Open letter from Michael Mundine
to Frank Sartor Minister for Redfern Waterloo
Sep 7,2005 - Central Courier
Minister Frank Sartor,
What I find most disturbing in your open letter to me in the Redfern Waterloo
Authority August 2005 newsletter, is that you have grossly misrepresented
the Pemulwuy Project and spread fear that the Block could become a ghetto
again. The commercial developments that you have suggested should be on the
Block are features already present in our master plan.
Facts about the Pemulwuy Project:
o Originally there were over 102 homes owned by the AHC (now demolished) on
and around the Block. The Pemulwuy Project will replace only 62.
o The suggestion that 19 houses is a sustainable number for the Block is wrong.
There are 19 houses on the Block now and this was not enough to stop last
year's riot.
o Reducing the number of houses proposed by the Pemulwuy Project will seriously
compromise the community's ability to respond to crime and anti-social behaviour.
The area requires a critical mass of people to ensure it remains safe.
o The AHC has won an international award for crime prevention and community
safety strategies.
o The Pemulwuy Project is driven by an award winning Social Plan and is not
an architectural response.
o The Pemulwuy Project is not about high-dependency housing. Two thirds of
the proposed housing will be available for homeownership and only as few as
20 homes will be available for low income rental.
o The Pemulwuy Project includes an Indigenous business college, a retail/office
centre, a student hostel, a museum, a culture centre, Aboriginal markets and
a fitness centre.
o The AHC has engaged independent professional advisors to oversee the Pemulwuy'
Project, chaired by the Hon Tom Uren, AO.
o The AHC has worked in partnership with the NSW Premier's department for
over three years.
o The AHC has never asked for funding from the NSW Government for the Pemulwuy
Project, and is exploring a range of other funding options.
I can say with a high degree of confidence that the Block will
never become a ghetto again. The AHC, with crime prevention experts and urban
planners, has developed strategies to avoid a high dependency situation from
re-occurring.
The Pemulwuy Project promises great benefits:
o The Block is a modern sacred site for Aboriginal people, its renewal will
result in greater cultural pride and self respect.
o Safer environment for children in a low crime, drug-free neighbourhood.
o Greater opportunities for Aboriginal education and employment.
o Opportunities for Aboriginal enterprise by making Redfern a cultural tourism
precinct.
o Unprecedented affordable home ownership in the inner-city for Aboriginal
families.
o Practical reconciliation not welfare handouts.
o Self-determination in action.
Your letter goes on to urge me to ignore "consultants and
nay-sayers. As CEO it is my responsibility to seek independent advice from
a range of sources. The Board of the Aboriginal Housing Company and the members
of the organisation have debated all the options. You may not like the decision
but the AHC members unanimously chose to reject your amendments to the Project,
on the grounds that the changes would seriously compromise the future social
sustainability of the community. Despite your attempts to blame me for delays,
I will continue to fight for the rights of my people to have a future in Redfern.
The vision for the Block is already there, the hard work has already been
done, all you have to do now Minister is open your heart and mind to the wonderful
future we can achieve for Redfern.
Regards.
Michael Mundine Snr
Chief Executive Officer
Aboriginal Housing Company,
Editor's note: This is an abridged version of the original letter
sent for publication.
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RIP
Aboriginal protest?
Sep 5,2005 - National Indigenous Times
It's with enormous regret (and quite some alarm) that Blackchat
officially announces that Aboriginal protest in Australia has died.
How do we know? Because the Sydney Morning Herald says so.
On August 26, the Herald ran a short feature piece inside the
paper, lamenting the decline of Aboriginal protest.
Headlined 'Fight for indigenous rights grinds to halt', the
article read: "The black, red and yellow Aboriginal flag is rarely seen
in the streets anymore. Cries for black rights are muted. That "T-word",
treaty, is barely whispered. What has happened to the Aboriginal cause? Previously
bursting with energy, it fell too much under the Federal Government's wing
during the reconciliation decade of the 1990s, says historian Henry Reynolds,
the nation's chief recorder of black-white relations.
"There's scarcely an Aboriginal movement at the moment,
for the first time in a long time. The generation who led the fight are simply
no longer involved," Reynolds says."
And where was the Sydney Morning Herald as all this happened?
Reporting on real estate prices and where to get the best cappuccino.
Does the Herald remember the Long Walk late last year, which
saw tens of thousands of people protest around the nation? Possibly not, because
it's coverage was in the 'bare minimum' category.
And, one might also ask, why hasn't the Herald had an Aboriginal
affairs reporter for the past year? The previous reporter in that round was
moved into a special investigations unit, but not replaced. Herald editor,
Rob Whitehead (that's his name, but we're sure no indication of his preferences)
explained to NIT at the time that the Herald's health reporter would cover
black issues; the Herald's education reporter would cover black issues...
etc etc. So the Herald mainstreamed its Indigenous affairs reporting. Or at
least it said it would. Anyone with any knowledge of the Herald will know
its reporting of black issues since its Aboriginal affairs reporter was moved
a year ago has been appalling.
Now, here's the rub. A day after the Herald's most recent story,
a protest was held in Marrickville over the NSW government's plans to boot
all the blackfellas out of The Block in Redfern. The Herald, unfortunately,
couldn't make the 10-kilometre journey from its plush Darling Park headquarters
to Marrickville, so no coverage in the Monday edition. There was, however,
a story on The Block. It was a free kick for NSW Planning Minister, Frank
Sartor, who dumped all over the Aboriginal Housing Company's (AHC) long-held
proposal to redevelop the area and create state-of-the-art Aboriginal housing.
Sadly, no balancing comment from the AHC defending the proposal or highlighting
the fact the AHC had been working on the multi-award winning design for years.
Just a one-sided spit from Sartor saying, and we quote, "... when you've
got people of that [socio-economic] background... you can't afford to create
another mire." Of course, the original article on the death of Aboriginal
protest quoted no blackfellas either.
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An open letter from Frank Sartor
to Mick Mundine, CEO, Aboriginal Housing Company
Sep 2, 2005
Dear Micky,
We've known each other for 20 years. We've worked together on community issues,
council campaigns and past redevelopments at the Block.
In the past, whenever we disagreed we talked it through and found a solution.
Today, the Aboriginal Housing Company intends to redevelop the Block, building
62 new medium-density houses to replace the existing 19.
We disagree on your development plans because the Government believes it will
repeat the problems of the past, but we're both passionate about making the
Block a place of significance for Aboriginal people. We both want an outcome
on the Block that benefits local Aboriginal families.
Six months ago I proposed a joint taskforce of Government and AHC representatives,
to come up with a shared vision for the Block. The existing 19 tenancies would
remain on and around the Block, and a further 43 would be found elsewhere
in Redfern-Waterloo. Everything else was on the table for discussion.
You rejected this taskforce, and since you have been boycotting all discussions
with Government.
My offer of six months ago still stands. I urge you to ignore consultants
and nay-sayers and restart discussions with the Government, as a strong local
voice for the Aboriginal community.
Let's work together to find a shared vision for the Block, and make it a place
for all of us to be proud of.
Frank Sartor
Minister for Redfern-Waterloo
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Sartor
refuses to budge on the Block
August 29, 2005 - SMH
By Tim Dick Urban Affairs Reporter
In Frank Sartor's future for Redfern, everything is negotiable.
Except the Block.
The Planning Minister has been trying to find a way out of the
impasse in which a Government keen to fix one of Sydney's most sensitive and
troubled communities finds itself.
The crux of the problem is that the landowner, the Aboriginal
Housing Company, wants to build 62 new homes for Aborigines at the symbolic
heart of indigenous Sydney.
But the company does not have enough money and needs funding
and planning approval from the State Government. Its current plan will not
get either.
Mr Sartor, as the minister responsible for Redfern's redevelopment,
insists it is bad policy to spend millions of dollars building medium-density
homes for highly dependent people in a tormented part of the city.
"No Government, Labor, Liberal or Calathumpian … will
ever support what they are proposing," he told the Herald, admitting
the situation was at an impasse.
The way out is unknown. "We won't be compulsorily acquiring
their land, no," he said, "but there are other ways of controlling
development."
However, Mr Sartor says he has a flexible approach to the suburb's
future.
"Everything's negotiable except for concentration of high-dependency
housing there," he says. "It seems to me that the focus of the Block
ought to be other than residential. Symbolically, I think it's important to
have some, but the focus ought to be on other things that bring people there,
not necessarily highly-dependent people, brings Aboriginal support, Aboriginal
culture, Aboriginal education, even non-Aboriginal."
He believes the mistakes of the past were providing money before
having a workable plan of how to spend it. He is adamant this is not a fight
about getting Aborigines off the Block, or reducing public housing.
"I don't care if it's white or black, it's not a racial
issue," he said. "When you've got people of that [socio-economic]
profile, no matter what their ethnic background, you can't afford to create
another mire. You've got to give it reasonable probability of success."
Unless one side caves in during the next few months, the issue
will be brought to a head by the Redfern-Waterloo Plan and the land use zonings
it proposes.
That document will also shed light on the future of Waterloo,
although Mr Sartor has scratched earlier plans to demolish the Department
of Housing towers.
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Loyal
and likeable but largely ineffectual
August 3, 2005 - Daily Telegraph
By Joe Hildebrand
IF THE secret of being a politician is to hang around for a
long time without actually doing anything, Andrew Refshauge is truly a master
of his craft.
The soon-to-be-ex-Deputy Premier and Treasurer is a nice bloke
and a well-intentioned politician, but when he looks back at his legacy he
may well find that there isn't one.
In many ways this was the hallmark of the Carr Government, an
administration so petrified of being seen as economically blase or irresponsible
that, gripped by the tight fiscal fist of Michael Egan, it was content to
just keep pottering along.
It is an irony that the few left-of-centre moves that were made,
were done so with the rubber stamp of Carr the Cautious, not his once-radical
lefty deputy. And they were overwhelmingly in Dr Refshauge's natural habitat
of health.
The establishment of the medically supervised injecting room
in Kings Cross, the exploration of the use of cannabis for medical purposes,
and the development of embryonic stem cell research were all driven by Carr.
Dr Refshauge was no crusader. If anything he was an anchor,
helping to steady the balance between the Left and Right and weather the more
radical elements of his own faction.
It is no surprise he was a more popular choice for premier among
the public than Carl Scully or Morris Iemma. He was a familiar and comforting
presence and he hadn't done anything wrong - largely because he hadn't done
anything at all.
Like his Left colleague and would-be usurper John Watkins, the
cool Dr Refshauge could take the heat out of an issue just by standing next
to it.
To chart the true trajectory of Dr Refshauge you only need to
consider his final stamp on the area of Aboriginal affairs, which has been
the one constant of his ministerial life.
Before entering Parliament he forged his political identity
as an idealistic GP crusading for better indigenous health and was Aboriginal
affairs minister throughout his time in Government.
As education minister in 2003 Dr Refshauge made an ambitious
pledge to raise the woeful standard of Aboriginal education. His department
costed the scheme at $80 million a year.
Just two years later, in his first Budget as Treasurer, Dr Refshauge
was prepared to hand over less than 10 per cent of that amount, meaning the
plan for an uplifting scheme for 53,000 indigenous students became a pilot
program for a selected few.
As education minister, teachers often complained that he didn't
have the clout to extract money from then-treasurer Michael Egan. Now it seemed
he didn't even have the clout to extract money from himself.
NSW Teachers Federation president Maree O'Halloran said his
stint as education minister could only be described as disappointing and his
failure to retrospectively resurrect it as Treasurer was the last nail in
the coffin which interred his once-noble vision.
"I think it marked the end of Dr Refshauge's career - in
terms of having begun with such a passion for Aboriginal health and education
- not to be able to deliver that as treasurer," she said. "I guess
that's a symptom of having the idealism knocked out of him over the years."
His other big hit in indigenous affairs was the sacking of the
NSW Aboriginal Land Council following years of maladministration. Given he
was the minister for overseeing the land council in the first place, this
can hardly be rated as a plus.
When the spiral of poverty, unemployment, substance abuse and
crime in Redfern exploded into the riot there last year, the Aboriginal Affairs
Minister was virtually invisible.
Despite the usual roundabout of inquiries, there has been no
definitive action to date, with the infamous needle van still plonked on The
Block and the only solution offered by the Government a massive real estate
redevelopment that seems to ignore the root causes.
The fact responsibility for overhauling Sydney's Aboriginal
mecca was taken out of Dr Refshauge's hands and placed in those of Frank Sartor
is perhaps indicative of the view inside Government that he was no can-do
minister.
As health minister in the first years of the Carr Government
Dr Refshauge avoided the scandals that haunted his successors.
He managed to cut waiting lists in half in an improbably short
amount of time just after the 1995 election but that began to look like sleight
of hand.
We don't know how much the chronic culture of administrative
blind-sidedness and mistreatment exposed in recent years was allowed to fester
under his watch. At the very least, the chance for an overhaul of health services
was missed and had to wait almost 10 years for Morris Iemma.
His stint as planning minister was uneventful and pre-dated
Carr's belated realisation that an infrastructure portfolio was needed to
prop up Sydney, while it's hard to recall any leaps forward in public housing
during his time as housing minister. Certainly homelessness is no less a problem.
For all the good intentions and once-burning ideals, when Dr
Refshauge returns to civilian life he will find that not much has changed.
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Sacred land and official secrets
July 15, 2005 - Southside News
In the early 1970s, many Aboriginal people living in Sydney
were homeless and there was a serious overcrowding of what housing did exist.
With no permanent housing they constantly faced eviction and racial discrimination
in the private rent market. As a result of this lack of affordable housing,
a group of Aboriginal people squatted in empty terraces on Louis Street in
Redfern, in December 1972.
These terrace houses were more than 80 years old and were shabby,
crowded and in bad repair. Under a 'blind-eye' squatting agreement with the
owner, the squatters organised themselves and formed a non-profit company
- the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC), the first housing collective in Australia,
was formed in July 1973.
An initial grant of $530,000 from the then Labor Whitlam federal
government allowed the AHC to purchase and restore the first 29 terrace houses.
The housing cluster became known as The Block.
This initial acquisition in Redfern was the first urban land-rights
grant in Australia.
The Aboriginal population of Redfern increased dramatically
between 1976 and 1981, mostly as a result of this housing project.
Now, 30 years later what looked like a secure land rights grant
is threatened. Another fight over The Block is raging - this time between
the Labor Government of NSW and the Aboriginal Housing Company.
The AHC has a plan to redevelop The Block.
The State Government has a grand plan to redevelop Redfern Waterloo.
It set up an authority and appointed a Minister, Frank Sartor,
to implement that plan.
Documents sighted by Southside News show the government sees
control of AHC land as crucial to the redevelopment - so crucial that a 'worst
case' scenario where Aboriginal land in Redfern could be compulsorily acquired
has been examined.
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Land and secrets on The Block
July 15, 2005 - Southside News
On May 25, a map of Redfern Waterloo was published in the Government
Gazette. It showed areas declared state significant within Redfern and Waterloo
boundaries and included The Block - land privately owned by the Aboriginal
Housing Company. Gazetting means planning and compulsory acquisition powers
will now move to the recently established Redfern Waterloo Authority. Government
documents show control of The Block was always central to the $5 billion redevelopment
plan for the area. SAMANTHA DERRICK reports for Southside News (Issue 3/2005
Pages 13-14.)
Last December the Redfern/Waterloo Authority Bill 2004 passed
through the NSW parliament.
The Bill legislated for the formation of a decision and planning
authority to take charge of redevelopment in the two South Sydney suburbs.
Early this year the Authority was formed - see opposite page.
Even before that happened Cabinet documents were leaked and
newspaper reports told of the State Government's $5 billion, 10-year plan
to redevelop Redfern and the surrounding suburbs. The plan involved taking
control of Aboriginal housing on The Block and letting private developers
take over two-thirds of the area's public housing estates.
Since then, the man with extraordinary powers to implement this
plan, Minister for Redfern Waterloo Frank Sartor has consistently denied there
were any plans to seize control of Aboriginal land.
Southside News however, has sighted documents which show crown
solicitors' office advice to Cabinet last year outlined a number of scenarios
which would give the RWA effective control of Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC)
land in return for RWA funding to redevelop The Block and associated lands.
And if these scenarios collapsed and the "worst case"
- AHC insolvency - happened, the advice was that the "RWA may compulsorily
acquire the AHC land or NSW Government may consider legislation".
The advice was among Cabinet papers titled The Redfern/Waterloo
Plan (2004-2014) which related to the setting up of the RWA and its funding.
They give comprehensive insight into the NSW Government's plans
for a wholesale makeover of Redfern and Waterloo as a high density extension
of the CBD.
They also reveal that crucial to the funding of the whole plan
was control of the redevelopment of Aboriginal Housing Company's prime real
estate - The Block site.
Meanwhile for five years the AHC, assisted by the State Government,
has been planning the redevelopment of The Block through a project called
the Pemulwuy Project. It is a comprehensive plan that would see 62 Aboriginal
homes on The Block. It needs $27 million funding. (See Page 15)
In the scenarios outlined to Cabinet last October this project
did not get a look in, even though it had won awards and was found to be economically
feasible.
All scenarios addressed by the crown solicitor's office concentrate
on how the AHC could lease the land to the RWA for redevelopment.
The advice to Cabinet is that the RWA and the AHC form the Pemulwuy
Redevelopment Committee (PRC) - same name but no relationship to the project.
In fact the proposed set up of this committee would remove the Aboriginal
Housing Company from direct access to the RWA.
This PRC committee was to advise the RWA on the redevelopment
of The Block. The advice to Cabinet was that it be made up, half and half,
of AHC and RWA members.
The PRC would have a chairperson who had the deciding vote -
a position appointed by Mr Sartor.
It would also have a general manager-an RWA staff member.
This structure would ostensibly show co-operation between the
RWA and AHC but ultimately the Aboriginal Company would have limited control
over the decision-making process.
The NSW Crown solicitor's office also advised Cabinet in October
that the RWA should lease AHC land for 10 years. The AHC should be asked to
sign off on a redevelopment agreement and positive covenant for 20 years,
in return for the RWA start-up funds to redevelop The Block.
Under this arrangement Mr Sartor's Authority would have "exclusive
possession and management of sales and leasing" for 10 years and then
have ongoing management interest for another 10.
This would mean that even if The Block was not compulsorily
acquired, the AHC would, while formally owning the land lose control over
it. The RWA would decide who was allowed to lease houses on The Block and
have power of eviction.
Another recommendation in the documents was that the AHC take
out a $I million - $2 million loan as a "contribution to the redevelopments".
The Crown solicitor recommended that the RWA would get more
"leverage when dealing with the company" if it was "guarantor
of the loan.
The AHC has told Southside News that repayments of such a loan
could not. have been met. It would have pushed them into insolvency.
The "worst case" would have come about and as the
advice suggests "the RWA could compulsorily acquire the AHC land to protect
its investment".
In any event and after the Sydney Morning Herald published stories
based on leaked Cabinet documents showing the extent of Government pre-planning,
the Aboriginal Housing Company walked away.
AHC project director Peter Valilis said: "This whole deal
smacked off a conspiracy to take The Block, but it would have been done with
the co-operation of the AHC."
He said AHC members did talk to the State Government in August
2004 about forming the Pemulwuy Redevelopment Committee.
"We wanted an equal partnership with the government,"
said Mr Valilis.
"We would bring land and over $3 million to $4 million
worth of research (The Pemulwuy Project) and they would bring money that would
be equivalent to the land value."
But he said the government wanted the AHC to contribute more
to the partnership.
"The State Government said they weren't happy with that
arrangement. They proposed that we go to Macquarie Bank, they even proposed
the bank, and borrow $2 million," he said.
"They would underwrite that loan and at any time we didn't
keep up with the payments, then they would take The Block."
The AHC has since setup its own committee called the Pemulwuy
Vision Taskforce headed by former Whitlam regional planning development minister
and veteran campaigner Tom Uren.
As you will see on Page 15 that vision for 62 dwellings collides
head on with Frank Sartor's vision for The Block.
On June 15 he told SBS Aboriginal reporter Lola Forester: "my
only precondition to this, I don't mind what the final vision is, my only
precondition is, that we shouldn't increase the amount of dwellings in and
around The Block above the 19 that are there now."
REDWatch is an amalgam of community and political interest groups
dedicated to getting the best deal for Redfem. An eletter is circulated monthly
with detailed information on unfolding community and RWA sagas.
