station, and to acquire land compulsorily.

Some of the sites earmarked for sale are Redfern police station, Redfern Public School and the Rachel Forster Hospital site.

Residents who now have only half the open space of other inner-city suburbs will have only a quarter of the space once the population is doubled, the papers reveal. The Government has been advised to provide additional transport to take these overcrowded residents to places like Bondi Beach.

The minister responsible for the authority, Frank Sartor, told Parliament this month he would "consult widely with the community and all levels of government when developing the plan" for the authority.

For instance, the Government has not revealed that the authority will take effective control of the Aboriginal Housing Company, which owns the Block and other homes in the area, and that help to refurbish the Block will come at a price.

According to the papers, the Aboriginal Housing Company, a registered charity, will be required to give the Government a 10-year lease over its land and impose stricter rent agreements. Tenants could be required, for instance, to be drug free. The papers warn that some members of the Aboriginal Housing Company may challenge the plan as "inequitable and oppressive".

The Government has secretly audited the company and found it is in financial trouble, with debts of more than $1 million.

So sensitive is this audit that the October 2004 papers state it should be withheld from the parliamentary committee that investigated the death of the Redfern Aboriginal teenager Thomas "T. J." Hickey, which caused riots in the suburb in February.

The papers say that in the absolute worst case, the Redfern-Waterloo Authority could compulsorily buy the Aboriginal Housing Company's land and "then implement the long-term arrangements on that land for affordable housing for Aboriginal people".

The papers even include a draft memorandum of understanding to be signed by Mr Carr and the chief executive officer of the Aboriginal Housing Company, Michael Mundine - although it is not known whether he is aware of all the details.

A spokeswoman for Mr Sartor said yesterday that there was no plan. She said a plan would be worked out once the authority was in place.

History will be swept aside in one of Sydney's oldest areas to clear the way for the massive remaking of 340 hectares of land covering four suburbs under NSW Government plans.

The minister responsible, Frank Sartor, has already revealed that heritage laws will no longer apply to four sites around Redfern: the Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh railway workshop, the 23-hectare public housing estates, and the Block.

However, secret documents reveal that the Government is proposing to lift heritage protection from a swag of other sites by declaring them to be "state-significant" under the Redfern Waterloo plan, making them exempt from the Heritage Act.

These include an area covering Lawson, Abercrombie, Cleveland and Eveleigh streets, another in Redfern Street and the Gibbons-Regent street area.

"Future surplus government sites" could also be declared state-significant if the new Redfern-Waterloo Authority wants to sell or develop them. Redfern Public School, Rachel Forster Hospital and Redfern police station sites would also no longer have heritage protection.

Sydney's oldest surviving toilet, in Redfern railway station, is among the heritage items under threat. "Several aspects of the station are subject to a permanent conservation order," the documents state.

"Optimal redevelopment of the station would require the demolition of a toilet block ... and one that is understood to be the first public toilet in Sydney. Relocation of the toilet block is not regarded as practical."

The lifting of heritage protection "ensures that the authority is free to develop infrastructure for the benefit of the local community", Mr Sartor told Parliament on November 19.

"For example, the Redfern railway station has been identified as an appropriate location for a town centre, as called for by the local community."

The independent member for Bligh, Clover Moore, who is also City of Sydney's Lord Mayor, said in Parliament: "This authority was set up so that the Government had an unfettered opportunity to develop the area. No indication has been given of precisely what sites will be targeted in the operational area. This is not about social improvement for the area; this is about this minister becoming developer and consent authority, and the Heritage Act not applying."

Mr Sartor said: "The simple fact is that the Government has moved to intervene where for a century local government has failed."

The State Government's plans to rejuvenate the troubled inner-city suburbs reveal a broader agenda to strip planning powers from local councils in specific areas or along corridors that it thinks need renewal.

Five corridors are flagged for upgrade in the Government's metropolitan strategy, the blueprint that is being developed to co-ordinate the city's growth over the next 30 years.

Those corridors are the lucrative city-airport strip, Parramatta Road, Canterbury Road, the Hume Highway, and the arc from Royal North Shore Hospital through to the Ryde high-technology area.

If the bill before Parliament is passed without amendments to create the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, the minister appointed to take charge, the former lord mayor Frank Sartor, will have extraordinary powers over land and transport - and that model of governance could logically be extended to other areas, such as the renewal corridors.

Under the bill, not only will Mr Sartor be able to declare any property within the authority's boundaries "state significant", and thus immune to council intervention or heritage restrictions, he will have the power to annex virtually any area within the state, as his jurisdiction is not geographically constrained. He also has powers to acquire land compulsorily, without objection.

Not even his own authority board members, whom he will appoint, can stop him, as he has legislative powers to overrule their objections to ensure projects are not stalled.

This absolute rule, and Mr Sartor's stated desire to make things happen quickly in the area, would put him in potential conflict with the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, an outspoken critic of the bill, and also the only person so far to have been declared an automatic board member.

Earlier this year, the Carr Government's top planning bureaucrat, Jennifer Westacott, withdrew an official report by the Government Architect, Chris Johnson, in which a powerful city-airport authority was canvassed, after the report was leaked. Government sources insist that plans to remove the eight-kilometre strip from City of Sydney are still being examined.

But while the authority's powers are incredibly broad, most of them are not new, and are styled on an existing body, the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority.

That authority has been embroiled in controversy for the way in which it has consulted, and developed land, on projects like Darling Harbour and Pyrmont. It has its own force of council-like rangers, and Mr Sartor will likewise be able to form his own posse of Redfern troops, to enforce the authority's regulations.

MARK COLVIN: Details have emerged today of a multi-billion dollar plan to renew the inner suburbs of Sydney which are home to the Aboriginal community known as the Block.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported on documents which reveal the spending of some $5-billion over the next 10 years, in an effort by the Carr Government to attract new residents and businesses to one of the city's most troubled areas.

Most controversially, though, the New South Wales Government is refusing to rule out that it might take over some management rights over the Block - a move that would mean a departure from the principle of self-management which has guided the Block for decades.

DAVID HARDAKER: What to do about the Block is a question which has vexed leaders, both black and white, since its creation in 1973.

It was a Federal Labor Government, the Whitlam Government, which provided the money for Aboriginal people to develop their own housing in a deprived residential neighbourhood on the doorstep of Sydney's CBD.

Thirty years on, details have emerged of a secret plan by the Carr Government to assume control of the neighbourhood from the Aboriginal Housing Company as part of a plan to redevelop the surrounding area.

FRANK SARTOR: Now this is a delicate and sensitive issue, very important for the Aboriginal community.

DAVID HARDAKER: Frank Sartor is the New South Wales Government Minister in charge of the redevelopment.

FRANK SARTOR: But I think many of the Aboriginals in the area want to see some reforms.

DAVID HARDAKER: Would you rule out actually seizing control of the Block under your authority?

FRANK SARTOR: There are no plans for us to seize control, to use State powers to seize control.

DAVID HARDAKER: Well, what of this report then in the Sydney Morning Herald that the Redfern Waterloo Authority, which you run, could compulsorily buy the Aboriginal Housing Community's land?

FRANK SARTOR: There've been many reports done, but they don't necessarily mean they're Government decisions. There's been no Government decision to compulsorily acquire that land.

DAVID HARDAKER: Would you not agree that something must happen, if land values around that area are to increase, and to make it attractive residentially and commercially?

FRANK SARTOR: Yes, there needs to be a sustainable solution, it needs to be not an experiment, it needs to be something that has a very high probability of success, it needs to have significant commitment by government at all levels, including the Federal Government, it needs to have commitment even from the local government, it needs to have the commitment of the Aboriginal community and other residents as well. And that's what we'll be working towards.

DAVID HARDAKER: And you're confident the Aboriginal Housing Company is able to do something which is not an experiment, in your words, and which will have a likelihood of success?

FRANK SARTOR: Well, one option is that they will give us some rights to help them do it. Another option is they do it themselves. There's various options available, but…

FRANK SARTOR: Well, there was talk about them giving some property management rights to the Redfern Waterloo Authority, but that was never finally settled. But there were discussions about that. They're all the various options available.