Geoff Turnbull is president of REDwatch.
He said he believes the RWA wants limited Aboriginal housing
because otherwise developers might not bite.
"Part of the issue on what you're seeing about The Block
is in the stuff that the Herald leaked from the Cabinet papers which said...
if you didn't have good things happening around the station, the developer
would be prepared to pay 25-30 per cent less for doing that public and private
development than what they would if there were other things going on.
"The developers and the spokesperson for the property council
are on record as saying if you want them to come in and redevelop the station
and other areas then we are going to have to get rid of The Block," he
said.
The RWA is not an open organisation.
As it is constituted Mr Sartor has final' say oil funding, can
appoint and fire board members and is the sole spokesperson on all issues
relating to the redevelopment.
Mr Turnbull said the community was being left in the dark by
the RWA.
"This is a development corporation model, everything is
secret unless there's some good reason to release it, or leak it to somebody
in the media. What we've argued is that the Authority should have the same
sort of mechanisms and transparency as being carried on by local government."
In an interview with Southside News in April, opposition Aboriginal
affairs spokesman Brad Hazzard also criticised lack of community consultation.
"It seems very Monty Pythonesque that the government had
all these people working on it (Pemulwuy Project) and yet their solution seems
to be coming from a totally different quarter, out of the blue," he said.
"All power to be placed in one person or group tends to
be a very corruptive and destructive force."
"Sartor's decision (gazetting The Block as state significant)
is a decision of arrogance," said Mr Uren.
"His whole position is a confrontational one. You don't
start off doing something on the position of confrontation, you seek out co-operation
with all parties involved, including the community," he said.
Mr Sartor declined to be interviewed by Southside News.
His office instead supplied written answers to our questions
about the Redfern-Waterloo Authority and the Aboriginal Housing Company.
"My door remains open to the Aboriginal Housing Company
to discuss a way forward for The Block. I have also met a range of stakeholders
and discussions are happening at a community level on the redevelopment of
Redfern-Waterloo.
"I have consistently stated I would find the balance of
the 62 tenancies in the area, and I repeat my commitment that the level of
public and Aboriginal housing in Redfern-Waterloo will not be reduced,"
the written replies from his press officer said.
He elaborated on this in the SBS interview. He told Ms Forester:
`...we're prepared to find 62 dwellings in and around RedfemWaterloo but on
the actual Block, and the immediate, sort of, across the road from the Block,
we think you're crazy re-concentrating this amount of housing just right there,
given the fact that, in fact, we used to have about 50 - most of them got
demolished, because it just ended up being just too difficult to manage.
"... we want the Aboriginal community to work with us to
work that through. And then we will help them financially and try and put
together a different vision, it might be to do with education, it might be
to do with arts, it might be to do with sport ... once we settle that, let's
settle how much housing you can have around there and then we will find the
rest, and we will find the 62 dwellings..." Mr Sartor said.
Ms Forester asked: "Yeah but Frank you're actually saying
that Aboriginal people can't move forward in a sophisticated way but with
the Pemulwuy Project they're proposing a mixture of home ownership, and affordable
housing for high, middle and low income families on The Block, along with
a business college, a retail office complex, a large civil space with Aboriginal
artist markets, a sporting facility, student hostel.
"Can you name one aspect of the Pemulwuy Project you don't
believe is worth implementing?"
Mr Sartor repeated his point about the 62 dwellings.
When pressed he said he hadn't read all of the Pemulwuy Project
but was familiar with its contents.
KEY POINTS FROM ADVICE TO CABINET OCTOBER 2004
o RWA to be consent authority for lands within its ambit.
o In return for the RWA Fund redevelopment funding AHC agrees to RWA controlling
AHC land via a 10-year lease (RWA has exclusive possession and manages leases
and sales), and a Redevelopment Agreement and registered legal title owner
of the AHC land.
o A key aspect of the redevelopment of the AHC land is the operation of the
PRC (Pemulwuy Redevelopment Committee) within the RWA structure. The PRC will
comprise equal representations from the AHC and Government, with the chairman,
having the deciding vote, to be nominated by the minister subject to the AHC
having aright to veto the appointment (at the time of the appointment only).
It is also intended to appoint a general manager to have carriage of management
of the PRC's affairs, with the general manager having a dual reporting line
to the PRC and the RWA's CEO.
o Advice acknowledges inherent risks in development with its example being
that after the RWA develops AHC land, the AHC may challenge the agreement
as "inequitable and oppressive". In the worst-case scenario it advises
the RWA could compulsorily acquire the AHC land.
o In a section of RWA Control of Aboriginal Housing Company land in return
for RWA Fund monies applied to redevelop The Block and associated lands it
is mentioned that:
- Compulsory acquisition is not likely except in very limited circumstances,
eg. In the event of AHC insolvency.
- The documents do mention that intended RWA's functions include the social
outcome of promoting affordable quality Aboriginal housing and employment
opportunities.
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Pemulwuy inspires battle for The
Block
July 15, 2005 - Southside News
Pemulwuy was the Rainbow Warrior who in the late 1700s united
Aboriginal clans to resist the British. This earned him the reputation as
the most famous freedom fighter in Aboriginal history. Another battle is now
brewing - this time between the NSW Government and the Aboriginal Housing
Company (AHC). The company has a plan to redevelop its prime land, The Block
in Redfern. The Government has a plan to take over that development. Samantha
Derrick Southside News Issue 3/2005 page 15.
For five years the AHC worked with the University of Sydney,
local businesses, urban planners, architects and community as well as the
NSW Government to develop the Pemulwuy Project.
The project would mean building 62 homes for Aboriginal people
on the Block - symbolic of the 62 families of the Gadigal tribe in Redfern
who were wiped out by smallpox during British settlement. It would also mean
demolition of the brick wall opposite the Redfern railway station and the
construction of a public civic space, retail area, artist markets, student
hostel, a sports facility and an indigenous business college.
The Block, the first piece of urban land returned to Aboriginal
people, has long been notorious for its social problems. Neglect as well as
drug and alcohol problems have beset residents.
Driving the Pemulwuy Project is a desire to reverse this image
and create a positive icon of self-determination for the Aboriginal people.
"The Pemulwuy Project is for the future of the next generation,
that's our main goal," said Mick Mundine, chief executive officer of
the Housing Company.
"It's (The Block) known all over the world ... so we could
show people that Aboriginal people can do things themselves, self-determination,
we can do it and we going to be a role model for a lot of people and organisations."
Sydney University researchers, social planners and the ABC worked
together on the Pemulwuy Project.
Professor Col James who works with Sydney University Housing
Centre was one of those involved from the beginning. The Centre carried out
a detailed study of The Block's residents, their disadvantages, hopes and
aspirations.
The AHC "insisted on doing a social plan first ...and that
social plan has driven the architectural expression of it", said Prof
James.
"It's pretty much to do with responding to Aboriginal culture,
responding to the urban requirements of the site, responding to crime, reconciliation,
health and jobs."
The social plan won a community housing innovation award in
2001 and just last year it won an international crime prevention award.
"The Planning Institute of Australia has looked at this
project and said `this is fantastic planning', we've had developers come in
and say `mate this is second to none'," said Peter Valilis, the AHC's
project manager.
"This project is now recognised internationally as having
the best security planning of any other project."
Public planning workshops were held and the initial Pemulwuy
plan was drawn up in early 2002. But after rigorous crime prevention testing,
the plan was redesigned and the final model designed.
Mr Valilis said The Block's major social problems were addressed
in the Pemulwuy Project plan and families who would rent the homes represented
a broad socio-economic mix of low and middle incomes. There would also be
the possibility of home-ownership schemes for the residents.
"Where it's going to change is that we're going to have
a mix of incomes," said Mr Mundine.
"And now we're talking about home ownership, that's going
to bring a lot of pride and self-determination back into the community."
The State Government had been a close supporter of the project
- they provided the government's architects to draw the Pemulwuy plan, requested
Macquarie Bank to conduct a financial forecast of the project and signed a
memorandum of understanding with the AHC and Sydney University in 2003 stating
it's commitment to the redevelopment of The Block.
But the AHC said things changed when the RWA was formally constituted.
"They introduced the RWA and all support stopped, ... they
don't want to see any Aboriginal housing on The Block," Mr Valilis said.
Reports say that the Minister for Redfern Waterloo, Frank Sartor
told the AHC board he didn't want any Aboriginal housing on The Block and
at a maximum he would accept no more than 19 - the number of houses currently
on The Block.
"We've got 19 houses left on The Block and he (Frank Sartor)
just wants to refurbish the houses and the rest of the land use it on an economic
basis, small business and business college. But as we said in the past this
land is for Aboriginal people and that's the way it's going to stay,"
said Mr Mundine.
Mr Sartor's office has said he does not believe 62 dwellings
on The Block is a sustainable vision.
"It is likely to concentrate high-dependency tenancies
and re-visit past mistakes," his office said on his behalf when approached
by Southside News.
Peter Valilis said: "Nobody wants this to be a ghetto again
"The fact is he hasn't even looked at the project ... for
three years we worked with the Premier's department to address all these sustainability
issues. They kept putting the bars up and we passed every one of them. We
exceeded all their expectations to the point they ran out of bars to put up."
Under the RWA Act all planning controls and approvals provided
for under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979, will move from
the Minister of Planning and City of Sydney Council to the Minister of RWA
- enabling the minister to override heritage laws and approve all developments
within the proposed area. The RWA is now the approval body for the Pemulwuy
Project.
The AHC has fought back establishing the Pemulwuy Vision Taskforce
headed by Torn Uren, who was part of the Whitlam government team who originally
handed The Block to the Aboriginal people in 1973.
The battle continues.
Photo: Grand vision... Innovarchi Architects prepared this draft
of the Aboriginal Housing Company's vision for the commercial component of
the Pemulwuy Project. The Eveleigh Street redevelopment includes a retail/office
building. a plaza, an indigenous Business College, a student hostel and the
Gadigal apartments.
BACK TO TOP
Friend or foe Sartor has final say
July 15, 2005 - Southside News
New South Wales Labor MP Frank Ernest Sartor, in his early years
as a Sydney City councillor, described The Block in Redfern as: "the
most difficult problem I have ever had to deal with". Today, as a minister,
he heads the Redfern Waterloo Authority. JOE CORREY profiles the man who now
has extraordinary power to change all of Redfern not just its notorious streets.
From the moment Frank Sartor became Minister for Redfern Waterloo
speculation began. Newspaper reports said he wanted to turn the area into
the new North Sydney and this would mean limiting housing for Aboriginal people
on The Block.
There was also speculation that the former Independent city
councillor had a high personal stake in the Redfern Waterloo Authority. ALP
insiders suggested that while there was still tension within the party over
his recruitment and quick ascension through Labor ranks, if the Authority
was successful he could be seen as a possible successor to Premier Bob Carr.
If that happened it would be an ironic final twist in the career
of a man who started his political life as a vociferous opponent of Labor
and a strong defender of the types of communities some fear he might now decimate.
In 1984, Sartor and a group of nine Independents created history
when they were elected to Sydney City Council shifting the balance of power
from the ALP.
It was the first time Labor had significant opposition from
Independents on the council. As well as that, the energetic Councillor Sartor
had strong community connections and was making sure they were aware of council
business.
He had arrived on the political scene in the late seventies
as part of a local-based resident group fighting the construction of a multi-storey
apartment building.
But despite the outward enmity, former Labor alderman, Terry
Murphy said even then relationships were being formed that would pave the
way for Frank Sartor's entry into the party.
He said that as early as 1985, Labor councillors were within
a few days of convincing Sartor to join. "He always had a close relationship
with some of the Labor councillors. That's why Clover Moore was offside with
Frank because she said he was compliant with the ALP.
"The Labor councillors were massaging his ego so we could
get the numbers in council, which we'd lost with the rise of the Independents.
Frank would have joined, but then the Liberal-Labor deal happened, which scared
him off," said Mr Murphy.
The Liberal-Labor deal involved the two major parties co-operating
to elect a mayor free of Independent influence. The balance of power in Sydney
City Council again shifted and so did Sartor. He became more outspoken against
the ALP.
At the same time, he began to receive praise for his work on
the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. From 1983 to 1986 he was executive
director of the committee - a body that acted as a watchdog for spending in
the public sector and reported directly to the NSW Government.
In this role, he developed relationships with many influential
government figures, including Mr Can.
However the relationships were not strong enough to protect
him. The State Labor government readvertised the job he was doing on the Public
Accounts Committee. Anyone applying needed a law degree and this made him
ineligible. He is a qualified chemical engineer and accountant.
The Liberal Party speculated at the time it was Labor payback
for Frank Sartor's attacks in council.
His tentative association with the Labor Party was also damaged
when the Government sacked the council in 1987.
Frank Sartor ran against the ALP candidate for the state seat
of McKell in the following NSW election and lost resoundingly.
He was however, re-elected to the Sydney City Council in 1989.
Two years later he became Lord Mayor and declared: "I want this city
to become a cultural and intellectual centre of the world?".
He remained Lord Mayor until 2003.
During his reign, the Living City plan was introduced, and Sartor's
legacy was laid down: 21,000 residents in the city, old buildings restored,
heritage buildings protected and the creation of new parks.
Just like now, these changes did not come without opposition.
The plan to widen footpaths infuriated city retailers, Cook
and Philip Park swimming pools were said to have destroyed parkland, and he
was accused of having increased the city's population to shore up his voter
base when the Carr Government amended the City of Sydney Act.
The Act gave city residents and business people the right to
elect the Lord Mayor by popular vote.
Lucy Turnbull, now on the board of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority
was. deputy mayor to Sartor.
She said: "A lot of the construction was controversial
and there were complaints at the time. But, I think that there is a widespread
appreciation that the public domain of the city is of a much higher quality
and better designed place thanks to Frank.
"At the same time he never lost his support base of city
residents who lived in then working-class suburbs such as Pyrmont, Ultimo,
Millers Point and The Rocks."
Despite his achievements Sartor was not satisfied with the size
of the council. He believed that the Sydney City Council boundaries should
be larger to make the city viable.
One ALP source told Southside News, that Sartor appealed to
the NSW Government for an amalgamation of South Sydney Council while he was
still Lord Mayor. It was said he was paying his path to join the party.
Former South Sydney Labor Councillor All Lay said party members
on South Sydney Council realised there would be a voter backlash and voiced
strong opposition to the plan.
Shortly after Sartor left local Government, South Sydney Council
and Sydney City Council were merged. As predicted, the ALP lost support, and
Clover Moore became Sydney Lord Mayor through an alliance with the Greens
and other Independents.
In 2003, Sartor was elected into the safe Labor seat of Rockdale;
a year later he was made Minister for Redfern Waterloo.
It was yet another big move up in the world for a man whose
view of life was no doubt formed by childhood experiences as the fifth of
eight children in a newly settled Italian family.
He once told an interviewer, his childhood was the "usual
migrant story: Tough background and poverty. They make you more determined
not to fail because you know what it is like on the other side of the fence".
Mick Mundine, CEO of the Aboriginal Housing Company, which owns
The Block, said: "Frank isn't the right person to head the Redfern Waterloo
Authority. The NSW Government put him there because he is a muscle man, but
if he doesn't work with the people in the community, he'll get nowhere."
Mundine is not the only person to question the former Lord Mayor's
approach.
He has a reputation for a short temper and for being domineering.
Former council associates Dixie Coulton and Kathryn Greiner
spoke frankly to the Sydney Morning Herald in February 2004.
Coulton said: "He yelled, bullied and belittled people."
Greiner went a step further, and said: "He has a very short fuse. His
management style is pure dictatorial, which is why the staff just turned over
all the time.,,
Lay however said the bottom line was that Sartor's temperament
should be looked at in the context of his achievements.
"Frank is a can-do person. He is very determined, dogged
and opinionated. That's why he was given the job of heading the RWA. Love
him or hate him, he's an intelligent man. You don't get to do the things he
did, or move through the system as he's done, if you can't evaluate and make
things happen," she said.
"But for Frank to make the right things happen he must
listen to, and be guided by, the Redfern Waterloo community, unlike what happened
when the NSW Government merged South Sydney Council."
Sartor was unavailable for interview.
Southside News wanted to ask: Will he be more guided in his
new job by his experience as vice-president of the Olympic body SOCOG and
as a board member of the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority where tough development
decisions often bulldozed local obstacles, or by the community bonds of his
distant past?
BACK TO TOP
How Moore's 'kinda'onside with RWA
July 15, 2005 - Southside News
The support of Sydney's Lord Mayor is vital for the success
of the Redfern Waterloo redevelopment plan. But as DHEEPTHI NAMASIVAYAM finds
out its not guaranteed. (Southside News issue 3/2005 page 10)
There are no prizes for predicting that the relationship of
community-focused Sydney City Lord Mayor, Clover Moore with the Redfern Waterloo
Authority (RWA) and her lord mayoral predecessor, Frank Sartor, would not
be smooth.
It was hoped if she accepted membership of the RWA, her position
as Lord Mayor would help link the council with the government appointed authority
responsible for overseeing the redevelopment of Sydney's inner-city suburbs,
Redfern and Waterloo.
The Lord Mayor's relationship with the RWA was going to be even
further complicated by her other political role. She is an Independent member
of the NSW parliament and has represented Bligh since 1988.
In the end though it was a confidentiality clause which thwarted
any wish she might have had to serve on the RWA board.
When she took the invitation to join the RWA to a council meeting
on February 21 the majority of councillors opposed her involvement because
of an RWA confidentiality requirement - an $11,000 fine could be imposed upon
the Lord Mayor if as a RWA board member she revealed confidential details
about the Redfern-Waterloo project to the council.
She publicly expressed concerns that being on the RWA board
would prevent her from criticising the authority.
"There are important principles which will influence my
support or opposition to the actions of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority and
I reserve my rights to promote them," she wrote in the Bligh News newsletter
in March.
Another factor propelling her decision to decline membership
was the constitution of the board.
She is recorded in the minutes of a Council meeting in February
as saying she was sceptical about the "unfettered power and lack of public
accountability" vested in the Minister for Redfern Waterloo, Frank Sartor,
and the Redfern-Waterloo Authority through the RWA Bill, which was passed
in December last year.
"The legislation gives the minister unprecedented power
to override normal. planning controls, going so far as to enable the minister
to take control of other areas at will, cherry pick developer contributions
from adjacent areas... and override the Heritage Act" It was obvious
that the former South Sydney councillor was very much aware and concerned
at the potential conflict of interest between RWA board membership and her
ability to represent at grassroots level.
"Clearly there is a trade-off here between the capacity
to influence outcomes by being on the board and my responsibilities as an
elected representative to speak out or criticise the operation of the authority
if I believe it to be necessary," she also told Council in February
But it was not just that Ms Moore had vehemently opposed the
RWA Bill from the moment it was proposed.
In November last year, she attacked the Bill, accusing the State
Government of using it as a cash cow to address the lack of funds for public
infrastructure in Sydney.
She still had those concerns and this year told the city council:
"I would have hoped that a progressive and well-informed State Government
would be looking at world-class examples of best practise in urban renewal
... rather than taking the easy but short-sighted route they have to turn
this into a land development exercise to shore up state finances."
With a background as a hardliner on development issues and close
ties with the South Sydney community and a history of disagreement with Mr
Sartor, Ms Moore was bound to find herself in a dilemma.
That dilemma she stated publicly and succinctly in February:
"The council's first obligation is to the people of Redfern and Waterloo,
to work with the State Government to ensure the best social and urban outcomes
for the area.
In an attempt to resolve the personal dilemma, she had considered
appointing Peter Seamer, the Sydney City Council's general manager, to the
board instead of herself, but in the end it was decided there would be no
City of Sydney representative on the RWA.
This fracturing of the RWA board before it was properly up and
running meant that Mr Sartor had more than one job of reconciliation on his
hands.
Reconciling the Aboriginal Housing Company to RWA plans has
gone by the wayside, (see pages 13 and 14) and now an important player - the
Lord Mayor of Sydney- was not onside.
In April Mr Sartor found a compromise he announced that a peak
liaison meeting would be held between the Sydney city council. The agreement
was that the respective chiefs-of-staff and chief executive officers of the
council and RWA would meet with Mr Sartor and Ms Moore monthly.