DAVID HARDAKER: In 2001, the Aboriginal Housing Company commissioned a plan on the way forward for the Block.

It reported a catalogue of problems: drug and alcohol, vandalism, health, sexual assault and substandard housing among them.

MICK MUNDINE: I welcome the shake-up, because they're sort of bringing everybody out in the open, they're sort of letting people know what's really going on. So, I'm very happy at the moment from that point of view.

DAVID HARDAKER: But is there a case for the Carr Government to take control of the land which is presently under control of the Aboriginal Housing Company?

MICK MUNDINE: Yeah, mate, that's a very serious point, and it's going to be a battle. I think we've got to do a lot of negotiating. We'll still have to talk to the Ministers. I just had a big meeting with all the Aboriginal organisation, and they're very supportive of what we are doing, and we have another meeting tomorrow at five o'clock to really sort of get our heads together and just to let the Government know that, you know, we've got to keep our plan. There's nowhere in the world that they can take the plan away from us.

DAVID HARDAKER: Frank Sartor has raised the... or not ruled out the possibility that the Aboriginal Housing Company might assign management rights to the Government. Do you agree with that?

MICK MUNDINE: Well, I think it all depends on the framework and the fine detail within the framework, you know? We'll do a bit of negotiating about it, just see what's happening, the fine detail's in the framework.

MARK COLVIN: The Chief Executive Officer of the Aboriginal Housing Company, Mick Mundine, on the mobile phone, ending David Hardaker's report there.

A powerful new State Government authority will take control of Aboriginal lands on the "Block" at Redfern for at least 20 years as part of a huge redevelopment plan aimed at fixing social ills and lifting the area's property prices.

The Redfern-Waterloo Authority will commit $27 million to redeveloping the troubled precinct centred on Eveleigh Street, but only if the indigenous owners hand the authority exclusive possession of the lands through a 10-year lease.

The authority would manage sales and leasing of properties, and could compulsorily acquire land if the crisis-ridden Aboriginal Housing Company, which owns the property, becomes insolvent, according to secret cabinet documents.

Aborigines who fail to pay rent, sublet or use drugs may be kicked out of their homes under the new arrangement, the papers reveal.

A cabinet committee has backed recommendations that will force change on the housing company in return for building new accommodation for its tenants, the documents reveal.

But the symbolism of taking control of land first won by Aborigines in the 1970s could spark protests over the Block, the scene of a riot in February, government advisors have warned.

The housing company is more than $1 million in debt, and it is likely the new authority will help it get a $1 million-$2 million loan.

This would give the Government leverage when dealing with the company, the papers say.

The company is asset-rich but cash-poor. Its 62 properties on the Block are valued in the papers at up to $22 million and it owns a further 25 lots in the immediate area valued at $5.6 million.

At an August meeting with Government representatives, the company's chief executive, Michael Mundine, agreed to many important points in the overhaul, including a new structure for the organisation.

"Other members of the board and the broader AHC membership may view them less favourably. In particular, it is anticipated that there will be claims of a government takeover, as well as a questioning of Aboriginal self-determination," the papers say. One "sticking point" will be that there will be no company member on the board of the new authority.

Another could be that government appointees on the new Pemulwuy Redevelopment Committee set up to revamp the Block, including the chairman, "could successfully veto an AHC position and recommendation regarding AHC lands," the documents say.

The Block needs drastic action to fix its social woes, but the redevelopment is crucial to the success of commercial projects planned on government lands at Redfern. If this does not happen, other developments in the area will be worth less, according to the documents.

Failure to fix the Block would depress the value of commercial and residential development by 25-30 per cent, according to the NSW Department of Commerce.

The housing company "has experienced significant organisational and management problems", and an audit had identified a liquidity crisis, landing the organisation more than half a million dollars in the red in June 2003, the documents say.

It will need to sell some of its property to become viable again, they say. Apart from its holdings around the Block, it owns 44 properties in other parts of the state, valued at $17.3 million. Many of them are derelict or have been demolished.

The company could be wound up and does not have the financial and property management skills to manage these assets, says an another audit, conducted in the middle of this year.

The Aboriginal Housing Company has failed to collect rent consistently, had to be bailed out at a $900,000 cost to the Aboriginal Housing Office - a statutory authority which instigated urgent health and safety repairs for 43 properties - and also owes the Tax Office $238,000, the documents reveal.

Redfern is to become the new North Sydney to take pressure off an overcrowded CBD, according to the NSW Government's grand plan for the area.

Growth of office space to the north has stalled because this area is also considered a desirable place to live,says a strategy paper by the Government's consultants, Cox Richardson, produced for Cabinet earlier this year.

But as Sydney is poised to become "a key world city serving the Asia Pacific region", its commercial hub needs to expand into Redfern, says the paper.

"Redfern could emerge as an office/commercial centre in the same manner as North Sydney became a northern employment satellite of the Sydney CBD from the 1950s," it says.

"Sydney is a comparatively small CBD in terms of area and whilst height of buildings can add floor space, to avoid congestion, [a] major CBD needs to expand horizontally as well as vertically," the paper says.

A great advantage of the Redfern, Eveleigh and Darlington area is that about one-third of the land is in Government hands, the consultants say.

Other documents, dated October 2004, argue new businesses are needed to regenerate an area which has declined and is now a weak link in the chain of commercial hubs stretching from Ryde to Botany Bay which link Sydney into the global economy.

One paper says the Redfern, Eveleigh and Darlington area is strategically placed within the metropolitan area, being at the heart of the Sydney economic crescent, which stretches from Macquarie University to Sydney Airport.

Despite being close to the CBD, three of Sydney's leading universities are easily reached by train or road, there are only 2300 jobs within a 500 metre radius of Redfern station.

"This is an underutilisation of government infrastructure, which is reflected by the decline in trade in the area surrounding the station," the document says.

The area is in a particularly good position to cash in on the "knowledge economy" because it is in "Australia's global city". But social dislocation is preventing this, it says.

The documents say the population of the area has dropped to 20,000 from 50,482 in 1921. It stood at 42,817 just after World War II.

"The decline in population has meant that the economic sustainability of the area has also declined," the papers say.

Waterloo is rated as the fifth poorest out of Sydney's 526 suburbs, the future Minister for Redfern-Waterloo, Frank Sartor, said recently when introducing a Bill establishing a new authority to overhaul the area.

The new authority would promote the social and economic development of the community by taking charge of prime Government assets including the Australian Technology Park, the Redfern railway station, the Rachel Forster Hospital and Redfern Public School.

One reason for the secret plan for Redfern is money. The cabinet papers say that the market value of developments in the area is almost $5 billion and almost one third of the land is owned by the Government.

Nothing should get in the way of maximising that value, not even the planning regulations of local authorities, the papers indicate.

The documents reveal deep Government dissatisfaction with the City of Sydney, the designated local government controller of the Redfern-Waterloo lands. The papers cite the council's objection to greater density and heights for a proposed development at North Eveleigh. They say this pattern may be repeated for other proposed developments on private and public lands unless the Redfern-Waterloo Authority is set up.

Under the plan, the authority would declare favoured developments "state significant", thereby bypassing normal planning rules and even heritage laws.

"In order to maximise social and economic returns, the Government must be able to offer planning certainty to the market within a strategic planning framework," the documents state. "It is considered likely that council would not support other major developments in the Redfern, Eveleigh, Darlington and Waterloo area."

They say the Government has a unique opportunity to develop a cohesive approach to development in the area by calling in several individually significant sites.

One of those sites would be the Rachel Forster Hospital. "The Department of Health has recently offered the Rachel Forster Hospital site to the market for sale. The market's low value response to the site is due in part to apprehension on achieving reasonable development yields" under the council's present position on development, the papers say.

The papers also reveal that if the Block is redeveloped, some government-owned lands will be worth up to 30 per cent more. "If the Block is not redeveloped, the commercial benefits flowing from the proposed infrastructure projects identified in the infrastructure plan will be undermined," the documents say. "The Department of Commerce's recent report on the redevelopment of Redfern station found: 'It is important that the redevelopment of the station occurs in parallel with the redevelopment of the general area, include [sic] the Block. This assumption is critical: the commercial returns used in the model could not be achieved if the station redevelopment was attempted in isolation. Commercial development would probably be impractical under those conditions and any residential development would face a substantial reduction in value, probably in the order of 25 per cent to 30 per cent."'

By applying authority planning rules, the Government would make almost $18 million profit on the upgrade of Redfern station, the documents say.

They say Redfern station "would attract considerable interest if it were put to tender. In fact, a developer would be likely to pay more than will be required to redevelop the station if it was assured of planning approval on the scale contemplated".

Redfern police station would be sold for $2.3 million and a new police station incorporated into the redevelopment of Redfern train station.

The Redfern-Waterloo Authority Bill gives one minister immense power, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.

Picture it. January 2004. The professor, chairman of the parliamentary committee, bravely reminds parliament that compulsory acquisition of land without notice, which the government seeks to legalise, is actually unconstitutional. The professor's argument is clear and cogent - but without effect, since the government proceeds undaunted, acquiring land as a child picks flowers.

Which parliament? Not NSW, clearly, since we have neither constitution nor, for that matter, cogent opposition. No. The speaker was Professor Abednico Ncube, the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs. The country: Zimbabwe.

NSW is not Zimbabwe. Of course not. There's the black-white reversal, for one thing. But the legislative creatures in question - Robert Mugabe's Land Acquisition Act 2001 and Bob Carr's Redfern-Waterloo Authority Bill 2004 - are strikingly congruent. Both concentrate power to acquire public or private property in the hands of one man; both exempt that man and his authority from the normal operations of democracy; both justify such means by extreme political exigency.

Carr's Redfern-Waterloo Authority (RWA) Bill doesn't even feign checks and balances. Whisked through the Legislative Assembly a week ago and awaiting the upper house's stamp duty, so to speak, it creates an authority that is not only secretive and self-validating, as we have come to expect, but has powers unprecedented even in the wilds of Sydney planning. It is "trust me" legislation of the scariest, dopiest kind.

In some ways this just spells out Sydney's fair-weather friendship with democracy: lip-service when skies are blue, summary abandonment at the first wisp of trouble. And Redfern-Waterloo is trouble. It is also one of the most diverse, disadvantaged and sensitive communities in the country, a youthful community where not a single indigenous male attends university; where even government reports bemoan the "crippling welfare mentality", while toddlers play knee-deep in used sharps from the Government's do-good needle bus.

First, it creates yet another secret Sydney planning authority - no public meetings or minutes, decisions or debates - and puts that authority under control of a single minister; the minister not for Planning, but for Energy and Utilities, Science and Research, Health (Cancer, assisting), Arts (assisting). It invests that minister, Frank Sartor, with unheard-of discretionary powers, even within this Thatcherite development corporation mentality, to plan, acquire, approve and develop public or private lands, within and without the given area, without outside scrutiny.

He can appoint and sack board members and advisory committees for no reason; extend boundaries; suck in external developer contributions without hypothecation; and run a staff of authorised officers with no function except to serve penalty notices, "personally or by post".

The Aboriginal community has lately applauded Redfern police for their delicacy in a difficult job. But the place needs another (untrained) enforcement troupe like a baby needs a barbed-wire sandwich.

Checks and balances? Sure. The bill requires the minister to make the Redfern-Waterloo Plan publicly available, but not before its approval. Not even before its execution. It requires the minister to consult the board in making said plan, but he can sack them if they demur. It allows the minister to take public issues into account, if he so chooses. And, in order to facilitate all this, it "disapplies" the Heritage Act, wherever the minister feels this to be essential to his vision.

This means nothing is safe. Any property - in an area with 16,500 residents - can be acquired, demolished, redeveloped. And because the money, from development and from penalties, goes straight into coffers, the minister has a direct incentive to maximise both - and sack any dissenter. Dangerous law, more dangerous precedent.

Then there's the board. In a move as insulting, to all of us, as naming Bennelong Point after Bennelong died of rum in a gutter, the bill requires one - one - indigenous board member (minister's choice), leaving all other nine appointments to pure ministerial discretion.

And in case that's all too constraining, the bill entitles the authority to "do all such supplemental, incidental or consequential acts as may be necessary or expedient for the exercise of its functions". You don't often see the word expedient in the statutes, even in NSW.

In Parliament, while the Opposition doodled, the Member for Bligh, Clover Moore, moved a volley of amendments. Most were rejected, including one that would have helped the minister out of an obvious conflict of interest by giving consent powers to the Planning Minister, Craig Knowles, instead. One amendment, though, was accepted, requiring the minister-for-everything not to do anything dramatic about his boundaries (like including the airport corridor) before consulting, well, himself. Help me here - is that a check, or a balance?

As to motive, there are various theories; from demolishing the Block by stealth to grow the CBD, to reclaiming what the ALP lost through its hamfisted pre-election gerrymander. (Remember the minister's "local-government pissants" tirade back in February, and his promise to Lucy Turnbull that "the Government ... will destroy the City..." Remember that?) Then again, some say the Opposition is waiting for the Government to trip itself up here - which might explain their pathetic performance in Parliament, where only five independent MPs (including Moore) bothered opposing the bill.

Just as Mugabe used the Land Aquisition Act to stifle political opposition, the Carr Government relies on the Liberals' pro-development habits and the popular kneejerk to "clean up Redfern" forever, to push through legislation that no democratic government should be seen dead with.

And just as Mugabe ended up putting half of the very population he purported to help on food aid, while the fat guys sit pretty, so Carr's Redfern-Waterloo Act will backfire, destroying the only pocket of live indigenous culture the city centre will ever have while the Big End white boys take over the small black end as well.

Elizabeth Farrelly is a Redfern resident, architecture writer and former city councillor.

On Wednesday 10th November 2004, the Rev Fred Nile spoke in support of the Redfern Pemulwuy Redevelopment Project for ‘the Block’, which is led by Mick Mundine of the Aboriginal Housing Company.

Mr Nile was speaking during the debate on the report of the Standing Committee on Social Issues into issues relating to Redfern and Waterloo, following the disastrous Redfern Riot.

Mr Nile shared his experience in visiting ‘the Block’ and meeting Mrs Hickey, the mother of the deceased T.J Hickey.

Mr Nile was the only white person invited to take part in T.J Hickey’s funeral at ‘the Block’ with local Aboriginal leaders.

Mr Nile strongly opposed the report’s support for the drug needle van at ‘the Block’.

STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL ISSUES
Report: Inquiry into Issues Relating to Redfern and Waterloo: Interim Report
Proof, NSW Legislative Council Hansard, 10 November 2004, Pages 29 - (article 28)

Reverend the Hon. FRED NILE [3.25 p.m.]: On behalf of the Christian Democratic Party I contribute to this take-note debate on the report of the Standing Committee on Social Issues entitled "Inquiry Into Issues Relating to Redfern and Waterloo, Interim Report No. 32 dated August 2004". Over the years I have been to The Block and spoken with Aboriginal elders and have visited a number of homes in the area. Aboriginal people were given a sense of hope when the Whitlam Government gave them ownership of some buildings in the area. Sadly, and tragically, the Redfern riot highlighted the serious problems experienced there. Over time conflicts have developed between police and Aboriginal residents. It is hard to estimate how many Aboriginal people reside in the Redfern-Waterloo area. One count suggested 700, but I believe the number is higher than that.

Between one census and another the transient population around The Block can range from low to high. The figures from the last census were lower than I expected. Following the riot I visited Redfern and met with Mrs Hickey to give her some encouragement because I believed that the Aboriginal people in the area were feeling alienated—a sense of Aboriginal people versus white people; and not only white police but the white community. I attempted to break through that attitude, which the Aboriginal people seemed to be locked into, to show them that I, and the whole non-Aboriginal community, shared their concerns about the riot and the death of TJ Hickey. I gave Mrs Hickey a fairly large donation towards TJ's funeral as well as a offer of friendship and support.