According to council minutes for May 9, Ms Moore confirmed that
the meeting aimed to acknowledge the vital role that council plays in the
Redfern Waterloo plan.
She also said: "It is a mechanism to provide high-level
communication between council and the NSW Government."
At the Ms Moore's electorate office in Paddington, her spokesman
Roy Bishop told Southside News: "Clover has had one roundtable meeting
with the minister for Redfern-Waterloo, and I understand that they hope to
continue meeting to discuss the RWA's work and co-ordinate Council and RWA
activities."
BACK TO TOP
Fighting
to save The Block
July 6,2005 - The Guardian
NSW Minister Frank Sartor's vision to gentrify Redfern and to ease the path
for developers came one step closer to reality last month with the gazetting
of The Block and other key sites in Redfern as State significant under the
Redfern Waterloo Act.
Ironically this grab for control over Aboriginal land coincided with the
start of Reconciliation Week and only days after the funeral of one of the
true champions of self-determination, Father Ted Kennedy.
When asked about the planning controls over The Block going to the minister
Frank Sartor, Peter Valilis, Project Director for the Aboriginal Housing Company
(AHC), revealed, "The AHC wrote to the Minister for Planning, Craig Knowles,
in February expressly objecting, as the land owner, to Frank Sartor taking
planning control over Aboriginal land on The Block, especially in light of
his negative views toward Aboriginal people. Naturally we are unimpressed
The Block has been designated State significant without any notification or
consultation, but this is typical of the autocratic and secretive way Frank
Sartor seems to operate with regards to Redfern."
The Minister for Redfern Waterloo has publicly stated his opposition to the
Aboriginal community continuing to reside so close to proposed lucrative sites
around Redfern Railway Station. He has also made no secret of his intention
to block any attempts by the Aboriginal Housing Company (the private landowners
of The Block) to rebuild new Aboriginal homes and provide affordable home
ownership (for the first time) to Redfern's Aboriginal community.
The Aboriginal Housing Company's redevelopment proposal (the Pemulwuy Project)
has attracted international acclaim and awards for its innovative inclusion
of 62 low-to-medium-density family homes, a public civic space and retail/commercial
area, artist markets, a student hostel, a sports facility and an Indigenous
business college.
The project has also attracted broad local support from Sydney City Council,
non-Aboriginal neighbours and the local business community.
When asked about the future of Redfern, Peter Valilis said, "The local
stakeholders who have a long-term interest in the area recognise the potential
for Redfern to become the hub of Aboriginal cultural tourism for Sydney. Obviously
this cannot be achieved without a prominent and stable locally-based Aboriginal
community. That's what the Pemulwuy Project is proposing."
Up until late last year the Aboriginal Housing Company maintained a very
close co-operative relationship with the NSW Premier's Department and spent
three years working to resolve all the issues that would ensure The Block
did not become a slum again.
When asked about the support of the NSW government for the project, Michael
Mundine, chief executive officer of the Aboriginal Housing Company, said,
"The Government Architect's office, under instructions from the Premier's
Department, prepared the final plans for the housing component of Pemulwuy
Project. I don't understand what the NSW government is now objecting to."
In light of the duplicity of the NSW Government towards the Aboriginal Housing
Company and the Redfern community, leading academics and experts have lent
their support and expertise to the project. This eminent group is chaired
by Tom Uren and includes Professor Ed Blakely, chair of the NSW Metro Strategy,
and Dr Vivienne Milligan, director of AHURI (Australian Housing and Urban
Research Institute).
The Aboriginal Housing Company hopes that with this group's support and guidance,
the project can finally achieve a prompt conclusion, in spite of the efforts
of Frank Sartor to derail the process.
When asked why the NSW government has back-flipped on their support for Redfern,
Michael Mundine said, "I don't think the NSW Government ever really supported
us, the Premier's Department was just stringing us along.
"The AHC was an open and honest partner in its co-operation; the NSW
Government on the other hand has proven to be dishonest and untrustworthy
in its dealings with the community.
"Redfern is a cash cow for the Bob and Frank consortium and they seem
ready to sell out the blackfellas to get what they want. The have a plan for
Redfern that doesn't include the poor or people with dark skin, and they must
see The Block as a blockage to their plans."
The Aboriginal Housing Company has vowed to fight for self-determination
and has not ruled out a legal challenge if the NSW government tries to prevent
it from providing new housing to Aboriginal people on The Block.
BACK TO TOP
Black
and blue
July 2, 2005 - SMH
By Joseph Correy
No matter what good fortune comes their way a history of conflict
haunts Redfern's children, reports Robert Wainwright.
Archie Glass got a new bike five weeks ago. A blue Schwinn;
the sort you'd see in the pages of a BMX magazine rather than on the streets
of the Block in Redfern.
Police felt the same way. Two days later, when the 13-year-old
was spotted racing up Edwards Street, they confiscated the bike. The reason?
He was a Redfern kid with previous run-ins with the law, so he must have stolen
it.
"My friend Lisa bought it for me," Archie had pleaded
to the officer who refused to return the bike unless he could produce a sales
receipt.
Lisa Duff had indeed bought the bike. And four others like it.
She was hauled out of a film class she teaches at the nearby Eora College
by the distraught youngster who pleaded with her to go to the police station
and vouch for him.
Two days later she was back at the station; this time retrieving
bikes she had bought not only Archie but his 11-year-old mate. Then a third
time when police turned up on her doorstep in Wilson Street to check the receipts.
When Duff confronted officers about the incidents she accused
police of harassing the kids because they were black. "I asked him if
they would take bikes off them if they were white … I said it was plain
harassment.
"He told me that harassment was their job. There were 200
officers stationed at Redfern and he couldn't possibly let them all know that
five local kids had been given new bikes."
A little over 16 months after the Redfern riots, sparked by
the death of teenager T.J. Hickey, the Block is a changed place in many ways.
There are still drug dealers in the shadows along Eveleigh Street, but not
as many. The community centre down the hill from the railway station has become
a social focus and uneasy, long-time Aboriginal residents are waiting for
a decision about their future.
Despite some improvements, many of the actual and perceived
problems of Australia's best-known indigenous suburban community remain.
Perception plays a major role in this community. Contrary to
its public veneer, there are some 60 nationalities represented here. The Koori
population, which statistically is a minority, fear that their future is being
dictated by property prices and political pragmatism rather than human rights
and societal obligations.
Detective Inspector Darren Bennett has been the crime manager
at Redfern police station for two years. He is perplexed by claims that relations
are poor. So is his superior, Assistant Commissioner Bob Waites. They insist
that relations with the community returned to normal soon after the Hickey
uproar and are now better than ever.
And why shouldn't they? Robberies around the railway station
have fallen 50 per cent, as have violent assaults, while most of the dealers
have been picked up in an operation over the past year and are in jail. There
are now specialist drugs squad officers at Redfern, at least 20 uniformed
beat police and extra officers at the local Police and Community Youth Club.
There has been a deliberate policy of assigning experienced
officers to the station. Even replacement officers must have at least five
years' experience.
The complaint about the bikes being confiscated draws a blank
with both men. It doesn't seem right, they say, and any suggestion of racist
overtones are immediately dismissed. There may be presumptions but it is not
about race or youth, but repeat offenders.
And that is the heart of the problem. Where can police draw
a line between legitimate policing and harassment?
Waites is unrepentant about firm policing: "Regardless
of race or creed, it is about us going out there and doing our job. Police
have always walked a very narrow line … because they are the face of
government, there 24 hours a day. There is an expectation they will provide
the support the community expects, but on the other side there is an expectation
that when one of those people breaks the law they will do something about
it."
He says people who offend, by nature, always believe they are
innocent and have been picked on. "That's the nature, human nature, regardless
of what ethnic background they may be."
The relationship between authority and youth remains at best
cynical, but poisonous for many; imbued with a belief on one side that all
police are racist bastards and on the other that some kids in groups are probably
up to no good. If an Aboriginal kid sees a cop, they run. If a cop sees a
kid, he follows. It is an endless, vicious circle to those who see the continued
tension.
Rather than being protectors of the community, police are seen
in some quarters as protectors of the people who pass through each day - the
university students and commuters - guards for the visitors rather than the
locals.
Some of the kids have been in trouble, mostly for petty theft;
a few have committed more serious crimes. They attend school only intermittently
but all have dreams; nothing fanciful - a mechanic, delivering pizza, learning
to cook - but dreams nonetheless.
Even if they live outside Redfern, in suburbs like Marrickville,
Lidcombe and further west, many still end up on the train each day, bound
for the stop before Central; a collection point no different to the Town Hall
steps on George Street where the city's teens like to meet. The difference
is they have little money and nothing to do.
Lisa Duff insists there has been a change in their outlook in
the 12 months she has known them. "They're starting to take some responsibility
and that's part of giving them bikes. The bikes are their freedom. It's their
way out of the Block. But the police have blinkers on. [To them] they're just
little black thieves and nothing will change. They will tell you the bikes
help them do bag snatches and they have to be taken away.
"They watch them constantly, following them around the
streets expecting something to happen. I've challenged them and they admit
it."
Darren Bennett shakes his head at the suggestion of harassment.
"It just isn't true. Where would we get the manpower to watch kids around
Redfern each day? We would never work like that. But if we have intelligence
that the kids are offending then we have an obligation to follow them.
"If they choose to not go to the school, not engage the
community in any way and commit offences while they are supposed to be at
school then the public expects the police to stop them. It is not race-based,
it is based on individuals."
Waites agrees: "That's our job. That's what we're paid
to do and that's what the public expects us to do."
It's not just within the boundaries of the Block. Joseph Correy
grew up in Little Eveleigh Street. Like Duff he has established an accidental
but close relationship with the Koori kids, often taking a group out for the
day rather than watch them wander the streets.
Two clashes with police and security guards have left him embittered
about the approach of authority.
In January, police stopped Correy as he left Leichhardt pool
in a car with three of the youths, aged between nine and 14. They were ordered
from the car, searched and questioned. Correy, who has complained to the NSW
Ombudsman, says one of the officers told them they were not welcome in Leichhardt,
and should "stay in Redfern".
In a letter to the Ombudsman, the Council of Civil Liberties
described it as "racial profiling at its worst". The Ombudsman is
still investigating.
Like most kids in a group, Archie Glass and Colin Smith are
loath to make a fuss about the run-ins with police. Being followed at a shopping
centre is common. The presumption of guilt is debilitating for a group of
children.
What is the difference between buying and stealing a bike? Nothing,
from their perspective; you get into trouble for either.
Colin was a passenger in the Leichhardt car and was ordered
out of it to be searched. He brushes off the incident as a regular occurrence:
"When they see blackfellas in a group they think the worst straight away.
Who do the police think they are, telling us where to go? It's not their land.
They always tell you where you can't go. They won't listen to us."
Archie says he is hassled just walking down a street: "It
happens all the time. All the kids get pulled up and stood over. It doesn't
matter if they have done anything or not."
The second incident occurred at a shopping centre in late April.
Correy had taken three boys, first to a video arcade and then to the food
arcade for lunch. As they walked toward an ATM a security guard began to follow.
He was joined by one, then another. One even insisted on sitting with the
boys while they ate, and until they left the complex.
The security firm manager confirmed the details of the incident
to the Herald and concedes it was heavy-handed. The guards have been counselled
and a formal apology issued.
It is of little comfort to the Redfern kids, who find it hard
to express their frustrations. Those who look after them have fewer inhibitions.
Families on the Block know their children aren't perfect, but want them to
be given the chance to mature before society gives up on them.
The aunt of one 10-year-old boy says the problem is a lack of
respect: "The kids are taught if someone doesn't give you respect then
you don't give them respect. There were times when my family would be running
around the streets looking for our children, and when the police called we
breathed a sigh of relief because we knew they were safe. But when you go
to the police station they look down at you."
Steve Ridgeway likes to call people "champion", but
it's more a reflection of the way he wants to be seen by others. As a kid
in the 1980s he lived in Eveleigh Street. He now drives a maroon 5 series
BMW. It's usually parked outside the Redfern Community Centre while Ridgeway
is at work. He's not a guard. He owns a security firm and is also keen for
a slice of the pie at next year's Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. He has
been short-listed and will get some work, just as he did during the 2000 Olympics.
Ridgeway sees the positive things happening in Redfern, like
the community centre and the eviction of drug dealers. He also proudly sponsors
the neighbourhood rugby league side, the All Blacks, which is in its 75th
year. Many of the team members were faces in the front line of the riots following
T.J. Hickey's death.
But sport isn't the only way to success, he insists: "You
don't have to be a sports star to be a millionaire. I can give anyone caps
and tracksuits but they need more than that around here. I want to help give
the young people opportunities; you know, training and work."
Ridgeway doesn't pretend that all the problems have disappeared
but insists the community centre has helped turn things around. Programs such
as Lights Camera Action are aimed at giving the indigenous community the chance
to work in film, television and theatre.
But, like the young teens, old perceptions die hard: "If
you are not a male caucasian there is always suspicion about driving a BMW.
It happens to me all the time. I watch the looks when I'm stopped at a set
of traffic lights."
BACK TO TOP
Power
of one best for city planning: adviser
June 29, 2005 - SMH
By Tim Dick Urban Affairs Reporter
The bunch of new planning authorities set up by the State Government
should be replaced by a single Sydney-wide body to implement much of the Metropolitan
Strategy, the Government's chief planning adviser says.
Two new authorities have been set up this year: the Redfern
Waterloo Authority and the Growth Centres Commission, which will guide the
development of new fringe suburbs.
Another is mooted to make the long talked about renewal of Parramatta
Road finally happen, and the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority already shares
power with 38 councils.
Professor Ed Blakely, the chairman of the Metropolitan Strategy
Reference Panel, told members of the property group the NSW Urban Taskforce
yesterday that there should be only one development authority.
Replying to a question from a City of Sydney councillor, Shayne
Mallard, on the future of such organisations and the prospect of more, Professor
Blakely said: "At some stage, we've got to put these things under a single
umbrella. Then as you do projects you don't have to go back and re-do it."
Such an authority could then be responsible for areas as the
Government deemed them in need of redevelopment, rather than it setting up
a specific authority in each instance.
Kathy Connell, a spokeswoman for the planning minister, Craig
Knowles, said: "At this particular stage, we haven't made any announcement
about a governance model."
Professor Blakely's comments come just weeks after state significance
rules came into force, allowing developers to seek approval directly from
Mr Knowles for projects deemed important to NSW, and a month after the Premier,
Bob Carr, publicly supported a commission to lead the renovation of Parramatta
Road.
Many councillors are only now discovering the effect of the
rule changes, which the Government says will cut red tape for important developments
without damaging the environment or removing locals' right to object.
But a shortage of qualified planners is raising concerns, repeated
by Professor Blakely yesterday, that the Department of Infrastructure, Planning
and Natural Resources, like councils, is losing a battle with the private
sector for scarce planners. More authorities may worsen that shortage.
Professor Blakely also called on the Federal Government to consider
tax breaks to encourage developers to provide low-cost or affordable housing.
"What the State Government can do is pretty small; what
the national government can do is pretty big," he said.
"We will not have a good future strategy unless the national
government is involved, nor will we have affordable housing, because it's
going to take tax to get affordable housing."
Craig Johnston, of Shelter NSW, an advocate for affordable housing,
said there were tax measures the State Government could implement, such as
extending the land tax exemption for low-rent homes. The exemption is limited
to homes within five kilometres of the Sydney CBD.
BACK TO TOP
NSW: The future of Redfern should
be based on need not greed: says Welsh
27 June 2005, ABC
Source: Address to ANTAR Forum, Redfern Town Hall, 25 June 2005.
By Rob Welsh, Chairperson, Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council
You’d be forgiven for thinking it was a scene from the
movie, The Castle. A community wakes up to reports that the Government has
plans to remove local families from their homes and land to make way for a
major development.
Only this is real and it’s not funny. And it’s happening
to some of Sydney’s poorest and most vulnerable people – the Aboriginal
families of Redfern and Waterloo.
At first, when the Redfern-Waterloo Authority was created last
year, it seemed like the Minister might forcibly acquire the land owned by
the Aboriginal Housing Company on the Block.
Now it’s clear that his approach is more subtle, but just
as sinister.
Instead of taking the land, he’ll simply deny the ability
of Aboriginal people to develop it in a way that will help our community.
Under changes to state government legislation, Minister Sartor,
rather than the Sydney City Council now has planning approval for the Block
– land that was given back to Aboriginal people by the Whitlam Government
in the 1970’s.
So even though the area is zoned residential, and the development
has Council support, the Aboriginal Housing Company is being prevented from
building its Pemulwuy project that would provide homes for sixty two Aboriginal
families.
The fact that the design of the Pemulwuy Project has won international
awards and been developed with expert advice over five years makes no difference
to Minister Sartor.
Some people have tried to suggest recently that the Aboriginal
community is divided over the Pemulwuy project.
These people are wrong. Last year, the leaders of every Aboriginal
community controlled organization in Redfern wrote to both the Premier and
Minister Sartor in support of the development.
Our support for the Aboriginal Housing Company and its Pemulwuy
Project remains one hundred percent.
We support the project because we understand how crucial proper
housing is for our people.
The Metro Land Council currently has one hundred and twenty
families on our housing waiting list. Some of these families have been waiting
for a house for more than 10 years.
So bad is the shortage that I’ve even heard reports of
10 people being crammed into a three bedroom house.
Adequate housing is essential for a stable family life. Without
it, it’s almost impossible for people to find and hold down a job, and
to keep their children healthy. It’s also very difficult for those children
to do well at school if they don’t have a proper place to study.
The Pemulwuy project would also give jobs to Aboriginal people
and opportunities to Aboriginal businesses. It would allow many of our people
to break out of the welfare cycle and become positive role models for their
children.
So if the need is so great, why would anyone oppose a project
that would provide homes for 62 Aboriginal families?
The answer is that the focus of the Redfern Waterloo development
is not on need, but greed.
Redfern is close to a CBD that needs to expand. A lot of people
stand to make a lot of money out of redeveloping the suburb at a time when
the property market has slowed in other parts of the city.
And these people don’t want black faces getting in the
way of business.
The Executive Director of the NSW Property Council made it clear
when he told the Australian Financial Review that: “There is no way that
Redfern is going to be that commercial mini-centre with Aboriginal housing
and the Block still in place. We need to sort that out before any private
investors will be interested.”
Well, at least he was honest.
But can you imagine this approach being applied to any other
ethnic group in Australia?
What would happen, if someone proposed removing Vietnamese Australian
housing from Cabramatta?
Or Italian Australian housing from Leichhardt?
Or Jewish Australian housing from the Eastern suburbs?
There’d be an uproar.
Yet people can say these things about Aboriginal Australians
and not understand that these arguments are racist.
The Minister has said that it’s
not about race, it’s about the fact that the Redfern Aboriginal community
is a “failed experiment.”
But this ignores the many positive and in some cases courageous
things Aboriginal people are doing themselves to improve our community.
Recently, for example, we won a NSW Violence Against Women Prevention
Award presented by the Premier, Bob Carr for our campaign Blackout Violence.
Blackout Violence used last year’s NSW Aboriginal Rugby
League Knockout to promote an anti violence message to players and spectators.
Players from 85 teams wore purple armbands to demonstrate their
opposition to family violence and sexual assault against women and children.
All participating teams were also given kits containing information
on how to prevent family violence and where to seek help.
While the Blackout Violence campaign is becoming better known
following the award, most people aren’t aware of how it started –
when a number of women confronted two drug dealers on the Block who had violently
raped a woman there.
Knowing that they were no match for them physically and not
receiving any help from the police, the women organized a peaceful rally on
the Block.
More than 100 people turned up to the rally where they heard
speakers say that enough was enough and that as a community we needed to take
responsibility for ending this kind of behaviour.
So through nonviolent action, the drug dealers were shamed into
moving away and the women were now convinced that they had the power to change
the behaviour of the local community.
This led to a local “Enough is Enough” campaign based
around the same themes but targeting the community in Redfern more broadly.
Later Enough is Enough evolved into the Blackout Violence campaign.
You may not think that the principles of Gandhi belong with
the great game of Rugby League but in Redfern these things are possible.
This program was put in place with no government funding.
It’s just one of the ways that our community is working
to change Redfern and give more opportunities to Aboriginal people from the
area.
I’ve tried to talk to Minister Sartor about these issues,
but so far haven’t been given the chance.