I spent some time talking to people who said they had been near the accident site, people who later gave evidence in the inquiry. As a layperson, it seemed to me that TJ's death was a tragic accident. He may have believed he was fleeing from police, but it seems obvious that a police van could not have accessed that narrow laneway. Over the years I have had discussions with the leaders of the Redfern Aboriginal Housing Company, particularly Mick Mundine and Pastor Peter Walker. For many years they have worked towards providing a solution to the Aboriginal housing problems. Of course, most problems stem from the state of disrepair of the buildings.

I am pleased that I was able to play some part in causing the Standing Committee on Social Issues to conduct this inquiry. My participation probably upset the Hon. Greg Pearce, who was pushing for the establishment of a select committee to inquire into the matter. However, my belief was that it was likely that the Government would act on the recommendations of a standing committee of this House rather than the recommendations of a partisan select committee. I hope my assessment will prove to be correct and that the Government will implement these recommendations.

Mick Mundine and Pastor Peter Walker have developed models of their dream; the problem is the cost. The last estimate was $26 million. The housing company has not received State or Federal financial support and obviously cannot finance such a project from its own resources. It has laid the basis for a project incorporating Aboriginal culture. The plan for redevelopment may not be the way we would do it, but it combines modern housing design with Aboriginal culture. The project has been named the Pumulwuy Redevelopment Project, named after an Aboriginal leader.

That the three tiers of government makes a firm commitment to the redevelopment of the Block by the Aboriginal Housing Company, subject to the requirements set out in Recommendation 8 - which deals with auditing issues - and in particular that:

• the NSW Government make a substantial funding contribution to enable the completion of the Pemulwuy Redevelopment Project, and that it facilitate access by the Aboriginal Housing Company to other funding sources.

• the Federal Government be approached by the NSW Government to make a substantial funding contribution to the Pemulwuy Redevelopment Project.

• the City of Sydney Council make a substantial contribution to the Pemulwuy Redevelopment Project, which might take the form of in-kind assistance, such as handing over freehold title to laneways or waiving rates for a period of time.

I ask the Government to act urgently on what I believe to be the most important recommendation in this report. People residing in The Block have always been disadvantaged as a result of drug abuse, unemployment, alcohol addiction and poor health and housing conditions. While Pastor Peter Walker and I were visiting the area I saw a young Aboriginal boy aged 12 or 13 go up to the needle van, get his needle, inject right at the doorway of the van, overdose and fall to the ground in front of the van. An ambulance was called and, fortunately, ambulance officers were able to resuscitate the boy.

Pastor Peter Walker was angry that this van was allowed to operate in The Block without the support of Aboriginal leaders or the community. It seems to me to be a case of white men saying to Aboriginal people, "We know what is best for you. We will not place a van in Bankstown, Bondi or Ku-ring-gai, but we will place a van in Redfern, in the centre of your community." That has had a demoralising effect on the Aboriginal community. The views of Aboriginal people were ignored, and that again highlights just how patronising the white community is. We believe that we know what is best for the Aboriginal community and that whatever we suggest the Aboriginal community just has to put up with it.

I oppose recommendation 22, which makes reference to providing information to the community about the need for improvements to the needle syringe service that is to be implemented in the area. That is not what Aboriginal people in The Block want. The implementation of such a service would only help drug dealers and the drug industry; it would promote a drug culture and result in a honey pot effect in that area. We must restore the dignity of Aboriginal people in Redfern and Waterloo and respect the views of their leaders. I cannot support the committee's recommendation for the retention of the needle van in the general area of The Block.

Block talks under way
November 04, 2004 - Central Courier
By Alexandra Walker

A week after announcing the creation of a powerful new Redfern/Waterloo authority, Energy Minister Frank Sartor begins talks with community groups.

Frank Sartor, the minister in charge of the new Redfern-Waterloo Authority has met with the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) to discuss the future of The Block.

Mr Sartor, who met with the AHC last Tuesday, said he was interested in sustainable development and confirmed that he would enter into further discussions with the company about plans they had developed for the site.

AHC spokesman Peter Valilis described the meeting as friendly and consultative. "I think the new authority will be receptive," Mr Valilis said. "It's hard to explain five years of planning in one meeting, but Mr Sartor was interested in talking about the issues."

While funding was not discussed at the meeting, Mr Valilis said the AHC would look into State and Federal government, as well as private sector funding, to realise their plans for The Block.
Mr Valilis said that much of the planning for the site's redevelopment had been conducted by volunteers, as all rent collected from tenants of The Block is used for general maintenance and community projects.

Bligh MP Clover Moore told the NSW Parliament last week that The Block should be a priority for the new authority. "Years of talk about the Aboriginal Housing Company redevelopment must be translated into action with a financially viable, sustainable development, good tenancy management, and support for tenants with problems," Ms Moore said "This is urgent and a major barrier to lasting improvement."

Despite highly publicised tensions between Ms Moore and Mr Sartor, Ms Moore has been invited to join the board of the new authority in her capacity as Lord Mayor of Sydney."I am interested in working constructively with Ms Moore," Mr Sartor said.He also confirmed that at least one Aboriginal representative will be appointed to the board.

Tony Larkings, the president of the Redfern Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, has welcomed the new authority describing it as a move forward. "The biggest problem is that people aren't looking forward - we have a lot of new businesses and a really vibrant business community here," Mr Larkings said.
"We can only hope that the new authority works in conjunction with the planning we've already done."

However, community group RedWATCH has been more cautious in its response to the new initiative.
Geoff Turnbull, a spokesman for the group, said transparency in the process would become a critical issue. "If the authority is going to be acting as landlord, regulator, land setter, developer and consent authority then we'd like to see processes like those set up for council reflected in the authority," Mr Turnbull said. "We want an open process with mechanisms for people to complain if they feel the self interest of the authority is colouring a decision it has made."

The focus is on the Block when perhaps it should be on the genuineness of the inquiry.

The best front-line police and Aboriginal leaders in the Block know what Redfern's biggest scourge is. It's heroin. You can see it in the discarded syringes and the bruised eyes of the adolescent junkie who has had at least one abortion, a string of criminal convictions and a boyfriend who "bitch-slaps" her.

After three years on the beat around the Block, Redfern sergeant Paul Huxtable and his colleagues know it. "If you gave police the resources, you could wipe out drugs in Redfern," Huxtable, 39, said yesterday. "The true cause of antagonism with police has little to do with race and everything to do with pure old-fashioned greed," he wrote in a submission to the NSW upper house committee which this week began an inquiry into February's riots in Redfern. "It is about protection of a lucrative heroin trade."

Mick Mundine, chief executive officer of the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC), knows it. For seven years a needle exchange service has operating been in the Block and for four years he has tried to get it shut down. The needle distribution service has "undermined every effort the AHC has made to remove the drug industry from the Block", he said in his submission to the inquiry. "The needle bus has been like a honey pot for drug addicts and dealers ... [Its] presence ... has substantiated and ratified a culture of tolerance for drugs."

Mundine complained to authorities about children as young as six sitting in the bus: "To the children of the Block the presence of the needle bus and drug industry has become the norm."

The residents of Vine and Hugo streets know it. In their submission to the inquiry they talk of the invasion of drug dealers in the past three years and the accompanying disorder and misery. They talk of children as young as six or seven smashing windows of cars and houses, pushing burning paper under their front doors. They talk of muggings and bag snatches that go unreported and police who are powerless.

Deputy Commissioner Dave Madden knows it. He told the inquiry on Tuesday that police cannot approach drug dealers or criminals anywhere near a needle exchange van which doles out more than 700 syringes a day in the Block. A memorandum of understanding between the police and NSW Health effectively turns the area around the Central Area Health Service van into a no-go zone for police. "They [police] are caught between two competing ideologies" said Madden. "Once [criminals] get close to the needle exchange van, we can't target them."

The two competing ideologies are harm minimisation and the "get tough" approach on drugs. The latter regards the heroin problem as a controllable crime and attempts to limit supply by cracking down on importation and dealers, and removing drug users from the street, preferably into compulsory treatment programs. The former regards crackdowns as futile, and treats heroin abuse as a health issue, supplying clean needles to addicts to prevent disease, providing injection rooms to prevent overdoses, offering treatment programs to willing addicts.

While the Premier, Bob Carr, talks tough, harm minimisation has been his Government's de facto policy. Somehow the police try to balance their responsibility to enforce the law with the requirement to turn a blind eye to law breakers.

But the harm minimisation approach holds such sway in health and criminology circles that well-meaning advocates are blind to its obvious failures and the human misery they perpetuate. The prevailing wisdom is articulated in the submission to the inquiry by Dr Alex Wodak of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, who advocates a drug-injecting room in Redfern and supervised heroin treatment.

"Law enforcement attempts to control supply rarely succeed and often cause serious collateral damage such as rampant police corruption and worse public health outcomes," Wodak said.

And yet, the evidence of the Federal Government's much-criticised official Tough on Drugs strategy says otherwise. After a decade-long experiment with progressive harm minimisation policies and blind-eye policing, which saw a doubling of daily heroin users, in 1998, the party was over.

Suddenly borders were controlled, there were record seizures of heroin and drug dealers were jailed for as long as 40 years. The crackdown was followed by Australia's heroin drought, unique in the world, followed by a sudden drop in crime in NSW.

Last month, Dr Don Weatherburn, NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research director, said: "What the Federal Government did in relation to reducing heroin supply has definitely been a contributor [to falling crime rates]. The credit for the drop in heroin consumption belongs in the first instance to federal Customs and the Australian Federal Police."

Police who walk Redfern's streets daily know drug abuse is the biggest cause of the misery and family dysfunction. But this inquiry into Redfern's problems doesn't want to listen. In its first week, the inquiry has descended into politically controlled farce, thanks to its Labor Left faction chairwoman, Jan Burnswood, a mentor of the Police Minister, John Watkins.

Submissions by Redfern sergeants Huxtable and Frank Reitano, among the most knowledgeable, were not provided to members of the committee conducting the inquiry. Nor were they published on the inquiry website, as 22 other submissions were.

It was only after Huxtable's submission was leaked to the media this week that Burnswood reluctantly invited him to testify, but not until June. Her excuse was that the committee didn't want to influence Huxtable's bid for election as president of the Police Association this Sunday. As the first non-Labor aligned president of the police union for several years, Huxtable represents a potential headache for the Government, and has promised to agitate on behalf of front-line officers.

The mere mention of Huxtable's name by a Liberal committee member, Greg Pearce, on Tuesday sent Burnswood into a spin, causing her to twice eject the media from the public hearing at Parliament House.

While claiming she had to "conduct our inquiry with as open a mind as possible", Burnswood revealed her motives when she repudiated Huxtable in an interview with ABC radio's Sally Loane on Monday.

"Anyone who thinks Aboriginal people don't have reasons to resent police going back generations [is wrong]. We all know the words 'they took our children away'. Anyone who thinks there isn't a racism involved in this surely is wrong."

The death of 17-year-old TJ Hickey on February 15, and the subsequent explosion of community anger in Redfern — sparked by police provocation on top of decades of police violence and racism — has been seized upon by NSW politicians and media, to entrench racist stereotyping of a violent, drug and welfare-dependent Aboriginal community that has no place in inner-city Sydney.

NSW Liberal leader John Brogden was quick to call on the state’s Labor government to bulldoze the block. NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr responded by explaining that it’s already happening — 70 of 90 houses have already been demolished, and the last three on Eveleigh Street will go within weeks.

One of the blueprints for the redevelopment of Redfern is already on the table, drawn up by the Aboriginal Housing Company and promoted by the likes of right-wing shock jock Alan Jones. Spruiking on behalf of this initiative “by Aborigines, for Aborigines”, Jones told listeners about the merits of the “commercial component, an Aboriginal employment centre, an Aboriginal enterprise centre, shops, a restaurant, a theatre, and a bias of about 30-50% towards Aboriginal employment”.

At the heart of this redevelopment plan is the relocation of existing Redfern tenants.

The Aboriginal Housing Corporation is the owner and landlord of those houses that remain on the Redfern Block. Angered by 25 years of neglect and lack of community consultation, some residents formed the Aboriginal Housing Coalition in 1997.

Their aim was to involve Redfern Block residents in solving problems regarding housing and homelessness, and to put pressure on the corporation to provide a decent standard of housing. The Aboriginal Housing Coalition is now putting forward an alternative proposal for 77 new houses to be built.

Listed by the Australian Heritage Commission, the Redfern Block has a long history as a centre of black empowerment, culture and grass-roots organising — a fact which haunts the NSW government.

Attempts to relocate kooris out of Redfern have continued in one form or another since 1968, when the South Sydney Council and the NSW state government, through the Department of Housing, began a resettlement project moving kooris from the inner city to Green Valley, Mt Druitt and Campbelltown.

Community outreach and detox programmes for drug users and HIV prevention programs were set back in 1999, when Labor’s then-health minister Andrew Refshauge suspended the Redfern needle exchange program.

In 1997, raids on Redfern for “drug-related crime” were used to justify setting up a shop-front police station in the area. Community programs were replaced with a punitive approach to drug and alcohol abuse, and 24-hour police harassment of residents began.

The Aboriginal Legal Centre was forced to close its doors in the same year. The ALS was at the forefront of a campaign back in 1992 to defeat Sydney’s bid for the 2000 Olympic Games, and was formed during the wave of civil-rights activism that also gave birth to the Aboriginal Medical Service and Aboriginal Housing Company.

The attacks on Redfern are occurring in the context of a big push for more inner-city private redevelopment. Housing prices have been escalating in the inner-city for more than a decade.

The creeping privatisation of public housing has been contributing to the fragmentation of long-standing communities.

Carr’s plans for the Redfern Block are about just that, breaking up a community that has long been seen as an obstacle by inner-city developers and as a “problem” that won't go away by the ALP government. The forced amalgamation of South Sydney Council with the City of Sydney council will provide another weapon against residents of the block, with plans to expand the CBD to include Redfern.

Carr’s racist scapegoating of Aboriginal people (and Arab youth in Sydney’s south west) seeks to drive a wedge between white working people and Indigenous people and migrants. To answer this racist divisiveness, we need community solidarity.

In 2000, 750,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to support reconciliation with Indigenous people. Australians for Reconciliation groups were set up in cities and towns across the country, reflecting this desire for justice.

Sentiments like these are powerful, but there is a need to organise in solidarity with the Redfern Block residents, against the racism of Bob Carr and the NSW police and against the political influence of private developers and for the defence and expansion of public housing.

In the 1970s, the lack of affordable housing in Redfern drove many Kooris to squat in empty houses, and in response police arrested and charged squatters with trespassing. The local church hall became a home for increasing numbers of homeless, until it was shut down by the South Sydney Council. It was with the help of the NSW Builders Labourers Federation and the plumbers union that houses were brought up to a liveable standard, resulting in 45 Indigenous people residing in three houses in the Redfern Block.

When development threatened to displace the residents, the BLF placed a ban on all development in the area and any other work that the construction company was doing.

It is this kind of union and community solidarity that is needed to defend the Redfern Block today, 30 years later. A real answer has to involve Indigenous self-determination.

Centuries of racism can only be overcome when its victims reclaim real power over their lives. This means community self-organisation — supported by funding and resources — to find solutions to safety, drug and alcohol abuse, housing, jobs and welfare.

The Socialist Alliance pledges its support and solidarity with the Redfern Block. We call for the immediate suspension of the police involved in TJ’s death and for a fully independent inquiry into the fatality.

Once again, the neat, placid surface of white Australia is disturbed by those who owned and cared for this country and remain its internal exiles.

On February 15, a crowd of Aboriginal youths set fire to a railway station and fought riot police in a run-down area known as the Redfern Block in Sydney. It is the last redoubt of Australia's original inhabitants in the centre of a city built on land from which their forebears were first evicted 216 years ago.

On a hot Saturday morning, 17-year-old Thomas “TJ” Hickey was impaled on a metal picket fence in circumstances which the police, politicians and journalists say are “in dispute”. There is no dispute in the block. TJ was being chased by police, or at the very least riding his bike as fast as he could to get away from a provocatively cruising police car.