I’ve written to him seeking a meeting to discuss how the
Metro Land Council could use its resources to help with the Redfern Waterloo
redevelopment.
I wanted to coordinate our development plans with those of the
state government.
But despite writing to the Minister and my staff making numerous
follow up calls to his office, I haven’t been able to get an appointment
or a response to any of my letters.
I understand that other organizations have had similar difficulties
in meeting the Minister.
Now reluctantly, Metro Land Council has decided to agree to
the request of the Housing Company to boycott the Minister and the Redfern
Waterloo Authority.
The crazy thing is that it should never have come to this.
Aboriginal leaders supported the creation of the new Authority
and the need to redevelop Redfern Waterloo. But for the sake of our community
we want to have a say in how this development proceeds.
We want Redfern Waterloo to become secure and prosperous, but
Aboriginal people should 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 Minister has said that 20,000 new jobs are to be created
in our community. How many of these jobs will go to Aboriginal people?
Despite what the Property Council says, development in Redfern
and Waterloo is compatible with a continued presence of Aboriginal residents.
But we need to have a vision of what this could be.
My own personal vision for Redfern and the Block is for it to
be once again a site of Aboriginal hope and achievement.
Why couldn’t Redfern’s distinctive Aboriginal identity
one day attract international tourists and people from all over Sydney?
They would come to eat at Aboriginal owned and operated restaurants
and cafes, visit galleries and markets selling Aboriginal produced art and
crafts from our community, go on tours organized by Aboriginal travel businesses
and watch performances by Aboriginal actors, dancers and musicians.
Redfern may even be the site of a National Gallery of Indigenous
Art and a Museum of Aboriginal History.
Like Harlem in New York and Brixton in London, what was once
the scene of a race riot could become the most dynamic part of the city.
In this way, Aboriginal culture will be a source of economic
empowerment for our people and pride for all Australians.
But this will remain only a dream unless we make it happen and
the Minister walks with us in a spirit of true partnership.
In order for it to happen our people will need to stay united,
and we’ll need the support of the non Aboriginal community.
We often hear people say that they can’t be blamed for
the dispossession of Aboriginal people by earlier generations.
“We know terrible things were done in the past, but it’s
not our fault. There’s nothing we can do about it,” they tell us.
Well I say to those people, “now is your chance.”
Because Aboriginal people are being re-dispossessed of our land in Sydney
right now.
What will future generations say about you? Will they say that
your greed for profits or lust for votes made you join in the dispossession?
Will they say that your fear of rocking the boat led you to
turn away and pretend it wasn’t happening?
Or will they credit you for taking a stand, supporting Aboriginal
people and working with us to develop a true partnership and build a better
community?
The future is in our hands.
The people from ANTAR know which side they’re on. That’s
why they organized this forum and we thank them for it.
Geoff and Lyn Turnbull know where they stand. All their work
for REDWatch has earned them the respect and trust of the Aboriginal community.
If the main character from the Castle, Daryl Kerrigan was here,
he’d know which side he was on. He’d tell Minister he was dreaming.
Soon all of us will have the chance to make a decision.
Which side will you be on?
BACK TO TOP
New planning code: trust us, we're the experts
June 21, 2005 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
The "ayes", not to mention "musts" and "mays",
have put paid to public participation in development issues, writes Elizabeth
Farrelly.
It's funny, in a laugh-till-you-cry kind of way, that just when the whole
planning thing becomes critical for Sydney, and people start to engage fully
with the issues, the Government moves to delete said people - along with old
buildings and bandicoots - from the process. It almost looks like it doesn't
want us in there. Strange.
An 82-page amendment to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979
was passed by both houses and both mute sides of Parliament this month. Opposed
only by the independents, it exempts government from such irritants as heritage,
culture, community and those pesky endangered species, maxes out ministerial
discretion and virtually ends public consultation. Except for backyard extensions.
The long title of the act reads like a Lemony Snickett version of A.A. Milne.
"An Act to amend the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 and
other Acts to facilitate infrastructure and other planning reform; and for
other purposes." In which Pooh sticks it to the Heffalump.
The implication, if you are inclined to swallow it, is that our 10 years
without a plan is not due to political expedience, cowardice or incompetence.
No no. It's a red tape problem. That's the Government's story. But the real
one, of course, is that the Government, finally noticing that NSW is falling
apart, has cooked up an emollient act to let it slide directly from press
release to "just do it" phase, not only without a metro plan but
bypassing, too, virtually every environmental or cultural protection already
in place.
Impressed? I know I am. And this is how it works. The "other Acts"
so amended include: the Forestry and National Parks Estate Act 1998, Heritage
Act 1997, Lord Howe Island Act 1953, Land and Environment Court Act 1979,
Fisheries Management Act 1994, National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974, Mining
Act 1992, Mine Subsidence Compensations Act 1961, Redfern-Waterloo Authority
Act 2004, Roads Act 1993, Rural Fires Act 1997 and Water Management Act 2000.
Just like that.
The exact nature of the new provisions is hard for a normal literate human
to ascertain, since the act carefully makes audience participation as much
like crawling uphill through a dung-heap as possible. Just reading the 82
pages won't do it for you, since each amendment refers, through a series of
double and triple negatives, to some obscure sub-sub-clause of some completely
other act, schedule or regulation. But persevere. It's worth it.
Take, for example, the amendments to the National Parks and Wildlife Act
1974. Clause 7.12 [1] of the new act simply adds the innocuous words "or
(d) a project approved under Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment
Act 1979". Harmless, you might think. Its effect, though, when slotted
into clause 91AA (4)(c) of the 1974 act, is to let designated "projects"
sidestep existing departmental stop-work powers over development affecting
protected fauna, native plants, Aboriginal objects or items of cultural heritage.
Clause 7.12[4], similarly, makes the "harming or picking of threatened
species, endangered populations or endangered ecological communities"
OK - fine - if executed in pursuit of a "project" as defined under
the new act. Clause 7.12[2] makes it all right to harm protected fauna for
sporting or recreational purposes with firearm, explosive, net, trap, hunting
device or instrument as long as it is in the interests of an approved project.
And so on. And the 50-odd other amendments frolic in the same "trust
us we're the government" spirit.
All of which makes "project" an extremely valuable designation.
So, what is a project, exactly? Well, anything the minister feels like, really.
Any major infrastructure or "other development" that is, in the
opinion of the minister, of state or regional significance. Or any project
where the proponent is the same as the consent authority - that is, where
a conflict of interest is already built in - and which would otherwise (in
the proponent's opinion) require an environmental impact statement.
That is, any development, public or private, big enough and ugly enough to
have hitherto required special scrutiny is now explicitly exempted from all
scrutiny - except self-scrutiny.
"Project" also includes all so-called state significant development
- which, since the special state environmental planning policy of May 25,
corrals pretty much any project relating to agriculture, forestry, manufacturing,
tourism, sport, film and television, entertainment, health, medical research,
educational and correctional facilities, transport, water, electricity or
waste management. It specifically includes Port Botany, Port Jackson, Rozelle
Marshalling Yards (See? Whaditellya?), Glebe Island, White Bay, Darling Harbour,
The Rocks, Rhodes Peninsula, Sydney Cricket Ground, Fox Studios, Moore Park,
Luna Park, Ballast Point, ADI land at Ryde, Homebush, Ku-ring-gai, Taronga
Zoo, Kurnell, Chatswood rail interchange, the Australian Museum and the entire
Honeysuckle site in Newcastle. Oh, and any other project in the state exceeding
$50 million. You can see why they're too busy to plan anything.
But surely, you say, there are checks and balances still? Surely there are
ecological, heritage and consultation requirements remaining? Well, yes, of
course there are. The minister doesn't have to make such decisions entirely
alone. He may select a panel of experts or (even tamer) staff, although he
need not heed their recommendations. The panel may - or may not - invite submissions
from interested parties. Environmental and heritage assessment must be undertaken
- but by the proponent, probably a government agency or ally - and submitted
to the Director-General, who must publicly exhibit that assessment for 30
days.
And that's pretty much it. So if it suddenly seems to be of state significance,
somehow, that Luna Park turn a zero-sum by building half-a-dozen clifftop
towers, or that Rozelle marshalling yards be flogged for high-rise apartments,
or that Aboriginal land in Redfern be turned over to the lifestylers, there
is nothing - virtually nothing - to stop it.
The new act contains 18 "musts" and 137 "mays". This
means pretty well all the rules are optional - which, in the development game,
is like telling a child not to eat sweets unless it wants to. Should make
for good spectator sport. Enjoy - until your teeth fall out.
BACK TO TOP
Redfern Redevelopment
20 Jun 2005, SBS - Living Black
The Block in Redfern has been home to many Aboriginal people
since the early '70s. Today the Aboriginal Housing Company is locked in a
fight with the Redfern-Waterloo Authority and Minister Frank Sartor. Both
parties have different views on how the block should be redeveloped.
MICK MUNDINE: "We believe our people are entitled to live in modern
apartments, like anybody else. And we feel our people... I think the reason
why we're doing all this too is the next generation, you know, where our people
can get that respect and self-esteem for the future. So why can't we make
it a really good professional complex, have nice, good, affordable housing
where people can come and start respecting the place? We've really got on
top of the drug issue and we're really on top of everything. So I really feel
that it's time for everybody... and our own people have got to start facing
reality and then work together and make sure this comes into place".
Peter Valilis is the project manager at the Aboriginal Housing Company. He
believes their vision for The Block can turn things around for the community.
PETER VALILIS: The AHC has put together what we call the Pemuluwuy Project
and it's been six years in the making. Our plan is to rebuild 62 new family
homes for Aboriginal people, much of that will be available for home ownership.
The first time home ownership will be available in Redfern for Aboriginal
people at an affordable level. It'll include the Bob Bellear Aboriginal Business
College which will give opportunity for Aboriginal people to start enterprises
and employment in Redfern. We want to make it a benchmark for good Aboriginal
communities. We know that once The Block is fixed and it becomes a good community
again, it will flow onto the rest of the Aboriginal communities around the
country".
Due to time constraints, the Minister for Redfern-Waterloo, Frank Sartor
declined to be interviewed by Living Black.
MICK MUNDINE: "But it's very sad, I believe why Frank Sartor doesn't
want Aboriginal people on The Block is because he wants to move the redevelopers
in. The redevelopers said they will not move in as long as Aboriginal people
and The Block are still here".
LOLA FORESTER: "Because there's a lot of rumours going around that the
Minister for Redfern-Waterloo does not want blacks on the block and he wants
them removed. So we've got him on the line and that's Minister Frank Sartor.
And, Frank, are you there?"
Last week, Frank Sartor was interviewed on SBS Radio with presenter Lola
Forester. The interview had a keen audience listening at the Aboriginal Housing
Company.
FRANK SARTOR: "I think it won't work. The State Cabinet hasn't supported
it. We don't think it will work. I've said the Aboriginal Housing Company,
I've said to everyone, we're prepared to find 62 dwellings in and around Redfern
and Waterloo. But on the actual Block and the immediate, sort of across the
road from The Block, we think you're crazy reconcentrating this amount of
housing just right there, given the fact that in fact we used to have about
50 and most of them got demolished because it just ended up being just too
difficult to manage."
PETER VALILIS: "I've got to say that that interview was very revealing
as to how little respect this Minister of the Crown has for Aboriginal people
and Aboriginal self-determination and just generally Aboriginal ideas. How
dismissive he was of the social planning, he totally disregarded the five
years of social planning we've done. From our discussions with Sydney City
Council, they've made it very clear they don't care what sort of housing it
is. They approve buildings, they don't approve who lives there. The council
in that respect is objective. Whereas the Minister has said he doesn't want
a certain type of people living here, and that's subjective. You could even
suggest that that's racist."
Many people at The Block are looking forward to the Pemulwuy Project and
they are hopeful of the changes it could bring to the community.
RICHARD GREEN: "There's people here that love each other and respect
and care for each other. We want to show the rest of the world that that's
what our culture is about - consciousness, you know, helping each other and
empowering each other to walk forward. Sure, you can't help but be excited,
because you know what it could really do for the whole nation, the Aboriginal
nation of the country."
MICK MUNDINE: "Redfern itself, I'm talking about The Block itself, it's
a modern sacred site. It's like the main watering hole for our people who
have been travelling for years and years. They'll always come back here."
At present it seems that the struggle for The Block may be a drawn out process,
while the Aboriginal Housing Company says they will continue to do their best
to get their plans through.
PETER VALILIS: "The AHC will submit its DA as normal to the council.
The council will make its own determination, it won't be the final consent
authority, it will then have to be taken up to Frank Sartor."
FRANK SARTOR: "Join me in a process to develop an alternative. Join
me - that's all I'm saying to the Aboriginal Housing Company and to other
Aboriginal leaders - join me in a process. I'm not saying exactly what it's
got to be. I'm saying it could involve these other aspects. But I'm saying
don't reconcentrate high-dependency housing. and don't pretend that you're
going to be able to get a social mix. I don't think you're going to be able
to. You'll get very few people that will live there, with all the drug dealing
and stuff that's still going on. It's been a management failure."
PETER VALILIS: "If it means even going as far as the High Court, that's
what we'll do. Because Aboriginal housing will be built on The Block It will
be 62 houses. It will be family homes with home ownership. and it will be
a good project and it will get done, whether he likes it or not."
BACK TO TOP
Aboriginal community kicked in the guts
Thursday, 16th June 2005 - Christian Democratic Party
It was only recently that Federal member, Peter Garrett was claiming that
Labor was the only major political party capable of achieving reconciliation
between black and white Australia. “There [needs to be] up-front, personal
and government commitment to the entire reconciliation process, including
the acknowledgement of what has happened in the past. We need to make sure
Aboriginal people have opportunities to improve their lot. Aboriginal people
have big hearts, but not much in their pockets”, stated Mr Garrett.
Ironically, only a few days previous to this statement, NSW Labor made a
mockery of those sentiments by seizing the land legally purchased and owned
by the Aboriginal Community at Redfern.
“It appears State Labor had also noted the big hearts and empty pockets
of the Aboriginal community”, stated Rev Fred Nile, who has consistently
raised the issue in State Parliament. “They noted this as they courted
the Aboriginal Housing Company and gave assurances of a collaborative approach
in dealing with Indigenous issues in the Redfern area.
Having had the land around Redfern taken from the Aboriginal community some
200 years ago, the Aboriginal community with the help of a Federal Grant,
re-purchased some land in Redfern in 1973. Since then they have been seeking
help from State Government to further improve the situation for the Aboriginal
community in the area. No financial help has been provided by the State. Now
State Government has added insult to injury by flexing it’s executive
muscle and seizing control of the land from the Aboriginal Community to redevelop
it. It appears ‘reconciliation’ becomes morally expedient when large
development dollars are to be made.
This is a disgusting slap in the face for the Aboriginal community and the
reconciliation process, a kick in the guts when help should be offered. It
is little wonder that we witnessed over 1,000 people protest the move last
night at Redfern.
Peter Garrett is right in one regard, Labor does appear to have acknowledged
the past …with a return to it.”, Rev Nile stated.
Rev Nile raised the issue again this week in Parliament:
Reverend the Hon. FRED NILE: I ask the Minister for Rural Affairs, representing
the Minister for Energy and Utilities in his responsibility for the Redfern-Waterloo
Authority, a question without notice. Is it a fact that the Aboriginal Housing
Company [AHC] has been managing areas of land throughout the Redfern-Waterloo
area since 1973 that was legally purchased by the AHC on behalf of the Aboriginal
community with Federal funding? Is it a fact the AHC has, at great expense
to itself, produced a plan to develop the area known as the Block in Redfern
for the betterment of the Aboriginal and greater community in co-operation
with the State Government over three years?
Is it a fact the Minister gave written assurance that the Redfern-Waterloo
Authority would consult the AHC and the Aboriginal community regarding any
issues that affect Aboriginal land? Is it a fact that the Minister undertook
no such consultation before he announced on ABC radio that he intended to
prevent any moves by the AHC to acquire Federal funding for the development
of the Block? Is it a fact that the State Government has now taken over control
of the area known as the Block from the AHC and the Aboriginal community by
classifying it as "State significant" in a special supplement of
the Government Gazette dated 25 May 2005? Will the Government ensure that
the AHC ownership of the area known as the Block will be restored and recognised?
The Hon. TONY KELLY: I undertake to pass on that detailed question to the
Minister for Energy and Utilities and ensure that Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile
gets an answer as quickly as possible.
BACK TO TOP
It's not Mr Whippy, it's the needle van
June 16, 2005 - Daily Telegraph
By NICOLETTE BURKE
THE children of the troubled Block area in Redfern should be gathering around
ice cream vans.
Instead, they stand around the NSW Health-funded needle exchange van.
The van's presence around The Block is so common, children have even mistaken
it for their school bus.
Now residents are stepping up their campaign to end the practice of dispensing
needles near a children's playground.
Peter Valilis from the Aboriginal Housing Company, which administers the
area, said all but two of the drug dealers in The Block had been evicted,
and the incidence of drug use had dropped.
"We just can't understand why the van is necessary," Mr Valilis
said.
"The police have cracked down on theft so there's no money to buy the
drugs, there's no dealers to deal the drugs and yet the Department of Health
thinks we still need needles."
"It just attracts bad elements from other areas, when we're doing our
best to make this a good place to live.
"We've had reports that some of the kids walk onto the school bus, and
ask where the [boxes of needles] are.
"I've got to wonder at the morality of the people who put a needle bus
near a children's playground.
"When did the rights of addicts supercede the rights of children and
families?"
There has been community concern over the van for five years, but opposition
has risen to fever pitch now the State Government has announced its plan to
build a permanent needle exchange service opposite the train station.
Redfern community group, Red Alert, said the site was unsuitable because
of its proximity to the busy train station and the fact children lived next
door.
"The only support for the placing of this needle exchange next to children
is coming from politicians and bureaucrats," Red Alert spokesman Craig
Kentall said.
Mr Kentall and his wife Mel live next door to the site with their two daughters,
aged five years and three months.
"Residents and leading Aboriginal agencies are all totally opposed,"
he said.
The State Government maintains a needle exchange service should remain in
the area because it is well used.
A spokeswoman for Frank Sartor, the minister in charge of the Redfern-Waterloo
Authority, said the proposed development was a community health care facility
and needle exchange would be just one service offered.
Redfern's HIV rate is double the national average and the majority of central
Sydney's new hepatitis C cases, the spokeswoman added.
However, Mr Valilis said the statistics were misleading because needles were
handed out to anyone who asked - and often drug dealers sold them on at a
marked-up price.
The plan for the permanent site has been put on hold pending community consultation.
A public meeting will be held at Redfern Town Hall on Saturday at 2pm.
BACK TO TOP
Minister Frank Sartor on SBS Aboriginal
Radio program LISTEN
TO MP3 HERE 
15th June 2005
Interviewer - Lola Forester.
Lola Forester (interviewer): And you're listening to the Aboriginal program
on SBS radio broadcasting right around the country. Now we've all heard about
the Block, and the Block that means Redfern not the television series but
the original Block which has been in the hands of Aboriginal people since
1972. Now over the last few months we've been hearing lots of issues that
are impacting on the Block we've heard about the needle exchange that is going
to be removed, we have heard about the Aboriginal Housing Company who have
got a plan to put in 62 houses down on the Block also known as the Pemulwuy
Project and there are other business are going to go into that place as well.
We've heard from Mickey Mundine and the project office from the Aboriginal
Housing Company down there Peter Valilis so we thought we'd get the Minister
for Redfern and Waterloo on the line to find out from his perspective …
because there's a lot of rumours going around that the Minister for Redfern
Waterloo does not want blacks on the Block and that he wants them removed
so we've got him on the line and that's Minister Frank Sartor he hold five
other portfolios as well as the portfolio for Redfern Waterloo … and
Frank are you there?
Frank Sartor (guest): How are you Lola?
Lola Forester: Very good. Very good …now Frank…
Frank Sartor: It's been a long time Lola.
Lola Forester: It has been a long time and I believe our photo has been floating
around Sydney from the original flo.. photo .. the original photo that was
taken back in 1987 when we had the plans in the old Aboriginal housing company.
Frank Sartor: Yep that's right and in fact I've got a photograph up here on
my wall, a framed photograph... and there you are looking fabulous, I assume
you look the same today.
Lola Forester: Yep well that was when you were just getting into politics?