There is no dispute, because every Aboriginal youth in the block, and in every city and town in Australia, can expect to be harassed incessantly by police. The vast majority are arrested for petty offences and end up in custody. In the Northern Territory, 89% of an average day's prison arrivals are Aborigines, who comprise 2% of the Australian population. Once inside, many die by their own hand, and some are beaten to death.

White Australians know this. They know, or they ought to know, that the life expectancy of Aboriginal people is one of the lowest in the world, and that their health is the worst in the world. An entirely preventable disease, trachoma, which has been beaten in many third world countries, still blinds black Australians because of untreated cataracts and appalling living conditions. Epidemics of rheumatic fever and gastroenteritis ravage black communities as they did the slums of 19th-century England.

In a society obsessed with property values, 90% of overcrowded households are Aboriginal. A few years ago, Dr Richard Murray, of the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services Council, told me: “What it comes down to is a lack of political will to allocate resources. The federal government spends about 25% less per-capita on the health of Aboriginal people compared with the rest of the population.

“Look at the phenomenon of suicide, which comes from a lack of opportunity and hope for the future. It is the young men who bear the brunt. In a typical community where there are, say, 50 men up to the age of 25, one or two will kill themselves, two or three will try and another dozen will give it some serious thought. They come from families that have to live with constant grief. It is a heart-wrenching truth that the outside world knows little about.”

Gail Hickey, the grieving mother of TJ, says police were “after him” in their home town of Walgett, New South Wales. Soon after the family arrived in Sydney, he was beaten up by police, according to his aunt. “They claimed it was mistaken identity”, she said. Whatever the fine detail, the events leading to TJ's death are typical. Recently, I wrote a funeral eulogy for Leila Murray, an Aboriginal friend and the mother of Eddie Murray, who was found hanged in a police cell in the town of Wee Waa, New South Wales, on June 21, 1983.

Eddie had been arrested and taken to the police station; his crime was being drunk. At least one policeman lied at the inquest, and the coroner concluded that Eddie had died “at the hands of a person or persons unknown”. And that was that. Except that Eddie's parents, Leila and Arthur Murray, began a tenacious 21-year campaign for justice. They petitioned three New South Wales attorney generals, they provided compelling new evidence, and they finally won the right to exhume their son's body. The new autopsy revealed that Eddie's sternum had been crushed, as if subjected to blow upon blow.

Leila and Arthur demanded an independent inquiry, but instead came up against a new wall of indifference and silence. Having fought for justice through the system, they had barely rippled the surface of white Australia. When the heroic Leila died, not a word appeared in the mainstream media.

The other day, the Sydney Morning Herald interrupted its lifestyle coverage to offer this lecture: “The Redfern Aboriginal community should understand that no one should be immune from the processes of the law if an offence has been committed.”

Tell that to the Hickeys, and the Murrays, and to the countless other black Australians who, denied justice and health and employment and hope, have been betrayed time and again by the law. The Australian high court's judgement in the “landmark” Mabo case in 1992 was said to recognise that Aborigines had land rights.

But it did not order stolen land to be handed back, and in a follow-up judgement, the “moral victory” became a war of legal attrition fought against Aboriginal groups. The ensuing litigation has cost several billion dollars, which might have improved living conditions in ghettos such as The Block and provided jobs and decent health services. The bitterness felt throughout Aboriginal Australia was expressed by the anger of the 4,500 Yorta Yorta people, who had suffered a lifetime of peonage and whose claim to their stolen homelands was rejected in 2002 by the judiciary, which heard from a powerful array of white political and corporate interests.

Australia, like white South Africa, has a deeply racist history of dispossession and cruelty, buttressed by “the law”. But even history is a battleground, in which “revisionists” — the likes of Keith Windschuttle, a self-publishing and much-publicised “new historian” — can suggest that Tasmanian Aborigines lacked humanity and compassion. Not anywhere else in the world with Indigenous populations, not in North America, New Zealand, even South Africa, could you get away with such a slur.

Windschuttle has been the darling of an influential group of white supremacists, who buzz around the far-right magazine Quadrant (once funded by the CIA). They deploy their arguments in a manner not dissimilar to the way David Irving used his history texts to promote Holocaust denial, with the difference that they have been given generous space and tacit support in the press.

In rejecting what they call “the black armband view of history”, they claim, absurdly, that mass killing and resistance in Australia did not happen, nor did many of the horrific separations of Aboriginal children from their families, ordered by the state.

They are supported by Prime Minister John Howard, who is famous for sending the Australian military to turn away leaking boats carrying refugees, and to kill Iraqis in their own country. Howard often expresses the jingoistic national “pride” that comes with uniforms, flags and cricket.

Lyall Munro, a much-respected Aboriginal elder, referred to the real thing. Standing where the “riots” took place in the block, he told his people: “There's been a stand made here [by] some really brave young black people that we are immensely proud of.”

Indigenous life is improving, Redfern just reminds us solutions take time
February 20, 2004 - The Age
By Amanda Vanstone

The Redfern riot was a brutal reminder of the problems we face in indigenous policy in Australia.

For decades, governments at all levels and of all persuasions have, in good faith, been devising policies meant to benefit indigenous Australians. Whatever else we might choose to say about this, we cannot ignore the simple fact that indigenous Australians have not got value for the money that has been spent.

The Redfern riot makes most of us angry and frustrated - angry at the lawlessness; frustrated that years of spending and good intentions haven't avoided this. It's ironic that a riot that makes most of us angry and frustrated was itself fed, in part at least, by frustration and anger.

It seems that almost every day there are negative stories about indigenous issues. These stories, and many more we all hear of, paint a bleak picture of indigenous affairs in Australia. These problems grab our attention. We want them fixed and fixed quickly. We must focus on them - but the trick is to focus on the real problems, not just the symptoms.

The problems facing indigenous Australia are many and varied. And they are very long term. They did not happen overnight and they will not be solved quickly. There is no magic wand.

I don't say that to thwart the hopes of indigenous Australians who want improvements and want them soon. Nor do I say it as an excuse for turning a blind eye to current events.

Lawlessness and violence are unacceptable. Perpetrators should be dealt with as expeditiously as possible.

ATSIC has been under almost constant attack for not doing its bit. Reform of ATSIC is needed urgently. The status quo is not an option. The questions surrounding ATSIC's leadership also need to be resolved. The ATSIC Act lays down the procedure to be followed when the minister forms the view that someone should be removed from office. Due process needs to be followed.

Under the present circumstances relating to ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark, it is not a matter for the minister alone. A suspension notice must first be given, then a statement of reasons must be placed before each House of Parliament within seven sitting days. In the case of Mr Clark that was done promptly. Now, each House of Parliament has 15 sitting days within which to express a view.

The Federal Government is committed to turning around the long-term disadvantage faced by indigenous Australians. We are having some real success. If you want to give someone a future, give them an education. Under this Government the proportion of indigenous kids staying to year 12 has jumped from 29 to 38 per cent, and there has been a 32 per cent jump in students doing bachelor or higher degree courses. There are other good stories in other portfolio areas. Despite this success, there is a long way to go.

In all of this, spare a thought for all the hard-working, decent, law-abiding indigenous Australians who are wondering when the light is going to shine on the good things that are going on all around Australia. Spare a thought for the indigenous kids who never read anything positive about indigenous Australians outside the sports pages. Spare a thought for women in remote communities caring for their children without easy access to fresh, clean water, sanitation and decent housing.

When events such as the Redfern riot occur, we see the bricks and petrol bombs being thrown. What gets hidden is the work of those local residents and others who were and are still on the front line trying to calm things and move forward without blaming others.

The immediacy of current events can trick us into losing sight of the broader picture and the longer term. We shouldn't fall for it. Indigenous Australians have suffered long-term disadvantage.

Redfern is destined to become an extension of the Sydney CBD, the Premier, Bob Carr, predicted yesterday.

Speaking at the Committee for Sydney's seminar on creating a sustainable city, Mr Carr told his audience they did not have to worry about the CBD "bursting at the seams".

Parramatta would provide a second CBD for greater Sydney, and Redfern would provide room for the city to stretch southward.

Redfern would become "an area of major commercial redevelopment, because of its proximity to the city and excellent transport facilities", he said.

The Premier's Department has developed what is known as the RED strategy for the redevelopment of Redfern, Eveleigh rail yards and Darlington. Funds are being provided for the redevelopment of the infamous Block.

At least one property developer, Nati Stoliar, shares the Premier's vision. His company, Kimberley Securities, paid $24.5 million for the former TNT towers in August 2002.

"Redfern could be turned into Point Piper with a first-class location and first-class accommodation, it could be done," he told the Financial Review at the time. "What motivated me with the TNT towers is looking at the nature of expansion through the city and its proximity to the city, which could be made into something really fantastic."

Blame the people, blame the politicians, blame the buildings. Elizabeth Farrelly wonders if architectural change offers any hope for Redfern.

Redfern hits the headlines again. So in-yer-face and still so secret, Redfern's the Block - in stark contrast with Bondi's The Block - sits at the burnt-out end of the glamour spectrum, regarded by most of us, sight unseen, as scary and squalid. And while the kind of determinism that Band-Aids architectural solutions onto social problems is long discredited, recent events can only exacerbate calls for demolition.

At first glance this might seem like a good and reasonable thing, completing from within what the "natural" forces of lifestyle redevelopment and government sanitisation have begun from without. But, although the Block's traditional terrace-house stock has hindered improvement efforts, outright obliteration of this cultural landscape would be a profound cultural loss for Sydney.

Redfern, in sickness and in health, has been the centre of urban Aboriginal culture in Australia for generations - a crossroads, literal and metaphorical. Like a node in Rover Thomas's Roads Cross, the Block (bounded by Hugo, Young, Eveleigh and Caroline streets) is that to which all paths eventually lead. For white culture too, though, Redfern has been a nodal point, the crossing of mainline rail and two major roads (Regent and Cleveland). It's an inner-city six-ways, albeit one we might rather ignore. And crossing - between cultures as well as thoroughfares - is at the core of Redfern's dilemma, as well as its history.

Aboriginal Redfern exists because of jobs offered by the Eveleigh yards in the 1930s, and the cheap housing nearby. The architect Col James recently received the Institute of Architects' President's Award for 30 years of honorary work with the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) that owns the Block. "Country people," he says, "would arrive looking for roots, gravitate to Redfern, become [say] fettlers, find work in the goods yards."

Since then, there have been waves of creative energy, intercut with waves of dereliction. The bad old '70s days of riot police and street strife were followed by self-help redevelopment euphoria in the '80s - its successes and failures - then full-on heroin culture in the '90s. It is this, the drug stranglehold, that recently impelled the AHC to demolish most of the houses on the Block, resulting in relocation of all but four of the 15 known drug houses.

Nevertheless, now must be one of Redfern's ebb points. It's alive, but hardly vigorous, while upscale land-uses clamour at the gates. Current descriptions dust-off old terminology - slum, eyesore, squalor - guaranteed to nurture the reactive "comprehensive-redevelopment" impulse.

Which is exactly what the so-called RED (Redfern-Eveleigh-Darlington-Waterloo) strategy promises.

RED, a supposedly all-encompassing, all-of-government project, inspires in this consultation-fatigued community as much mistrust as optimism; not least because of the secrecy-cloaked-as-consultation that surrounds it. The Premier's Department won't talk, not on record, and local member Clover Moore has repeatedly queried RED's real agenda, in and out of Parliament. Bob Carr's reply? "The Government's approach is to go to the market with a plan to seek comprehensive redevelopment that takes account of the need for social renewal of the area as well as other matters."

That's planning. Ask the market. They closed the local primary school because RED's population dropped beneath 20,000 (from more than 50,000 in the 1920s), not seeing that the market had taken Redfern into its own hands. All around - along Broadway, on the old Carlton United site, and at Green Square - upscale residential has sprouted in vast quantities, morphing daggy old South Sydney into the designer-res hinterland of a newly global city.

Even in Redfern, the council's shiny new community centre is nearly finished, while virtually everything outside the Block has been invisibly mended into Newtown, Chippendale, Darlington or Strawberry Hills. Council plans to revamp the roller-shuttered high street may or may not survive the merger, but at North Eveleigh's Wilson Street carriageworks site, the Government quietly commissioned from Tonkin Zulaikha Greer a $35 million performance space and approved its masterplan for a residential and cultural redevelopment, up to 12 storeys with 600 units and 8000 square metres of offices.

Even the public housing along Elizabeth-Phillip streets is up for redevelopment. There's talk of rehabilitating Redfern Oval, next to Redfern Park (where Keating made his famous "we committed the murders" speech of 1992) and across from the Rabbitohs to public access, and "serious" consideration to sending a mini-tunnel under the Regent-Gibson street intersection, healing one of Sydney's worst pedestrian-hating crossings.

Transport is the key, and the incentive. RED studies show Redfern could provide 20,000 jobs within 400 metres of the station while the Australian Technology Park (ATP) masterplan allows its floorspace to quadruple, employing 6500 people at Eveleigh and several hundred more at Eveleigh North. Redfern has the infrastructure; trains, buses, parks. Plus the Parramatta-Chatswood line, if and when, makes Redfern an essential bead on the so-called "think-link", joining five universities (Macquarie, UWS, Sydney, UTS - all three campuses - and UNSW) with the Royal North Shore and Westmead teaching hospitals, as well as the bio-med and high-tech facilities at the ATP.

Central to it all, of course, is Redfern station, or what's left of it. Proposals involve a total revamp: fringing the heritage station with street-friendly retail, flanking it with 12-storey residential towers (so you'd scarcely notice Nati Stoliar's $25 million TNT twins, one lately occupied by South Sydney Council), bridging over the tracks and reorienting the lot towards the street.

All this may be inevitable; certainly it's a trend any new super-council will intensify. But within it all, Redfern-the-Block is pincered. Redfern station, capacity-rich, is barely used; it serves seven of Sydney's 10 lines but is only ninth-busiest in the network. Town Hall Station, meanwhile, is full, grubby and virtually unexpandable. Redfern, next along, is close, breezy and convenient, but no one gets off there because, even with a permanent police presence, that reputation, that fear-factor, outweigh all else.

Ten years hence, if the Premier's Department and the 45 government "partners" in its RED Strategy have their way, Redfern as we know-it will be no more. Question: is this a good thing?

Sure, there's graffiti. There are troubled and un-tame people. There are goomies (the old name for metho drinkers) and gatherings and even bonfires on the street, night and day. It is intimidating; no doubt about it. The sense of territory around the Block is palpable. Nothing is defined, not a word said. And yet the demarcation is clear. Partly, this is genuine threat; part is the invisible membrane with which marginal communities surround themselves. But is erasure the answer? Or are we simply intimidated by difference, and by Redfern's active dissent from our oh-so aspirational culture?

This has to be understood since, if Redfern is to survive, it will need to withstand not just the sanitising urge sweeping our town but also societies' instinct to destroy the object of fear.

So, consider. It is possible to see Redfern differently. To see it as core cultural fabric, enriching the entire city; to see its very difference rendering it not less but more important, the closer we come to glossed-out globalism. It is possible to see that the Block itself, as a made urban landscape, has its own beauty, a beauty which we owe it to ourselves to see. Hang the graffiti and the paint-patched walls in a gallery, they'd be instant art. Valuable, even. So, what can be done?

Quite a lot, probably. No one would suggest that Redfern's problem is primarily architectural, but many agree that getting rid of the London-type terraces would help. Not only are they dark and depressingly internalised, but their yards and lanes are so secluded they seem designed for the drug-deal. Even half-demolished, Eveleigh Lane is known as "million-dollar lane" for its annual turnover; Caroline Lane, where the needle bus (until recently) dropped its daily load, is a shooting alley so deep in needles the fire brigade comes to sluice it out. Occasionally. Plus, says Col James, if the local kids want in to a house they simply scoop a hole in the century-old lime mortar and sandstock, and walk through the wall.