Frank Sartor: I was the local ward councillor in '84 to '87 in that sort of
range.
Lola Forster: Yeah I like you in your little shorts.
Frank Sartor: I don't think I was in shorts.. if you want to remember me in
that way that's alright.
Lola Forester: Ok then.. the Premier's Dept now has been working with the
Pemulwuy Project with the Aboriginal Housing Company to address all the sustainable
issues for three year prior to the Redfern Waterloo [Authority]; but you have
been quoted as saying the Pemulwuy Project is unsustainable and you have experienced
concern that it will lead to a reconcentration of low income high dependency
housing, are you suggesting the Premier's Dept got the sustainability formula
wrong?
Frank Sartor: I don't think in fairness Lola to the Premier's
Dept and some of the staff there and you're only talking about the some of
the staff, I don't think that they ever officially endorsed the Pemulwuy Project
as it's expressed by the Aboriginal Housing Company or let me say as its particularly
expressed by some of the consultants.. um look as you know I was involved
in fact I think I chaired the advisory committee in '84 -'85.. um I had a
presentation at the Aboriginal Housing Company I've been upfront with them
I've been straight with them I said look guys to reconcentrate 80.. 62 dwellings
in medium density housing on the Block which will be high dependency a concentration
of 62 high dependency families whatever housing groups whatever dwellings
um you run.. there is a 90% chance you'll just repeat all the old mistakes
all the old problems because its really about making sure its sustainable
I said to them this is the two things I basically said to them I said look
can we just not.. not commit ourselves to that plan can we work out an alternative
vision and can the Aboriginal Housing Company nominate three or four people
and a few other Aboriginal people as well together with some state government
people to work up an alternative vision and secondly my only precondition
to this I don't mind what the final vision is my only precondition is that
we shouldn't increase the amount of dwellings in and around the Block above
the 19 that are there now.. we should not go above the 19 that are there now.
Lola Forester: Ok then Frank over $3 million dollars worth of research and
planning has gone into developing the Pemulwuy Project over the last 5 years.
Have you seen the Pemulwuy Project plans and read the supporting research?
Frank Sartor: Yes I have.. yes I have … I have … well I haven't
read it all but I've had a pretty good understanding of it and I've been briefed
about it and Lola I have to be honest with you I think it won't work.. the
state cabinet hasn't supported it.. we don't think it will work.. we don't
think it will work. We're prepared I said to the Aboriginal Housing Company
I said to everyone we're prepared to find 62 dwellings in and around Redfern
Waterloo but on the actual Block and the immediate sort of across the road
from the Block we think your crazy reconcentrating this amount of housing
just right there given the fact that in fact we used to have about fifty most
of them got demolished because because it just ended up being just too difficult
to manage. And I'm say lets lets rethink how we manage this lets have a lot
less housing here but of course the land is owned by the Aboriginal Housing
Company that's never been in dispute there's never been a plan for compulsory
acquisition there's been a lot of lies told particularly by a few people in
my own party who run around telling lies about this um.. we've never planned
you know.. its owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company its Aboriginal land
we want Aboriginal uses we want the Aboriginal community to work with us to
work that through and then we will help them financially and try and put together
a different vision it might be to do with education it might be to do with
arts it might be to do with sport um and then.. then lets having once we settle
that lets settle how much housing you can have around there and then we will
find the rest and we will find the 62 dwellings. I mean its why we recently
supported some changes to the constitution of the settlement to stop 4 Aboriginal
families being.. potentially losing their housing. That's why I supported
the Indigenous Land Corporation getting itself involved in Redfern Oval to
see if we can provide facilities for young Aboriginal people and Aboriginal
use in Redfern.
Lola Forester: Yeah but Frank you're actually saying
that Aboriginal people can't move forward in a sophisticated way but with
the Pemulwuy Project they're proposing a mixture of homeownership, and affordable
housing for high, middle and income …um low income families on the Block,
along with a business college, a retail office complex, a large civil space
with Aboriginal artist markets, a sporting facility, student hostel. Can you
name one aspect of the Pemulwuy Project you don't believe is worth implementing?
Frank Sartor: Lola Lola this is not about Aboriginals this is about any..
any concentration of high dependency housing whether it be in Macquarie Fields
whether it be anywhere else in Sydney it wouldn't matter what colour their
skin if you put 62 families that are that are all pretty highly dependant
all together..
Lola Forester: Do we know they are all going to be highly dependant
Frank Sartor: Yeah but the real.. realistically Lola if you're a professional
Aboriginal person, I mean how patronising of people to say that.. that there'll
be a lot of other people there I'm mean if there continues to be endemic social
problems on the Block other Aboriginal people will not live there, they will
not live there.
Lola Forester: Um well Frank um..
Frank Sartor: That's been the history in the last thirty years..
Lola Forester: Well that's the last thirty what about if we move on.. like
I've been talking to the Housing Company and they are talking about building
um like I said building this homeownership and you know I was interested if
they were going to be building down there it would be an opportunity for young
professional Aboriginal people too to be able to live in the inner-city..
so I mean we.. everybody can change.. you know what happened thirty years
ago where Aboriginal people where thirty years ago um to now is this.. I mean
we've come in leaps and bounds you know even though we got rid of they've
got rid of ATSIC and everything the communities have been working in their
own communities whether it be in the city or rural or remote areas to try
to develop self-determination and to try to get ahead and people here are
just being frustrated.. why can't there be Aboriginal housing in the Block?
And why can't the people that are going back in there.. you know be different?
Frank Sartor: Because.. because Lola with the greatest respect.. and I respect
you but I've also spoken to a lot of Aboriginal leaders and I have to say
the majority of them except for the Housing Company agree with me. There is
a high probability that if you put 62 dwellings there that you're not gonna
get enough people like you living there that you're gonna get a whole lot
of highly dependant people and you're gonna repeat a lot of the problems.
But.. but we'll provide 62 dwellings in Redfern.. Redfern Waterloo.. no problem.
We'll provide.. this will be Aboriginal facilities we'll have some housing
there.. we can talk about all those things but the view of a lot of people
a lot of people except the Aboriginal Housing Company.. and initially by the
way the Board of the Housing Company was tempted to support me after I went
and briefed them but we have consultants there that have a point of view and
they keep persuading Mick Mundine their way is the only way.. now with the
greatest respect we just we just don't agree we just don't agree and a lot
of people don't agree and the majority of the community don't agree. And yet
I haven't said this has got to be the answer I've said join us in a process
to work out the answer I'm sorry they have done that work and they've worked
hard but you know I have to be true to myself I can't put my hand on my heart
and say yeah I'll go into state cabinet and fight for money to build all these
dwellings which I think are not going to work..
Lola Forester: Ok then ok then Frank
Frank Sartor: It's a matter of opinion and a lot of people agree with me a
lot of people do.
Lola Forester: Ok there is wide support there and I've been talking to different
people now the Redfern Waterloo Chamber of Commerce supports the Project,
people like Professor Ed Blakely the chair of NSW Gov Metro Strategy
Frank Sartor: No he doesn't.. no he doesn't I spoke to him two days ago and
he said Frank I've only just been called to a meeting I didn't know anything
about this I haven't even got a.. I don't even know enough about it.. and
I spoke to him about late last week he doesn't support it.. There's a lot
of mythology about who supports this.
Lola Forester: Also what about plans what about the plans they received the
international award for sustainability in crime prevention strategies does
that count for anything?
Frank Sartor: Lola.. Lola I've been a great critic of architectural awards
for a long time when I was Mayor this is nothing new a lot of architectural
awards are done by architects and they have no bearing on bloody reality just
because they won and award does not mean its going to work it does not mean
its going to work. I'm not saying they haven't acted in good faith I'm not
saying they haven't been genuine in trying to find a solution but you can't
just solve it by architecture this is not an architectural problem. There's
three aspects to this only one aspect is design the other aspects is the social
mix just in terms of.. and the third aspect is the support systems in place.
Unless we've got all bloody well three it's like a tripod it won't stand up.
Now this nonsense that it's just an architectural solution is just a bit if
a wank and with the greatest respect to Colin James he's come down [mumbled
something] enormously, he's pushing an architectural answer when in fact the
answer has to be a bit more multifaceted than this.. and a lot of sensible
Aboriginal people who have been around there for thirty years who watched
the different efforts know there's gotta be a different approach to this.
They've got it wrong. A lot of people think they got it wrong.
Lola Forester: Ok then when can we expect to see your alternative plans?
Frank Sartor: But I haven't.. this is the point Lola I deliberately not done
one because if I did say here Frank Sartor trying to impose his plan on the
thing. I'm saying join me in a process to develop an alternative.. join me
that's what I'm saying to the Aboriginal Housing Company and to other Aboriginal
leaders join me in a process I'm not saying exactly what its got to be I'm
saying it could involve these other aspects but but I'm saying don't reconcentrate
high dependency housing and don't pretend that you're gonna be able to get
a social mix I don't think you're gonna be able to you'll get very few people
that will live there will all the drug dealing and stuff that's still going
on its been a management failure. Mickey has to accept the fact that its not
worked but if he can just join us and we can hold his hand to help him together
we solve this and there are a lot of Aboriginal leaders who will help us who
I've spoken to who will help us in this. Look I'm passionate about this I
want this to work I want the Block to be a positive icon for Aboriginal people
I'm sick of it being a negative icon but its got to be done in a sustainable
way so if there is trauma in the community if there are stresses in the community
the community can sort of support itself and not end up being under the sort
of stress we see from time to time over the last thirty years.. you know lets
lets do some really positive things this is about a win for the Aboriginal
community this is an opportunity this is an opportunity but instead of having
these architects from the Sydney University architecture school who quite
frankly I wouldn't feed anymore because they keep on pushing the same old
design solutions ITS NOT A DESIGN PROBLEM it's a combination of issues its
about support its about social mix and its its in part design and I just..
look I'm almost angry.
Lola Forester: Yeah but at the same time Frank when we're talking about social
mix you mentioned Macquarie Fields now the appalling conditions at out there
the housing didn't work out there that experiment didn't work out in the west.
Frank Sartor: Concentrated high dependency housing doesn't work whether its
whites no matter what.. you see this is not a thing about Aboriginals this
is a thing about sensible planning. It's not about Aboriginal people.
Lola Forester: But isn't this also something too about a pride of Indigenous
the first people that they're able to have this block of land since 1972 and
be able to put in something in there to give pride to the people who first
suffered you know in the colonisation of this country?
Frank Sartor: Yep yep this has got to be a win for the Aboriginal people and
ultimately they will decide it but I have to tell you something I think the
influence of some of those white consultants is a bit too much I think the
white consultants are over influencing the Housing Company because when I
met with the Housing Company they were about to support us and then when the
consultants said can we just talk about this we said fine you've got all the
time in the world and this is six month ago all of a sudden then now they
have changed their mind. Now look look you know these consultants have probably
done very well out of this project some of them have and they run round peddling
political rhetoric.
Lola Forester: Do we know they're all white consultants?
Frank Sartor: Well I know Peter is. Peter's a Greek. He's from a Greek background.
Lola Forester: Well that's not white.
Frank Sartor: Well when I say white, he's not Aboriginal. And nor is Colin
James. Now now you know you know they are not Aboriginal people asking for
this they are other consultants some of which for some of the time where paid
some of which for some of the time where paid now look.
Lola Forester: Yeah but Frank we're also talking about people working together
so we've got Aboriginal people, we've got Anglo-Australians, we've got Greeks
we've got other people all coming together to create to create something special
and something unique that Aboriginal people can be proud of.
Frank Sartor: What my plan is to work with all these people and I said I set
up this taskforce the Aboriginal Housing Company can have as many people as
it wants we'll get other people from the Authority from the Redfern Waterloo
Authority Aboriginal people, people like Ann Weldon the Chair of the Aboriginal
Housing Office, Jody Broun the head of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs
on it, its gonna be a majority of Aboriginal people I wasn't gonna be stacking
it with bloody whites I tell ya it was gonna be a group of professional Aboriginals
and supported by government departments to work through an alternative solution.
Lola Forester: Ok when do we expect to see some sort of forum or discussion
I mean have you spoken to the people..
Frank Sartor: I can't go forward because the Aboriginal Housing Company own
this Lola I have not gone forward till I can get them to the table.
Lola Forester: Ok then can we…
Frank Sartor: I don't know this land..
Lola Forester: Well then what do we need.. what do we need to do to bring
um.. you together with the Aboriginal Housing Company..
Frank Sartor: Well Mick Mundine I've spoke.. written to him.. the door's open..
I've spoken to Linda Burney many times.. she's spoken to him. I've spoken
to other people. My door's open. The moment Mick wants to walk in here or
anywhere he wants to meet me with his people.. you know with with er um his
own Board and I'd like to involve some other Aboriginal senior Aboriginal
people as well. We can start talking.
Lola Forester: Ok then can we meet on neutral ground then.
Frank Sartor: I'm available anytime you like.. anytime you like. But I have
to defend the Government's position, which is we just don't want to risk making
the same mistakes. We want to try and come up something.. alternative that's
gonna work.
Lola Forester: Ok then can we look at say a television forum? And debate on
this.
Frank Sartor: Can we can we .. I'll have debates anywhere..
Lola Forester: No Frank I'm just..
Frank Sartor: But I think that the sensible.. the initial.. I've been talk
to lots of people about this.. I'm talking to you on air.. but the thing is
that the most sensible.. the way progress is going to be made is by sitting
around a table and talking turkey and talking turkey in detail about the whole
thing. Now sure we can have a public forum.. my only problem with public forums
or especially television forums they'll become a bit more kind of stage managed
and people will try to score points. We can score points if you like. You
know Lola I can cop that I can cop that but I tell ya its better if I sit
around the table with the key people and say come on guys let work around
this. Now if they would just agree to join my taskforce I would convene a
meeting and they can nominate four or five people or whatever and we can sit
down and start to say look this is where were going with this but I have to
be up front with my position with this one issue because if I'm not upfront
they'll go through the process and then they'll say here's bloody Sartor imposing
his will. I'm saying the Government has a position on this issue its only
one aspect have we got a position on the rest is negotiable. The rest so..
its its almost a green-fields except for the fact we don't want to reconcentrate
high dependency housing just there.
Lola Forester: Ok then if we don't come to an agreement what happens?
Frank Sartor: Well if we.. it will be stale mate.. because because we can't
put.. the other thing about the Aboriginal Housing Company is they.. they're
in financial trouble.. the Aboriginal Housing Office had to give them a couple
of million the last few.. just to fix.. do emergency work on their housing.
You know they've got all sorts of problems I think they've just got to realise
they've gotta work with the state. The state cops the blame every time something
goes wrong they've gotta work with us. We're a legitimate.. you know we're
we're a major player in this business they've gotta work with the state. I
had proposed to have them involved as a key part people in state agencies
even a commonwealth representative and even a city council representative
all working together to work this through. Not just the school of architecture
and the architecture students doing a nice little fancy design exercise. It's
gotta be much more than that.
Lola Forester: Yeah but Frank I've looked at the plans that's an insult that's
really an insult to the plans that they've actually put down there because
I've watched the plans from the beginning and I've watched and I've looked
at the plans just lately and.. and to me that's a bit of a insult to the people..
Frank Sartor: Ok ok Lola I'll withdraw that comment..
Lola Forester: Please..
Frank Sartor: Except I'm saying what I said before which is this is not just
a design architectural problem.. its gotta lot of other issues to it. And
it's been approached as an architectural problem. Whether its been done by
students.. that's what I've been told but I'll withdraw that. I don't need
to say that..
Lola Forester: Ok then look Frank thanks very much.
Frank Sartor: It's good to talk to you and I'm glad to see you're in a feisty
mood I like an argument with you.
Lola Forester: Look we'll be picking up on you again because we're gonna be
looking at other people that are that it's affected on the Block down there
not just the Aboriginal residents but the non-Aboriginal residents and ah
get their opinions too.
Frank Sartor: Sure. I'm anxious to sit with Mick anytime shout him a coffee
what ever he wants.
Lola Forester: Oh just a coffee.
Frank Sartor: Oh.. lunch whatever you want don't be greedy whatever you want
whatever we'll sort that out.
Lola Forester: Ok then we'll sort something out.
Frank Sartor: Anything's possible. We just want to feel confident that we
can get the answer.
Lola Forester: Definitely, thanks very much Frank.
Frank Sartor: Thanks Lola.
Lola Forester: And we've been talking to the Minister for Redfern Waterloo
Frank Sartor. And you're listening to the Aboriginal program here at SBS radio
broadcasting right around the country.
BACK TO TOP
Residents step up needle fight
June 15, 2005 Daily Telegraph
ANGRY residents of Sydney's troubled suburb of Redfern are stepping
up their opposition to a government plan to set up a needle exchange opposite
Redfern train station.
The New South Wales Government wants to install a needle exchange for drug
addicts in Lawson Street, in inner city suburb.
A Redfern community group, Red Alert, said the site was unsuitable because
of its proximity to the busy train station and the fact children lived next
door.
Red Alert has organised a meeting at Redfern Town Hall this Saturday at 2pm,
where residents are expected to voice their opposition to the proposal.
"The only support for the placing of this needle exchange next to children
is coming from politicians and bureaucrats," Red Alert spokesman Craig
Kentall said today.
"Residents and leading Aboriginal agencies are all totally opposed."
Red Alert named NSW Health Minister Morris Iemma, Premier Bob Carr and Sydney
Lord Mayor Clover Moore as the main supporters of placing the needle exchange
in Lawson St.
There were alternative needle "outlets" within two blocks of the
proposed needle exchange site, Mr Kentall said.
BACK TO TOP
Religious leaders claim Block policy 'racist'
Wednesday, 8 June 2005, ABC Sydney
Several religious leaders have condemned what they claim is the New South
Wales Government's plan to effectively bulldoze the Block at Redfern and rid
it of Aboriginal housing, saying the impact of the policy is racist.
Anglican and Uniting church leaders in the Redfern-Waterloo area in inner
Sydney have joined forces to oppose the Government's plans to redevelop the
Block and other dilapidated parts of Redfern.
The Aboriginal Housing Company's project manager, Peter Valilis, says the
Minister, Frank Sartor, met with the company's board of directors earlier
this year and made it clear that he ideally does not want any Aboriginal housing
back on the Block.
"He called it a failed experiment," Mr Valilis said.
The Rev John McIntyre from Redfern's Anglican church says it is an injustice
directed at the Aboriginal people.
"By definition even if the intent is not racist, the action is racist
because the outcome only affects one group of people," he said.
The Uniting Church's Reverend Dorothy McCrae-McMahon claims Mr Sartor has
been granted extraordinary new powers to steal Aboriginal land.
BACK TO TOP
Labor `shame' at Block
plans
John Stapleton – The Australian June 6 page 3
MORE than 30 years after Gough Whitlam's Redfern dream, the
houses in the notorious inner Sydney ghetto of the Block are still derelict:
the windows smashed or boarded up, the gardens full of rubbish and the doors
wrenched off after successive drug raids.
The dream of creating a source of indigenous pride in the heart
of Sydney is literally in ashes. Now another Labor politician, the Carr Government's
Frank Sartor, has a different vision for the Block.
It is still owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company, but only
16 families are still living on the Block. Bought with a W Whitlam government
grant in 1973, it became a hub for indigenous activism, including some of
the country's first Aboriginal legal and medical services.
Hope died in the 1990s. Some believe the Block's descent into
drugs, crime, violence, poverty and dereliction began with the painting of
an unlucky rainbow serpent on a boundary wall. Others claim the slide was
encouraged by the state government with "genocidal" harm-minimisation
drug policies.
These included the provision of a "needle bus" next
to a children's park, which attracted hundreds of addicts from around the
city into the besieged community, and official tolerance of heroin dealing.
A crackdown by police and Aboriginal agencies has largely rid
the Block of heroin, and its shuttered houses are now empty of people. But
the view of the city's skyline means that in private hands the Block could
be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ten days ago the state Government declared the Block and other
parts of Redfern to be of "state significance" and gazetted planning
controls from Sydney City Council. Mr Sartor, the minister responsible for
the Redfern W Waterloo Authority, in charge of rejuvenating the blighted district,
has total control over its future.
His vision, which does not include Aboriginal housing, clashes
directly with the traditional owners of the land and has sparked ugly headlines
suggesting Mr Sartor wants 'no black faces on the Block'.
Long-time Labor supporter and Darlington branch secretary Trevor
Davies said s "I am today ashamed to be a member of the ALP. This is
an unprincipled land grab."
Aboriginal Housing Company chief executive Mick Mundane said
the NS W Government was "ready to sell out the blackfellas". "They
have a grand plan for Redfern that doesn't include the poor or people with
dark skin … This is all about power."
BACK TO TOP
The Block under threat, says AHC
31 May 05 - the Courier Mail
THE NSW government is making a land grab for the Sydney Aboriginal housing
estate known as The Block in order to "cleanse" the area of indigenous
people, a peak Aboriginal housing group says.
Aboriginal Housing Company project director Peter Valilis said the Minister
for Redfern-Waterloo, Frank Sartor, had snatched planning control over The
Block, in Redfern, coinciding with the beginning of Reconciliation Week.
"Frank Sartor has now made the block state significant, it's a legal
term that they're using; this means that he has full planning control over
the block," Mr Valilis said tonight.
"So even if the Housing Company went and got private funding, federal
funding or anything like that, Frank could veto any plans that we put up."
The Block is privately owned by the Aboriginal Housing company, which should
be entitled to build anything within council rules, Mr Valilis said.
"Right now that land is zoned residential for residential units and
the Aboriginal Housing Company would like to build 62 residential units in
accordance to council's rules," he said.
"But Frank says that would be okay as long as it's not Aboriginal housing."
A redevelopment proposal for The Block by the Aboriginal Housing Company
would see building begin on 62 residential units on the site by the end of
the year, he said.
However, under legislation set down under the Redfern Waterloo Act, Mr Sartor
now had the power to nominate any public or private land as "state significant"
to remove powers from The City of Sydney Council.
"The council would make an objective decision on what it wants built,
whereas Frank Sartor has made it clear he does not want any Aboriginal housing
built back on The Block," Mr Valilis said.
" ... despite what the zoning is, despite what the precedents are, despite
what the history is, he'll unilaterally decide not to allow Aboriginal housing
back on The Block."
Mr Sartor did not see Aboriginal people as part of his vision for future
of the area, he said.
"This to me looks like classic ethnic cleansing," Mr Valilis said.
"This is an ethnic group that Frank does not feel should be a part of
his grand vision ... and he wants them out and I think that's pretty disgusting."
The Aboriginal Housing Company have refused to meet with Mr Sartor and would
look to the Federal Government or private investors to fund building of the
units, Mr Valilis said.
BACK TO TOP
The last thing Redfern needs
May 26, 2005, SMH
Plans for a bigger and better needle exchange in the hot spot
will end in disaster, writes Miranda Devine.
YOU'D think the State Government would have learnt its lesson
on Redfern after the riots there last February. In the soul-searching aftermath
of the violence, one of the strongest requests from responsible Aboriginal
leaders and front-line police officers in Redfern was to remove the needle
exchange bus from the Block.
They didn't want the bus there because it attracted undesirables
from all over Sydney to the area they were trying so hard to improve, and
because the bus gave the impression to children as young as six, who used
to play around it, that injecting drugs into your arms was somehow normal,
perhaps desirable.
Lo and behold, 15 months later, what does Bob Carr's Health
Minister, Morris Iemma, decide to do? Unveil plans for a whiz-bang, multimillion-dollar,
seven-day-a-week needle exchange and drug service opposite Redfern railway
station, exactly where the riots occurred, and right next door to a young
family. Craig and Mel Kentell, who have a baby and a five-year-old daughter,
and whose Lawson Street terrace adjoins the proposed drug centre, are justifiably
angry.
Theirs are just two of the voices being ignored in Redfern in
Iemma's drive to appease the harm minimisation crowd who are so influential
in his portfolio.
Otherwise the drugs centre makes no sense. It will thrill the
Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, a big fan of the Kings Cross heroin injecting
room, but will only add misery to the lives of Redfern residents and cause
further impossible conflicts for the police who try to keep them safe. And
it's not just a menace for residents. Sydney University students walking to
class from the station will be forced daily to run the gauntlet of dealers
and addicts outside the centre.
Iemma defends his proposal by saying he has an obligation to
reduce the incidence of diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis. But since when
does the right of a law-breaking heroin injector to have access to clean needles
take precedence over the right of the people of Redfern to bring up their
children in a safe, drug-free environment?
In his submission to the largely useless upper house inquiry
into the riots last year, the chief executive of the Aboriginal Housing Company,
Mick Mundine, complained the needle exchange bus which the new centre is set
to replace "was like a honeypot for drug addicts and dealers. [Its] presence
… has substantiated and ratified a culture of tolerance for drugs".
Yesterday, Sergeant Paul Huxtable, the Police Association's
Redfern branch president, said you'd be hard-pressed finding anyone in the
area who wanted the Lawson Street drugs centre.
"Street robberies are the scourge of the Redfern area,"
he said, referring to the muggings and bag snatches that have become a fact
of life in the past few years. "Street robberies are related to heroin,
heroin is related to needles, and now needles will be related to Lawson Street,
in an ugly chain."
It was Huxtable who last year courageously exposed the fact
that the main problem between police and the community that prompted the Redfern
riots was drugs, not racism. "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 upper house inquiry. "It is about protection
of a lucrative heroin trade."
Harm minimisation advocates who pressure governments to normalise
drug activity by setting up injecting rooms and needle exchange centres in
vulnerable neighbourhoods are living in a parallel universe to that inhabited
by most sane people. If something is so dangerous and socially undesirable
that there is a law against it, why would you send a message that flouting
that law is OK, sanctioned, even, by another arm of government?
How are the police supposed to act, having devoted considerable
time and resources in recent months to cleaning out drugs in Redfern, only
to have their efforts undermined by Iemma.
Just this month, Redfern Local Area Command police formed Strike
Force Woolshed and raided an apartment block in Waterloo, next door to a preschool,
arresting 14 people and seizing a loaded rifle, knives and machetes and a
large amount of heroin, as well as syringes and cash.
Good work, Redfern police. Now we'll make your job even harder.
This is the absurdity of the conflicting pressures on authorities.
On the one hand, the harm minimisation crowd wants to blur the edges of the
law with their ultimate aim to decriminalise drugs, and have heroin treated
solely as a health issue rather than a policing problem. They had their time
in the sun in the 1980s and the experiment failed miserably, leading to a
doubling in daily heroin use in Australia.
On the other hand, you have law and order advocates, backed
by the majority of the general public, who believe that illicit drug use can
be controlled with law enforcement, by local police and the Australian Federal
Police cracking down on drug importation. The Bali nine now languishing in
Indonesian jails are one sign of increased police activity resulting from
the Federal Government's Tough on Drugs strategy.
This zero tolerance approach also extends compassion to drug
addicts via compulsory treatment programs.
Proof that it works is to be found in Australia's recent long-running
heroin drought, unique in the world, followed by a plunging crime rate in
NSW and a reduction in heroin-related deaths.
Harm minimisation advocates tried to claim, nonsensically, that
the Kings Cross heroin injecting room was the cause of this good news, showing
the extent to which they will manipulate facts to bolster their cause.
The Broken Windows theory of policing, which had such huge success
in driving down crime in New York in the 1980s, regardless of what the revisionists
say, had as its central ethos the idea that small signs of disorder in a neighbourhood
lead to an atmosphere of lawlessness, where the curbs of civilised society
do not apply.
The atmosphere feeds on itself, and soon you have social dysfunction
and a serious crime problem that requires draconian tactics to overcome.
Building a new drugs centre in Redfern sends the worst mixed
messages to an already vulnerable community. There is no such centre in Vaucluse
or Mosman. Why should families who can't afford the privilege of shielding
themselves from life's harshest realities have to suffer?
The residents of Redfern are entitled to a neighbourhood free
of crime and disorder. The police of Redfern know how best to deliver it to
them, if only Iemma and his harm minimisers would get out of the way.
BACK TO TOP
No Black Faces on the Block?
Signature, UK
By MARNI CORDELL
12 May 2005 - The Carr Government’s plans for the rundown suburb of
Redfern are yet to be realised, but anyone taking a white brush to the black
heart of Sydney is surely in for a fight. MARNI CORDELL reports on the battle
for Redfern-Waterloo.
‘The Block’, a hectare of land opposite Redfern train station,
was first bought for Aboriginal housing in 1973 with a grant from the Whitlam
Government. The area was a nucleus for Indigenous activism, and gave life
to some of Aboriginal Australia’s greatest social legacies, including
the first medical and legal services.
According to Shane Phillips, whose family has lived in the area for three
generations, it was a dynamic place to grow up. “We saw a lot of strong
Koori people, who all worked hard and fought for what they believed in,”
he says, “and just wanted to raise their kids and get what everyone else
was getting.”
But in the mid-1990s, says Phillips, “the gear hit”. The area became
known for its heroin trade, attracting users from across Sydney to score and
shoot up in the dark alleys of the area’s 19th century housing. “That
infection just grew, and destroyed what was a great, strong place,” Phillips
says.
To the local Aboriginal community, the Block is a significant and symbolic
place, with the potential to house a vibrant community. To developers, it’s
a near-empty piece of land in an overcrowded city.
Prime real estate just five minutes from the CBD, Redfern has been an obvious
‘black spot’ on developers’ maps for some time. However, last
year’s riots following the tragic death of 17-year-old TJ Hickey, and
the subsequent parliamentary inquiry in to the area, have given the NSW Government
the impetus to push ahead with major redevelopment plans.
In November last year the Carr Government’s agenda was revealed in documents
leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Soon after, the Redfern-Waterloo Act went through parliament with full support
from the Liberal opposition. “I said the day after the riot at Redfern
that the real solution to this was to bulldoze the Block. I can hardly argue
when the Government comes forward to do that and so much more,” said
opposition leader John Brogden.
In its mandate to improve the socio-economic standing of the area, the newly
formed Redfern-Waterloo Authority has the power to acquire private land, bypass
heritage and planning laws, and delegate its powers to private subsidiary
corporations. According to property lawyer Damien Barnes, while these powers
are not unprecedented, they are extraordinary considering the area is highly
residential.
The Block has a problematic history, and its owners, the Aboriginal Housing
Company, have not always had the support of the community at large. In 1997,
the company demolished a number of houses and relocated residents in an attempt
to get rid of the drug trade. Ann Weldon, Chairperson of the Aboriginal Housing
Office, says there was a lot of division over this decision, and the AHC has
still not delivered on a promise it made at that time: to build one house
for every two that it knocked down.
“I would like to see that promise obligated, irrespective of what the
company are negotiating with other people, because there was major rivalry
and discontent within the Aboriginal community over relocation, and the implications
of that,” says Weldon.
Peter Valilis, AHC Project Director, concedes that the AHC has not been an
effective community representative. “The Company didn’t do two things
in the past: it didn’t get the support of the majority of the stakeholders,
and it didn’t start off with a social agenda.”
“We now recognise that there are a lot of direct and indirect stakeholders
of this area. Even though the Housing Company owns the land, and no one, legally,
has a say beyond that; you have government stakeholders, tenants, local people
who live near the Block, the business community, academics. There’s a
long list of people who have an interest in this area.”
For the last five years, the AHC has been developing plans to revitalise
the area. The Company’s ‘Pemulwuy Plan’ would see 62 new houses
built on the Block, along with an open-plan retail district, offices, a gymnasium
and an Aboriginal business college. The plan has received two social planning
awards, but is reliant on Government funding to proceed.
Valilis explains that the Pemulwuy Plan came about following lengthy community
consultation: “Everyone had a say, and eventually, not everyone was happy,
but we found some common ground.”
That is, until the Redfern-Waterloo Authority weighed into the debate.
In February, Frank Sartor, the NSW Minister responsible for Redfern-Waterloo,
visited the AHC to discuss the future of the Block. According to Peter Valilis,
the Minister told the Company’s board members that he wanted “no
black faces on the Block”.
Sartor’s spokeswoman denies the claim.
However, the Minister has made his opposition to the Pemulwuy Plan clear,
dubbing it an experiment in high-dependency housing.
Valilis is adamant that the plan will go ahead, with or without State Government
support. He describes the Minister’s approach as “it’s my way
or the highway”. “Well, we got in the car and drove off down the
highway,” he says.
However, if negotiations between the two parties sour, Sartor could, in line
with the Land Acquisition Act, compulsorily acquire the Block and develop
it as he pleases. Valilis’s response to this suggestion is a defiant
“let him try.”
Democrats Senator Aden Ridgeway takes the threat more seriously. He believes
the local community does not have the political clout to take on a powerful
Minister, backed by wealthy developers.
“There’s good argument to say that any decision to compulsorily
acquire what is private land could amount to a breach of the Racial Discrimination
Act, on the grounds that it is treating one group differently to the rest
of the community,” he says.
“I think Australia’s become so immune to looking at these things
in certain ways. If [the ‘no black faces’ comment] were said in
the United States or the United Kingdom you’d have race riots on the
streets. Aboriginal people locally have somehow been conditioned into accepting
that this is normal, and the government and the rest of the community is saying
that it’s okay. Well I’m saying it’s not. The standards of
the law should apply equally, irrespective of the colour of a person’s
skin,” says Ridgeway
If the Redfern-Waterloo Authority acquired the Block, it would be the first
time in Australian history that land won by Aboriginal people as a result
of the 1970s land rights struggle was taken back from them.
Shane Phillips believes that much of the local Aboriginal community is behind
the AHC’s Pemulwuy Plan, and is prepared to fight for it. “There
are so many people who want to come back to Redfern. They don’t want
to come back while it’s all drugs, and drug dealers are still living
here. That’s the intention of the housing company: bring back some working
families and give the kids an opportunity to help rebuild the place, but also
to see positive role models in their community.”
“A few weeks ago there was a fundraiser for a bloke, a great family
man from the area, who’s ill at the moment. Everyone came together and
it was great to see all those faces, who you know have had words or had disputes,
all come together and sit at the same tables.”
“People come together for a cause,” says Phillips.
The Redfern-Waterloo Authority might be just the cause to bring community
back to the Block.
MARNI CORDELL IS CO-EDITOR OF SIGNATURE
BACK TO TOP
Redfern residents strongly opposed to needle exchange
May 20, 2005, ABC
The Aboriginal Housing Company says further public consultation on a proposed
needle exchange near The Block in Redfern will not change residents' opposition
to the proposal.
New South Wales Health Minister Morris Iemma has written to Sydney City Council
asking for a deferral of its application to set up a needle exchange and community
health centre on Lawson Street.
The Minister says the deferral will allow time for community consultation.
But the chief executive of the Aboriginal Housing Company Mick Mundine says
the community does not want it and no amount of consultation will change that.
"You cannot have it next to residents. Why not take it to an industrial
area, away from here? Why doesn't the minister put it right next to his door
and let him suffer the consequence of what our people are going through? It's
just very appalling," he said.
The association representing drug prevention programs says it is disappointed
by the request to defer the proposal.
The chief executive of the Association for Prevention and Harm Reduction
Programs, John Ryan, says Redfern needs the centre.
"If we just rely on policing in relation to drug issues, we will fail,"
he said.
The Sydney West Area Health Service will begin community consultation soon.
BACK TO TOP
Redfern
2GB Alan Jones Editorial, 18 May 2005
I read yesterday of a new plan for Redfern, unveiled in a thing
called Architecture Bulletin.
It's about the painting of a rainbow serpent on the wall facing
the railway station, which has long been associated with the area's descent
into drugs, crime and poverty.
An Aboriginal musician said "That's when all the vice and
inequity went crazy."
Richard Green.
He said "Even in other cultures, the snake is dangerous.
It's not poison where it belongs, it's their totem.
"But in Sydney our totem is the dolphin."
He said "In our folklore we jumped over the snake and ate
it along the way."
Well, I'm not too sure that you and I understand what that means,
but under a new plan the wall and the mural will make way for a square full
of buskers, cafes and markets.
And on one of the buildings surrounding the square there'll
be an image of a giant dolphin.
Now this is all progressive stuff.
The plan is the Aboriginal community's vision, put together
by the Aboriginal Housing Company, an academic, architects and community leaders.
And they are wanting, the community there, the State Government,
the Sydney City Council and the Commonwealth Government to pitch in and fund
the project.
Now this sounds good to me.
They want to "open up the area and make it busy",
on the basis that if it's busy it won't be intimidating.
A bridge would lead to an ochre-paved area known as Red Square
which would be surrounded by a business college, a cultural centre and a retail
building.
I'm not too sure the building should be called the Charles Perkins
Centre.
The name Red Square would remember an old meeting place for
Aboriginal rail workers, and nearby Green Square represents the colours of
their local football team South Sydney.
Behind the square The Block would be developed into 62 apartments
in memory of the last 62 Gadigal families killed by a smallpox epidemic.
Now how good is this in trying to reinvigorate the place?
And yet at the top of Lawson Street, pardon the expression,
but a stone's throw away, the scene of the riots in February, there's going
to be a needle exchange for heroin users.
Morris Iemma and the Government are saying, well you might like
to improve the precinct around the railway station, but we're going to make
it a home for heroin takers.
A needle exchange for heroin users.
As I said yesterday, no money for Redfern Oval, no, we don't
want sport.
We're happy to have the drug addicts.
No consultation.
Bring them in from everywhere, and feed them on heroin.
Why?
Morris Iemma says he can't turn his back on his public health
obligation to provide clean needles for injecting drug users.
Is it only a rumour that he's also going to bus all the alcoholics
to the nearest pub, because I'm sure he's got public health obligations to
provide free beer to them as well.
How can the community themselves be trying to improve the whole
area around the Redfern railway station and do a great job when the Government,
through the Health Minister, seems bent on torpedoing the lot of it by making
it the permanent home of drug addicts.
Roll up, roll up, wherever you might be and get your needle
to practise your drug taking and then hang around and do whatever damage you
might like to do.
Morris Iemma used to be the hope of the side.
Now he's wearing the same ragged clothes as all the rest of
them.
BACK TO TOP
Aborigines' ochre vision for Redfern
May 17, 2005 SMH
By Jordan Baker
For indigenous residents of Redfern, the painting of a rainbow
serpent on the wall facing the railway station has long been associated with
the area's descent into drugs, crime and poverty.
"That's when all the vice and inequity went crazy,"
said Richard Green, an Aboriginal musician.
"Even in other cultures, the snake is dangerous. It's not
poison where it belongs; it's their totem, but in Sydney [our totem] is the
dolphin. In our folklore, we jumped over [the snake] and ate it along the
way."
Under a new plan for Redfern, unveiled yesterday in Architecture
Bulletin, the wall and mural would make way for a square full of buskers,
cafes and markets. On one of the buildings surrounding the square would be
an image of a giant dolphin.
The plan is the Aboriginal community's vision, put together
by the Aboriginal Housing Company, the academic Col James, the architects
innovarchi and community leaders.
"Frank Sartor asked us to get our vision in train by the
end of April, and this is the vision," Mr James said. "We'd really
like the State Government and the Sydney City Council and the Commonwealth
Government to come to the party and talk about joint funding and joint action."
Mr James, a local resident, said the idea was to open up the
area and make it busy. "If it is busy it won't be intimidating,"
he said.
A bridge would lead to an ochre-paved area known as Red Square,
which would be surrounded by a business college, a cultural centre and a retail
building, the Charles Perkins Centre.
The name Red Square remembers an old meeting place for Aboriginal
rail workers and, with nearby Green Square, represents the colours of the
local football team, South Sydney, Mr James said.
Problem drinkers would be sent to a nearby centre and fighters
to the Elouera-Tony Mundine Gym.
Behind the square the Block would be developed into 62 apartments
in memory of the last 62 Gadigal families who were killed by a smallpox epidemic.
The Aboriginal Housing Commission proposed a mix of 20 outright
homeowners, 20 transitional homeowners, 20 service lessees and two artists
in residence.
BACK TO TOP
Redfern Needle Exchange
2GB Alan Jones Editorial, 16 May 2005
I couldn't believe last week two things about Redfern.
One is that everyone else seems to be getting money for community
sporting facilities, and the latest of course is Kogarah Oval.
And there's nothing from anybody for Redfern Oval other than,
it seems, a determination to close the thing or turn it into a white elephant,
and that needs to change.
But at the same time there's money apparently for a new needle
exchange for heroin users in Redfern.
What the hell are we trying to do to Redfern, make it a drug
centre?