Is there a better model? If so, what? And how, after all the well-meant failures, will we know? Can house-design cross cultural boundaries? How real are such boundaries, anyway? And how can you design for a largely itinerant population without a clear paradigm for urban Aboriginality?

The architect Dillon Kombumerri, now with the Government Architect's Merrima group, is collaborating with the AHC on its Pemulwuy rebuilding project. Kombumerri, with family ties in Redfern, worked with the AHC in the '80s "when Charlie [Perkins] was still around". He believes the first step is to abandon preconceptions about what is "culturally appropriate" and design "as any good designer would", from first principles and an open mind.

There are important differences, of course, from "ordinary" Australian housing. These include, says James, the need for bigger houses (allowing seven or eight per house) with at least half the floor area outside and duplicate facilities to allow cooking, eating, sleeping and even bathing to happen under the stars. "That's the beauty and the wonder of the place that you can interact spontaneously and in a large, social way," Kombumerri says.

And where white culture (with the possible exception of those in the Horizon) stresses privacy, early Pemulwuy sketches show all balconies, gardens and streets subject to communal supervision. Another key concept is to open Red Square, opposite the station and always the ignition-point of Redfern's troubles, to competition, redesigning this gauntlet of intimidation as a large and welcoming public place.

There's also a desire for symbolism. One proposal, drawn from Mandawuy Yunupingu's 1993 Boyer Lecture, is ceremonially to replace the "poisoned waterhole" of the old Railway View Hotel, corner Lawson and Eveleigh, with a billabong, doubling as a functional retention basin to reduce flooding on Vine Street. The mingling of salt and fresh water would symbolise the black-white cultural mix, but also the constant renewal of Redfern's heartland with fresh rural blood.

James recognises that the Block, like an overstressed adolescent, has suffered periods of self-harm. But he remains stubbornly optimistic: "I think we're doing better than we've done in the past. We'll make mistakes, but we'll learn from them. I think we'll get a lot of it right. Aboriginal people like comfort, just like anyone else."

To many, of course, white as well as black, being truly Aboriginal means living bush. Even in Redfern, says Kombumerri, with its deeply urban history, "there is a hard core of traditionalists who would like to have a bush setting. But it's not sustainable - for example with hygiene. You'd need a much bigger paddock."

As to the question of an urban paradigm. "I think it's there," says Kombumerri. "People just need to get it in their heads that just because they're in the city, it doesn't mean they're not black. They just need some pride in themselves and in their culture." That's the ask. It may not work, but it has to be more promising than a kneejerk engagement in Dispossession II.

State Government funding for the redevelopment of the Block has been delayed, and work to prepare the site will be set back by at least 12 months, the Aboriginal Housing Company says.

Work on the Block, bordered by Vine, Louis and Caroline streets, was due to begin at the end of this year, with the decontamination of parts of the site and installation of services.

Budgets developed at the request of the Premier's Department nominated $6 million for the initial works, said Peter Valilis, project manager for the company, which owns the site.

"All indications were that it was positive, the Premier really wanted this project to go ahead - it was a high priority," he said.

But Mr Valilis said he was told last month that only $2 million was available for the next financial year, which could lead to delays of at least 12 months.

"My fear is that there is so much hurt here that the four years of work we have put in to build relationships will go down the toilet in one go," Mr Valilis said.

"I'm hoping this is [an example of] the typical way the government does business, but if it stops now, what a waste."

A spokeswoman for the Premier denied any arrangements with the company had changed, and said the figure of $2 million was never discussed with it.

It had "always been the understanding" that the project would be privately financed, she said.

Mr Valilis denied this, saying the redevelopment, to build 60 homes and other accommodation at a cost of up to $27 million, could only go ahead if it was fully funded by the Government.

The Opposition spokesman for Aboriginal affairs, Brad Hazzard, said redevelopment of the Block would only work if it was accompanied by services to address the social dysfunction in the area which had been ignored by the Government.

"It's been a time bomb sitting there with the wick waiting to be lit and Bob Carr has effectively done that by not delivering the housing services and betterment outcomes to the people," he said.

MARK COLVIN: Redfern's Block has been a centre of Aboriginal activism since the 1970s. Lyall Munro, whose voice you just heard, was one of the original activists, as he was suggesting there and despite the many millions of dollars which have been poured into the area over the years, and attempts to improve police and community relations, the Block remains explosive.

There are now to be several inquiries into Thomas Hickey's death, and into the subsequent riot that surrounded it, but today the politics of dealing with the social issues of the Block took centre stage, with New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, saying that he had full confidence in how the police dealt with the events of last night. Meanwhile NSW Opposition leader, John Brogden, has suggested clearing the area out altogether.

PETA DONALD: In the latest chapter of the troubled history between police and the Aboriginal community in Redfern, the NSW Premier, Bob Carr, is firmly behind the police.

BOB CARR: First of all I've got full confidence in the way the police tackled this incident at Redfern, serious as it was. We have full confidence, we have full confidence in the police and they have our full backing.

PETA DONALD: The Premier announced three lines of inquiry. The coroner will investigate the death of Thomas Hickey, there'll be an internal police investigation into the riot that followed, and the Ombudsman will oversee both.

But already Bob Carr has cleared the police of the allegation they chased Thomas Hickey to his death.

BOB CARR: The strong advice from the police is that the police were not pursuing Thomas Hickey. They passed him in their vehicle. They were pursuing someone else, someone they were seeking because of a robbery at 6:15 am captured on closed circuit TV. There were no sirens or squealing tyres and indeed it took the police in the vehicle some minutes to return when they were alerted to the bicycle accident.

PETA DONALD: It is the most delicate of political questions, and perhaps that's why the Premier and the Police Commissioner shared the stage today. Mr Carr went out of his way to acknowledge attempts yesterday by Aboriginal leaders to stop the riot from taking place. The Premier, instead, placed the blame on outsiders, though who that was, was never made clear.

KEN MORONEY: It is regrettable in terms of the events of yesterday and the early hours of this morning because there has been an enormous amount of work, and much credit goes to the elders of the Aboriginal community in Redfern for the tremendous amount of work they have done, not only in collaboration with the NSW police and the police attached to Redfern, but indeed in support of their own community.

PETA DONALD: Ken Moroney had seen up to 40 of his officers injured, with one still in hospital after being hit in the head with a brick. The allegations flying in both directions were serious and the Commissioner vowed to act.

KEN MORONEY: This investigation will take as long as it has to. I'm absolutely determined to get to the truth, and the circumstances of how this issue occurred in Redfern yesterday and there should be no doubt about that whatsoever. It will take however long it takes me to do that. We will identify those responsible for this riotous behaviour. Equally as important, equally as important, we will identify those who were the promoters and the provocateurs, behind the riot.

PETA DONALD: But the police stand accused of taking a softly, softly approach to Redfern by the State Opposition leader John Brogden. He argues there should have been more than four arrests and that it's time for the most dramatic of solutions to the long-running problems on the Block.

JOHN BROGDEN: I'd bring the bulldozers in because I think allowing this to happen every couple of years, which is what is going to happen, will never fix the problem. Look, do you know who I feel saddest for? I feel saddest for a young Aboriginal kid that has to grow up in this part of Sydney and never has any chance to get out. What sort of life are we offering a young Aboriginal kid who at the age of 12 or 14 knows nothing other than grog and violence and unemployment.

PETA DONALD: Bulldozing the famous Block will hardly be supported by Aboriginal leaders, but dealing with living conditions there is the key, according to Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway.

ADEN RIDGEWAY: I think that there needs to be a broader ranging inquiry that looks at issues concerning social and material needs that Redfern requires. Clearly when you look at the way that indigenous policy is dealt with in this country, there seems to be this romantic view of somehow needing to deal with remote and isolated communities at the expense of those in the city. Now they have all the opportunities at their fingertips, but they're not getting jobs, they're not getting educated and health is just as poor as it might be if you were living in the Kimberlys.

MARK COLVIN: That was indeed Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway ending Peta Donald's report.

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