It's a year since a major police operation against the drug
trade there, and there are reports that Morris Emma the Health Minister wants
a new needle exchange for heroin users.
Morris Emma, forget it.
Heroin addiction will just compound the poverty and social dysfunction
of a large number of indigenous Australians in Redfern.
Is that what you want to do?
Build a damned oval for them.
Let them play football, and they'll stay off drugs.
And Morris Emma, I thought you were a potential leader in this
State, and you're talking about a public health obligation to ensure that
drug users have access to clean needles.
Come on.
Drugs are illegal.
So in Redfern the rights of the people and the rights of the
children must come second to the rights of the addicts.
As The Australian editorial said last week, where heroin rules
the streets are never safe.
We just had this appalling riot in Redfern.
We've had the appalling spectacle of that young fellow who was
killed.
The community suffer from all sorts of social problems.
We can't completely refurbish the oval and rebuild it, which
is virtually the heritage centre of Redfern.
But we want to find money for a needle exchange for heroin users.
And indeed in a place with a needle exchange caravan, Morris
Emma wants to build a permanent facility opposite Redfern railway station
to service the entire Sydney suburban network.
How the hell do you keep the suburb clean?
A bigger and better heroin honeypot.
Oh come on.
Please.
Give us all a break.
BACK TO TOP
Dr Diana Horvath AO
| Chief Executive
Sydney South West Area Health Service
Letter to the Australian 15/05
Redfern at sharp end: In response to The Australian's editorial
(``Selling Out the People of Redfern'', 12/5) the proposed needle exchange
facility is intended to assist the whole community, with a particular focus
on those who may not usually access mainstream health services. The range
and complexity of issues in the Redfern area have been well documented in
the Upper House Inquiry and the Review of Human Services into Redfern Waterloo.
It is also well known that Redfern, and the Block in particular, is a meeting
place for Aboriginal people from all parts of Australia and injecting drug
use poses a serious threat to the health of indigenous people who live and
visit this area. Access to clean injecting equipment has been a major factor
in the reduction of HIV and hepatitis C infections across Australia. Australia's
needle and syringe programs have prevented 25,000 new HIV infections and 21,000
hepatitis C infections over the past decade. We all know that adolescents,
in particular, indulge in risky behaviour as a part of their rejection of
adult authority. It would be devastating if drug use in this phase of life
were to lead to the life-limiting infections of HIV and hepatitis C. While
there remains a high level of drug use around Redfern, the health service
has a statutory responsibility to effectively manage associated public health
risks. In the area known as the Block, approximately 50,000 clean needles
and syringes were distributed January to April, 2005. In response to this,
the Sydney South West Area Health Service also provides a twice-daily clean
up of discarded needles to further safeguard the health of the broader community.
Michael Mundine Snr. J.P. | Chief Executive Officer
Aboriginal Housing Company
Reply letter to the Australian 17/05
In response to the letter (Redfern at the sharp end 15/05) by
Diana Horvath of the Sydney South West Area Health Service. I am astounded
that Ms Horvath is still flogging that old propaganda that there is a high
demand for needles on the Block. What a crock! It's obvious this latest Government
apologist to peek down from her bureaucratic ivory tower knows absolutely
nothing about Redfern or the Block as it is today. I have worked and lived
on the Block for the last 32 years and I have seen the good, the bad and the
ugly. I can tell you Redfern has never been better. The Aboriginal Housing
Company (AHC) has demolished 15 drug houses on the Block, 4 of which have
been removed in the last 12 months. Today there aren't enough people who live
or visit the Block to account for the 170 needles per hour she is claiming
are distributed from the needle bus. That's impossible. These high distribution
numbers were debunked years ago when locals revealed the figures were being
artificially inflated by 100's of needles being given each day to local drug
dealers. The surplus needles can be found discarded in the derelict buildings
or alleyways around the Block. When I reported this and the fact dealers were
using a Health Department issued mobile phone to organise drug deliveries
my concerns predictably fell on deaf ears. The proposed needle facility is
just another example of the arrogance of a health service with a history of
failing the real health needs of Aboriginal communities and ignoring the people
that have a long term interest in the health of Redfern. The Aboriginal community,
multicultural residents, the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service and Redfern
Police are in absolute agreement in their condemnation of the proposed needle
facility. It is an insanity to propose a duplication of needle services for
Redfern at a time when locals are reporting a dramatic decline in drug related
crime. It makes me angry that Ms Horvath's letter implies she cares for adolescence
and Aboriginal people. Nothing could be further from the truth. The needle
bus currently operating on the Block is parked next to a children's play ground
and is a honey-pot for addicts and dealers who are being corralled to the
Block. The community holds Ms Horvath directly responsible for putting Aboriginal
people and in particular the children of Redfern in harms way. Redfern has
been used for years as a dumping ground for Sydney's drug problems and the
residents are sick of it. I believe that the proposed needle facility will
be run by the same poverty pimps who use Redfern and the Block like vultures
to feed on the misery of our people. Redfern neither wants nor needs another
needle facility in amongst our children. Ms Horvath why don't you want our
children to grow up in a safe drug free environment?
BACK TO TOP
Protest against needle exchange
14 May 05, Herald Sun
A COMMUNITY group has stepped up its fight against a needle
exchange planned for a residential street in the Sydney suburb of Redfern.
The local community group Red Alert today began painting a mural
opposing NSW Government plans to place a needle exchange in Lawson Street,
where a number of young children live.
"A dangerous precedent would be set by putting (the needle
exchange) in a residential street," Redfern resident Hugh Ramage said
today.
"We are not against the service, we just think it needs
to be put in a more appropriate place - like a hospital.
"All other similar facilities in Sydney are associated
with hospitals and we think this one should be too."
Community groups were questioning the need for the needle exchange,
he said.
"Things have changed substantially since last year's riot
and things have been cleaned up a lot - there's a lot less drug activity,"
he said.
"The police are against it, the Aboriginal Health Service
are against it, local community groups and GPs are against it - so who is
for it?"
BACK TO TOP
Selling out the people of Redfern
May 12, 2005 The Australian.
YESTERDAY The Australian reported NSW Health Minister Morris
Iemma saying the inner-city Sydney suburb of Redfern needs a new needle exchange
for heroin users. Never mind this announcement less than a year since a major
police operation against the drug trade there. Never mind heroin addiction
compounds the poverty and social dysfunction that afflict the large community
of indigenous Australians in Redfern. Never mind the locals, especially the
family with kids who live next door to the proposed needle exchange, do not
want the facility. Mr Iemma acknowledges local concerns but points to his
public health obligation to ensure drug users have access to clean needles.
Certainly injecting addicts who share syringes place themselves at unnecessary
risk. But in his concern for their welfare, Mr Iemma sends a stark message
- in Redfern, children's rights come second to addicts' rights.
When heroin rules, the streets are never safe. In February last
year, police in Redfern lost control when Aborigines rioted following the
death of a young man in an accident they wrongly accused police of causing.
It showed a community where social cohesion was absent, where large numbers
of people thought the writ of the law should not run. Heroin was not the sole
catalyst of the riot. Redfern's Aboriginal community suffers from all sorts
of deep-seated social problems. But the presence of a needle exchange program
operating from a caravan that attracted addicts, and drug dealers, from all
over Sydney, did not help. The death and resulting riot were tragedies for
the Redfern community, but at least something positive came of them. Following
the riot, police and indigenous community leaders co-operated in an offensive
against drug crime, and the problems that accompany heroin dealing have since
declined.
But now it seems the NSW Government wants to make it ever harder
for police and the community to keep the suburb clean. In the place of the
needle exchange caravan, Mr Iemma wants to build a permanent facility opposite
Redfern's rail station, which services the entire Sydney suburban network.
In the interest of addicts' health, he plans a bigger, better heroin honeypot
for users and dealers. For a government that makes much of its supposed support
for the rights of indigenous Australians and its commitment to cleaning up
Redfern, this is a strange way of showing it.
BACK TO TOP
Needle exchange a bad fit for cleaned-up community
May 11, 2005 The Australian
John Stapleton
WITH its volatile mix of disaffected Aboriginal youth, urban
poor and new home owners, Redfern is not famed for neighbourhood harmony.
But a NSW Government proposal to put a needle exchange and drug
service directly opposite the Sydney suburb's railway station - the scene
of last year's riots with police - has drawn universal condemnation from the
community.
The service is designed to replace the area's controversial
"needle bus", which has serviced drug addicts since the 1980s. But
residents, business owners and police say such a centre would draw drug-induced
crime back to the area just months after a concerted police and community
effort swept much of it from its streets.
Project officer at the Aboriginal Housing Company Peter Valilis
said they had worked hard with police and public housing officials to evict
drug dealers from The Block, which as a result had been transformed. He said
bag snatching, assaults and blatant drug dealing had almost disappeared.
"This would undo all the good work we have done,"
Mr Valilis said. "This will attract drug addicts into the Aboriginal
community from all over Sydney. This is not an amenity that has been requested
by anyone. It is not required and not wanted."
Mr Valilis said the community had reported a significant drop
in crime since busts last July, when 250 police raided the increasingly derelict
area and closed down major drug dealing operations.
Should it proceed, the proposed multi-million-dollar, seven-day
service will operate next door to resident Craig Kentell, his wife Mel and
their two daughters, aged five years and eight weeks.
Mr Kentell said he and his wife now feared hundreds of people
with serious mental health and drug issues would be attracted to their doorstep.
"You cannot build a brothel next door to where children live, so how
can you build a needle exchange next to young children?"
Health Minister Morris Iemma said he was aware of opposition
to the needle exchange and its placement near young families, but could not
turn his back on his public health obligation to provide clean needles for
injecting drug users.
But Aboriginal Medical Service chief Naomi Mayers said it was
preposterous to consider putting a needle exchange next door to a young family.
"The situation has vastly improved, and they are going
to bring it back all over again," she said.
"They don't learn from history. I am livid. We have told
them straight: we don't want it." Residents and community groups have
until this Friday to lodge their protests against the development application.
BACK TO TOP
Madness rules the metropolis
May 10, 2005 SMH
The future of Sydney's ports and freight plans is in a state
of flux, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
I do try, now and then, to write on something other than the
pageant of NSW planning. But what a fabulous pageant it is. Carl Hiaasen once
likened the Miami development scene that is his daily bread to those Keystone
Cops movies, where your heroes tumble one by one from the back of the paddy
wagon and spend the rest of the film trying to get their arms and legs moving
in a forward direction.
The NSW planning scene, it seems to me, is less Keystone Cops,
more Hieronymous Bosch, with its endless parade of innocents, carousers, fornicators
and delighters in all forms and refinements of perdition. In that order.
In NSW planning, as in Bosch, you can be as the driven snow
and still end up crucified on a harp or devoured by some bird-headed monster
- which makes the whole scene much more fun to watch than to play in. And
as with Bosch, any little detail, once focused on, seems easily to expand
into an entire cosmos of follies and excruciations. In the past few months
alone we've had Orange Grove, Redfern, the Metro Plan and the Working Harbour
flickering across our screens of consciousness, each one replete with its
own tangled comedia of mirror-tricks, mind-games and mayhem.
Take the Working Harbour. At first glance the issues might seem
simple. Should Sydney, which has metamorphosed from tent-village to mega-city
in a couple of short centuries, now banish its port facilities to Botany,
Newcastle and Port Kembla? Yes or no - simple.
A moment's thought, however, shows that it is no simple question
and that a cogent answer demands nothing less than the entire Metro Plan,
which has kept the Carr Government so terrorised for so long. Why? Because
to make that decision cogently we need to know the following: what is the
most efficient (and least polluting) freight-distribution pattern for the
megalopolis? Is the central city ready, its residential population having
quadrupled in a decade, for yet more downtown dwellers? Are there better sites,
such as Green Square for instance? Can Botany Bay, clearly looming as Sydney's
next environmental catastrophe (after Homebush), sustain a doubling of port
reclamation area? Can the roads cope given that, rhetoric notwithstanding,
the Government is clearly in no hurry to build rail?
It's 18 months since Bob Carr announced the so-called Sydney
Ports Growth Plan. Not that there is such a plan. Oh dear me no. Don't get
that idea.
All there is, all there ever was, is the announcement of such
a plan; an announcement of the Government's intention to take Port Jackson
out of Sydney Harbour and pork-barrel it around the provinces (60 promised
jobs to the Illawarra, 300-odd to Newcastle).
And being an announcement, not a plan, the PGP didn't need any
supporting research or scholarship. Just as well, under the circumstances.
Nevertheless, this announcement, lashed together by a sticky web of votes
and dollars, became the flotation device for an entire raft of ad hoc and
often incompatible decisions.
Such as the two-line "strategy" to redevelop the vast
East Darling Harbour site (reserving Millers Point for iconic purposes) before
we know for sure whether Port Botany can or should be expanded. Such as the
vow to double Sydney's proportion of rail-freight (rather than road-freight)
by 2011 - all of six years away - just as we kill White Bay, the only dock
in Port Jackson with direct rail access. Such as the promise of huge port
action to the regions, when the shipping lines themselves look just as likely,
once expelled, to adopt Brisbane or Melbourne instead.
Then, three weeks after announcing its Ports Growth Plan, in
October 2003, the Government established an upper house inquiry into the issue.
Not a proper inquiry, you understand. One of those ALP-chaired-and-dominated
jobs, whose only recommendation so far has been a carefully worded injunction
to do absolutely nothing. (I paraphrase, but only slightly.) Four weeks on
again, before the committee had a chance even to meet, the Government closed
White Bay to shipping. Done.
Then a second inquiry was set up, a proper inquiry this time,
with a proper commissioner, Kevin Cleland - but briefed only to scrutinise
the subsidiary issue of how to expand Port Botany. Not whether, how. The Government
told that inquiry, in submission, that it could produce neither a freight
plan nor an overall Metro Plan until it had the inquiry's recommendation in
hand.
Nor, it says, can it make any decisions (except small ones like
killing Sydney's working harbour) until it knows "where and by what means
freight will be entering the state". How will it know that? Easy. It
has already decided to rearrange the ports and to stymie any proposals for
road-rail transfer stations that might enhance its own policy to increase
rail. They did it to the Ports Corporation's proposal to build such a station
at Enfield, and to Patrick Corporation's proposal for Ingleburn, although
the court battle rages over their right not to make a decision on that one.
All this despite a previous commission of inquiry's finding
that such intermodal stations are fundamental to any sustainable NSW freight
picture, and the more the merrier - especially when provided by the private
sector.
Then there's East Darling Harbour. This, the Government argues,
makes unsustainable wharfage because all goods must be trucked out through
the city. No sooner had the redevelopment proposal been announced, however,
than suddenly, magically, a new railway proposal appeared - poof! - right
beside the site. Not just a new station, either, an entire line, running under
the CBD's western edge along the "metro-west" underground stratum
that has been reserved for years for that purpose.
Question: if a rail line can carry humans, then why can't it
carry freight now? Why not keep Port Jackson working, and build a new, underground
rail line to service it, simultaneously relieving pressure on the Town Hall
line?
Answer: it's all in the numbers. Number of dollars, number of
votes. Try reclaiming 63 hectares of Port Botany for residential development
and see how you get on. Not quite up there, is it, in the $izzle department.
Then again, when it comes to sizzle, ask Hieronymous. He's the expert.
BACK TO TOP
Redfern
community centre on chopping block
April 15, 2005 - SMH
By Tim Dick, Urban Affairs Reporter
Many Aborigines in Redfern do not have much, but their children do have a
long-running neighbourhood centre just around the corner from the Block, called
the Settlement.
At least for now they do.
A ruckus has erupted over the centre's new direction, with a majority elected
on to its management committee last year now accused of neglecting the Aboriginal
people it has helped for much of its 80-year history, and the Independent
Commission Against Corruption asked to investigate.
This week the centre sent tenants in some of its low-cost terraces eviction
letters, then retracted them, while there are plans to shift the centre to
a former Masonic hall on the other side of the Block.
The tired but treasured 30-year-old murals that used to cover the centre's
walls were painted over during one recent weekend, in an unfortunately chosen
off-white colour.
The row has become so heated that the Democrats senator Aden Ridgeway has
referred some unspecified "accountability" concerns to the corruption
watchdog.
"I believe all corporations and associations, including community organisations,
need to be able to account for their actions," Senator Ridgeway said.
"On the face of it, there are some concerns raised with me which I believe
should be investigated, which is why it was referred to ICAC for further investigation."
The federal Labor member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, said she had talked
to many involved and would be very concerned about any decline in services
or affordable housing in the area.
Now a group of the centre's membership, Friends of the Settlement, is seeking
a special general meeting to dump the management committee and refocus the
centre's activities on the needs of local Aborigines.
A man close to the centre, who asked not to be named, said the majority on
the committee did not support the centre's four staff and instead were sympathetic
to the redevelopment plans of Frank Sartor, the minister responsible for the
new Redfern-Waterloo Authority.
The centre's former co-ordinator Michael Gravener, whose contract was not
renewed by the committee, said the conflict had been building for a couple
of years.
"The last two AGMs there's been how-to-vote cards placed around the
room," he said. "They've got local neighbours who don't want the
Settlement in their area."
He blamed the area's increasing gentrification for partly causing the conflict,
and a lack of consultation about the murals and plans to move the centre for
inflaming it.
The centre's chairman, Jason Keane, said he could not answer criticisms,
citing possible loss of his director's liability coverage. He told the Herald
he would like to answer the allegations to bring some balance to the debate
but could not.
"I'm just hamstrung at the moment," he said.
BACK TO TOP
2SER
Radio Interview
April 15, 2005
REPORTER - Peter Valilis Project Director at the AHC says the
Minister for Redfern Frank Sartor approached the board a few weeks ago saying
he didn't like the idea of 62 Aboriginal homes on the block and ideally he
didn't want any Aboriginal homes. Mr Valilis says the Minister then offered
to support an extra 20 homes.
VALILIS - The problem is that this minimalist strategy, in other words build
less and you'll have less problems really doesn't work because right now there
are 20 houses on the block and that didn't stop the riots.
REPORTER - Mr Sartor however has a different version of events.
SARTOR - What I'm seeking to do is and I've invited the AHC and the Board
of the AHC to join a working group with other people including other Aboriginal
people and government officials to work to develop a new vision for the block.
Now the new vision for the block would still be Aboriginal ownership, it still
is about the Aboriginal people, but I don't believe that re-concentrating
high dependent tenants whether they be Aboriginal or not, in this case they
would be Aboriginal because it's Aboriginal land, is a sensible idea at all.
I think that if they want us to find housing for Aboriginal people in Redfern
or Waterloo of 62 dwellings we can look at that, I'm happy to pursue that,
not a problem but at the moment there are about 19 houses of tenancies involving
Aboriginal people owned by the AHC in or around the block. We can probably
keep that number but actually I would like to see the block becoming a place
for optimism, a place to do with education or the arts or even Aboriginal
commerce or other things. Now, I don't know what the correct answer is, I'm
not seeking to impose a solution on the Aboriginal people, all I've asked
the AHC is to come and join me on a working group, majority of which would
be Aboriginal people, and lets work out a new vision. And if we can work out
a new vision that I feel I can back, there's a high chance of success of becoming
a really positive thing for Aboriginal people then I will then go into bat
for it with the State and Federal government.
REPORTER - Attending a meeting in Redfern overnight, democrat Senator Aden
Ridgeway who said the position of Mr Sartor is quite unbelievable.
RIDGEWAY - If it isn't blatant racism then that comes fairly close to it
where the State Minister Frank Sartor has told the local people and the AHC
that they essentially want no Aboriginal housing on the block. Now my argument
here is basically saying that there's a long-term history, is it okay and
convenient for the government to turn around and say that on the basis of
race of one group that we'll move them. You know what next, will we be asking
the Jewish people from Bondi to move, and the Italians from Leichhardt or
the Chinese from Haymarket just because the developers want prime real estate.
The reality is that this is private land, it's not for the government to dictate
those terms and its up to those people to decide themselves and they should
be given that support. If it happens in Sydney, it can happen anywhere in
the country.
REPORTER - The AHC in Redfern was the first housing collective in Australia
incorporated in 1973. The company was given an initial grant of $530,000 to
purchase and restore the first 29 terrace houses. The Aboriginal population
of Redfern tripled between 1976 and 1981 primarily as a result of the housing
project. The latest development, the Pemulwuy project has been five years
in the making and has received two awards, in 2001 a national award for excellence
in community housing in the category of innovation, and then in 2004 an international
CPTED innovation award from the international security management and crime
prevention institute and the international CPTED association. It's this recognition
for the community social plan that Mr Valilis says despite the Minister's
position, the project of 62 Aboriginal homes will go ahead.
VALILIS - We're going to pursue other sources of assistance, and that's just
not going to include the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, that's all.
REPORTER - Mr Sartor says awards mean little and the housing company needs
government approval.
SARTOR - There's been architectural awards for all sorts of Sydney's most
ugliest buildings at times, the fact that someone has won an architectural
award an inhouse little thing within a profession doesn't tell me that overall
it's in the public interest, okay, we have to as a broader community be comfortable
with the work of this solution, we don't believe that's the right answer.
They need development consent, they need government consent. I'm not supportive
of this project. I've been upfront with them from they day I became Minister,
I've been very straight, I know they're disappointed but I say it's time to
let the past go, lets work on a new future and I'll hold hands with them,
we'll do it, but I need their involvement. I don't wanna be running around
telling them what the answer is, I want them to join my working group to work
out an answer.
BACK TO TOP
Redfern revamp: Sartor seeks $36m
April 11, 2005 SMH
By Tim Dick, Urban Affairs Reporter
The two-month-old Redfern-Waterloo Authority, charged with redeveloping
dilapidated inner-Sydney suburbs, is facing a $28 million cash-flow crisis
because its original budget was flawed and "too optimistic".
To cover the gap, Frank Sartor, the authority's responsible
minister, wants the NSW Government to give it nine annual loans of $4 million
each, or $36 million. And he warns he may be back for more.
The authority was to get a single, interest-free loan of $7.75
million to sustain it before it could make money by developing public land.
It is meant to use those real estate proceeds, rather than government grants,
to change the face of Redfern.
But Mr Sartor submitted a minute to cabinet's budget review
committee, seen by the Herald, in which he admits the authority "is currently
unable to carry out these responsibilities due to insufficient funding".
The single loan is not enough because the "fundamentals
of the budget", on which the Government based its decision six months
ago to set up the authority, now need "revision", it says.
A Premier's Department report in October said the authority
would be "a non-budget dependent agency". It was to fund the redevelopment
of the area entirely by selling public land, save for the one-off loan.
But Mr Sartor's minute says that model failed to provide for
the authority's administration costs and was "too optimistic" in
estimating how quickly it could profit from its real estate business.
Its original budget required it to "generate significant
revenue" in its first two years, by selling or developing the police
station at Redfern and railway land at Eveleigh. It does not now expect to
raise significant amounts for up to four years, blaming problems with public
consultation, "highly contaminated" sites and "significant"
heritage issues.
The minute does not blame the cash-flow crisis on a softer property
market, but says that "as a matter of commercial practice and Government
policy, the [authority] should seek to maximise the returns from these developments".
Additionally, "the sale of government assets to fund operational cost
could be interpreted as a lack of commitment towards the Redfern-Waterloo
community".
Mr Sartor wants $36 million of loans, and permission to raid
the budget of the existing Redfern-Waterloo Partnership Project, to cover
the shortfall until 2014.
He wants to be allowed "to speed the sale" of "surplus
government land" in the area, including significant railway landholdings
in Redfern and Eveleigh, as well as the Redfern school, police station, courthouse
and the Rachel Forster Hospital.
He played down the significance of his request yesterday and
refused to say whether it had been approved. "I'm not at liberty to say,"
he said, directing the Herald to wait for the budget. He was not worried about
the long-term viability of the project, which had only just begun. "I'm
satisfied everything's under control."
His minute warns ministers he may soon be back asking for more.
"It is recommended that cabinet notes the minister's view that Redfern-Waterloo
remains under-resourced, and that supplementary funding may be sought to advance
specific projects in future years," it says.
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NSW misled over Redfern redevelopment costs: Opposition
ABC April 11, 2005
The New South Wales Opposition claims Planning Minister Frank
Sartor has misled the state over how much the redevelopment of parts of inner-Sydney
will cost.
The newly-established Redfern Waterloo Authority is reportedly
facing a budget blow-out.
The Opposition's planning spokeswoman, Peta Seaton, says Mr
Sartor is seeking $36 million for the authority, which is well above original
estimates.
"[He] told everybody that he needed to do this project
but he had the financing under control," Ms Seaton said.
Mr Sartor has dismissed the claims, saying while he cannot disclose
Cabinet's discussions, it is a normal part of the Budget process.
He says the authority has just starting hiring staff and the
Treasury loans are to be paid back.
"There are provisional estimates," Mr Sartor said.
"It's just to do with how much you might borrow, I mean
it's really not a big deal."
Mr Sartor says the development of railway land and other holdings
in Redfern and Waterloo will go ahead.
BACK TO TOP
Redeveloping The Block:
the battle drags on
The South Sydney Herald April 8, 2005 Page 1
Joe Correy
Negotiations between the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) and
the Redfern Waterloo Authority have come to a standstill because of a failure
to agree on what is a sustainable future for The Block. The AHC is committed
to the Pemulwuy Redevelopment Project, which would replace deteriorated terrace
housing on the Block with 62 homes in a low-rise apartment complex.
NSW Minister for Redfern-Waterloo, Frank Sartor, while declining
to talk to the media, sent a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald
on March 8 and described his plans for the Block. "My dialogue with the
company is based on two propositions: Let's set up a working group to develop
a new vision for the Block and its surrounds, and let's not rehouse any more
than the 19 existing tenancies".
Peter Valilis, the AHC's Project Manager, said the AHC is shocked
at the position that the Redfern Waterloo Authority has taken on the future
of The Block. He argues that, until the formation of the Redfern Waterloo
Authority, the NSW Government had publicly supported the Pemulwuy Project
and funded parts of its development.
Valilis said, "For the past three years the Premier's Department
has encouraged us to follow a model of 62 houses. Now Frank Sartor has come
along and demanded we disregard the entire plan. But the Pemulwuy Project
will go ahead with or without the NSW Government".
Zoe Allebone, spokesperson for Frank Sartor said of the Pemulwuy
' Project: "The Minister, doesn't believe reconcentrating potentially,
high-dependency housing on The Block is the way to make the area sustainable".
The AHC agrees with this view, but argues that the Pemulwuy Project is based
on a combination of private home ownership and tenants with mixed socio-economic
backgrounds - not 'high dependency' housing as suggested by Minister Sartor.
Mick Mundine, chief executive of the AHC, said, "five years
of planning has shown us that we can't compromise the figure of 62 houses
because it is the number of properties we need to create a safe and sustainable
environment". In response to reports that the Redfern Waterloo Authority
wanted `no black faces on the Block', Mundine said: "The Aboriginal.
people fought hard to secure this land, and now it seems likely that we'll
have to fight to rebuild the houses on it. Frank Sartor can`t just come in
here and use standover tactics to tell us what the NSW Government wants this
company to do".
However, Sartor's tough talk has gained support from property
developers interested in the area. Property Council of Australia NSW Executive
Director, Ken Morrison, has publicly said: "There is no way that Redfern
is going to be that commercial mini-centre with Aboriginal housing and The
Block still in place. We need to sort that out before any private investors
will be interested". When asked by, the South Sydney Herald about the
comment, Morrison said, "We support the Redfern Waterloo Authority in
their plans for the Block. I don't think it's unreasonable that they have
an agenda of urban renewal, and the NSW Government's vision is unlikely to
be achievable with a residential area in the Redfern Station precinct".
At present, talks between the AHC and the Redfern Waterloo Authority
have ceased because Minister Sartor will only conduct negotiations through
a "working body", tentatively known as the Pemulwuy Vision Taskforce.
A document obtained by the South Sydney Herald, known as the Pemulwuy Vision
Taskforce Brief, detailed the conditions of the agenda for the proposed committee.
They were that the AHC abandon the Pemulwuy Project and allow the committee
to decide on a new vision for what is built on The Block. Representatives
on the Pemulwuy Vision Taskforce, other than the AHC, would be selected from
a list provided by Minister Sartor. A final report, with recommendation, would
be due on June 30 2005.
Valilis said, "That's unacceptable. The Minister would
have authority over the group and the final say on its decision. We won't
place the future of the Block in the hands of the Frank Sartor. Of the representatives
he suggested for the Taskforce, hardly any had experience in planning, but
he expected the committee to come up with a better plan than the Pemulwuy
Project in only five months. Negotiations with the State Government have finished
as far as we're concerned. They gave us: a take-it-or-leave-it deal and we
said, no thanks."
Robert Domm, CEO of the Redfern Waterloo Authority, when questioned
about the proposed committee said: "The Aboriginal Housing Company has
been invited to take part in a dialogue about a sustainable future for The
Block. Our motives are genuine". He refused to say whether the Redfern
Waterloo Authority would compromise on the conditions of the Pemulwuy Vision
Taskforce, which have made further negotiations unlikely.
The AHC will now form their own committee, also to be known
as the Pemulwuy Vision Taskforce, which will assess the Pemulwuy Project and
offer advice on any changes that would make the plan more sustainable. The
panel will include experts who are associated with the Sydney Metropolitan
Strategy, the Chamber of Commerce, Sydney University, local community groups,
and also a founder of the Aboriginal Housing Office.
There has also been a swell of support for the project within
the City of Sydney Council. Green's Councillor Chris Harris said, "There
is no formal resolution yet, but Chief Executive Peter Seamer is preparing
a report on how we could form a consortium composed of the Aboriginal Housing
Company, City of Sydney Council, and a Federal funding body that could supply
money for the Pemulwuy Redevelopment Project. I'm confident council would
support such a resolution. We aren't expecting the NSW Government to be a
part of the consortium because they don't want Aboriginal housing on The Block."
NSW Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Brad Hazzard, told
the South Sydney Herald that the Carr Government has adopted the wrong approach
towards The Block. "The NSW Government is clearly wrong. A top-down solution
will not work and never has in indigenous communities. If we gain power, we'll
talk to the community and work out what's good for the local area. I don't
see any problems that would prevent the Pemulwuy project from getting funding
from a Coalition Government".
BACK TO TOP
Joining Forces for
Redfern
Sydney Central Wednesday April 6 2005 Page 10
Plans for redeveloping The Block are engaging politicians from
all sides. Report Alexandra Walker
The Aboriginal Housing Company's plan to redevelop The Block
received a boost this week, as councillors from the City of Sydney met with
a Federal Government agency to discuss funding for the project.
Greens councillor Chris Harris, Deputy Lord Mayor John McInerney
and the council's general manager Peter Seamer met with representatives from
the office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination on Tuesday.
The group met to look into the possibility of putting together
a consortium to bankroll the AHC's Pemulway Project, which involves building
62 units and townhouses on the Redfern site.
Cr Harris raised the idea of a consortium with the council and
said the project has the support of City of Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore.
"They own the land and they are entitled to develop it,"
Cr Harris said.
"They aren't going to wear having a token Aboriginal presence
on that land."
While Cr Harris said that nothing was concrete "just yet",
he said he was confident there would be money made available for the project.
AHC spokesman Peter Valilis said the company were "absolutely"
in support of the idea of a consortium.
"We've always said that the funding for this project should
come from a consortium incorporating all levels of government, as well as
private funding," Mr Valilis said.
He said that while the AHC had been in talks with the Redfern
Waterloo Authority (RWA) over the project, they had been unable to agree on
key details.
"We share a lot of common ground with the RWA, but we can't
agree on the number of houses because we feel that cutting the number would
compromise the sustainability of the project," Mr Valilis said.
"The official position of the AHC is that we've been made
a `take it or leave it' deal and the board has chosen to leave it."
A spokeswoman for the minister in charge of the Redfern Waterloo
Authority, Frank Sartor said that the minister's door was open to the AHC.
But she said Mr Sartor did not believe that the Pemulway Project
was a sustainable vision for The Block because he believes it is likely to
lead to a reconcentration of high dependency housing.
BACK TO TOP
Sartor out to remove Aboriginal housing
From Green Left Weekly, March 23, 2005
Norman Brewer, Sydney
“On the hottest day last month, the [NSW] minister responsible
for Redfern, Frank Sartor, walked into the offices of the Aboriginal Housing
Company [AHC] and dropped a bombshell: he didn’t want any Aboriginal
housing on the Block.”
This was how Tim Dick, the Sydney Morning Herald’s urban
affairs reporter, began an article headlined “Hardly a black face on
the Block — Sartor’s vision for Redfern”, carried in the paper’s
March 5 edition.
Sartor has been commissioned by NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr to
supervise the construction of an up-market commercial corridor through the
inner-city suburb of Redfern.
Dick reported that the SMH had obtained a confidential briefing
paper prepared by the AHC in which is directors claimed “Sartor [had]
said that if he was forced to accept some Aboriginal housing, he would consider
no more than 20 homes, as long as few of them were for affordable housing
and the remaining land was used for other purposes”.
The briefing paper said either option would force the company
“to abandon its charter” to provide affordable housing. The SMH
quoted the briefing paper as saying: “The AHC has promised to deliver
62 houses on the Block for five years with the state government's blessing
and assistance ...
“By not providing an adequate amount of houses on the Block,
or something other than houses, the AHC loses the opportunity to create a
beacon of hope for the next generation ...
“There is a very real possibility that the minister's opinion
is being influenced by developers who have publicly stated they would like
to see no Aborigines living on the Block before they invest in Redfern.”
According to the March 11 Australian Financial Review, a few
days after his outburst to the AHC, Sartor told the Property Council of Australia
that “the government would not hand over a cent to replace Aboriginal
public housing once the Block is razed”.
The AFR also reported that at the same PCA meeting the council’s
NSW executive director Ken Morrison said: “There is no way that Redfern
is going to be that commercial mini-centre with Aboriginal housing and the
Block still in place. We need to sort that out before any private investors
will be interested.”.
BACK TO TOP
Psst: Sydney's future is on the line
March 15, 2005 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
The State Government has big plans to redevelop areas of the
city, but Elizabeth Farrelly is yet to be convinced.
Three planning inquiries are in town. Orange Grove gets the
press, mainly for its giggle value, with the assistant Minister for Planning
playing Dory ("just keep swimming, uh, I don't remember, just keep swimming")
and Frank Lowy playing Bruce, the friendly shark. It's kinda sweet. But the
other two - the upper house inquiry into the management of the Sydney Harbour
Foreshore Authority (SHFA) and the Port Botany Expansion inquiry - are, like,
serious. Between them, or even singly, they could shape Sydney for decades.
But is anyone talking about them? Anyone?
Nah, forget it. The Ports proposal is only the biggest infrastructure
DA this state has seen in 10 years. Freight is only the biggest transport
issue facing this city - like how we get the fridges and BMWs distributed
without terminal sclerosis. And SHFA is only the model for current and future
government sell-offs including the Cooks Cove-Kogarah golf course shenanigans
and Redfern-no black faces-Waterloo. But what the heck? Don't think about
it. Do NOT get interested. Trust them. It'll be fine.
The ports expansion gets a real commission of inquiry, at least,
and is serious enough for Botany Council to have QCs attending throughout
even if the press isn't that bothered. But the SHFA inquiry is an upper house
job and no one seems to be taking it terribly seriously, least of all the
MLCs themselves.
The only person treating the inquiry with the respect it deserves
is SHFA's former chairman, Gerry "the Cardinal" Gleeson, who retired
ill between announcement and commencement. Still, I, for one, have been hanging
on their transcripts. And an entertaining business it is.
What do we learn, from 130-odd Hansard pages? Well, first that
SHFA has been either terribly unlucky or just a tad careless, having lurched
from controversy to catastrophe across much of Sydney: Pyrmont, the Fish Markets,
Luna Park, the Australian Technology Park (ATP) at Redfern and Cooks Cove,
Arncliffe. It could be simple incompetence, but some see darker secrets.
The submissions also show a clear divide between the ins and
the outs on the communication front of this notoriously occult organisation.
To the Government and pro-development witnesses (Waterways Authority, Tourism
Task Force, Property Council, the ins), everything SHFA is excellent; professional,
focused and innovative. From the community organisations, though, there's
a near-unanimous view of SHFA as obscure, inconsistent, over-intimate with
developers and deeply conflicted in its public-interest performance.
Joseph Glascott, OAM, for example, chairman of the Defenders
of Sydney Harbour Foreshores, says the authority's role seems to be entirely
that of identifying and selling off foreshore sites for private development.
Michael Rolfe, of the Sydney Harbour and Foreshores Committee, sees tension
between SHFA's roles as landowner and ministerial adviser. The Uniting Church's
Harris Centre reports broad community mistrust generated by consultation happening
too often after the event.
The Protectors of Sydney Foreshore note conflicts of interest
and a lack of probity and transparency, and queries the closeness of the SHFA-developer
relationship, SHFA's excessive secrecy and a lack of financial transparency.
Well, you might shrug, resident anti-development ratbags. But
look at the issues. The development corporation is conflict of interest made
manifest. Its prototype, invented by Margaret Thatcher in 1981, was the London
Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC). Her intention was to sweep away
inertia and red tape but the reality, according to British writer David Widgery,
was a highly secretive engine of corruption and a government-financed estate
agent.
It had the appeal of startling simplicity: making the development
corporation both sole landowner and planning authority positioned it to reap
huge gains from comparatively minor investment in degraded urban areas. This
was meant to generate private funding for public services. But there was nothing
like the same incentive towards the services half of the equation. In London,
for instance, the LDDC's residue was the $4 billion Canary Wharf Tower, where
low prices and fat tax breaks meant the developer could offer plush office
space at half the rate of the City of London, while tuberculosis levels in
adjacent Canning Town remain the highest in the UK.
Think that's funny? The Cooks Cove redevelopment is more comic
still.
It's a 100-hectare site, all green on current maps, adjacent
to the Sydney international terminal and currently occupied by Kogarah Golf
Club, Barton Park and the St George Soccer Club. Landowners are the golf club,
two government agencies, and the Crown. The proposal, cooked up by the golf
club, the developer Harrington (now Trafalgar) Properties and the NSW Department
of State and Regional Development, is to shift the golf club south onto Barton
Park (which is too close to the east-west runway, otherwise they'd just develop
that) and replace it with a high-tech business park. Close to the airport,
with its own 11-storey hotel and right beside the links. What more could the
blow-in businessperson want?
Of course the public loses - bang goes Barton Park, in exchange
for two pocket parks and a foreshore walk - but they should be proud, shouldn't
they, to have such a white-collar magnet in the 'hood?
Will it work? Sure - since it's being managed by none other
than SHFA. It's not called SHFA, but the Cooks Cove Development Corporation
(CCDC). But the CCDC has no staff, no board members and no budget, other than
SHFA's. Who were the board, when the project was being cooked up? Gerry Gleeson,
of course, in the chair. Frank Sartor, now member for nearby Rockdale; Greg
Robinson, then CEO of SHFA, later ICACed for strange dealings and sacked (by
Sartor) as CEO of Sydney Water; and a few colour-by-numbers.
And why would you think it a bad omen that the very same SHFA
managed Sydney's other hi-tech park, the ATP, until it became such a basket-case
it needed its own development corp, the even-more-extreme Redfern-Waterloo
Authority (RWA), specially set up under the care and control of, yup, Frank
Sartor? Surely you wouldn't worry that Sartor is on record as applying the
same attitude to Rockdale's wetlands as to Redfern's blacks? Or see any connection
between the RWA Act, designed for limitlessly elastic boundaries; the two
tech-parks; the Minister-for-Everything's constituency in Rockdale and ownership
of Redfern; and the Government's continuing hype about the CBD-to-airport
corridor as the engine of the Australian economy, would you?
Nah. Don't worry about it. Trust them. And remember - you heard
it here first.
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Tough-talking Sartor targets the
Block
11th March 2005 - Australian Financial Review
By Tina Perinotto
They say Frank Sartor has a good chance of being the next premier of NSW.
He certainly talks the right way. Tough. Last week he was reported as saying
there would be no more Aborigines in Redfern.
Sartor, NSW Minister for Energy and Utilities is the state government's answer
to one of its toughest planning challenges: heading the newly created Redfern-Waterloo
Authority.
The authority's job is to redevelop the decades-old slums of Aboriginal housing
in the infamous Block around Eveleigh Street and the nasty public housing
in Waterloo, now potentially prime inner-city real estate.
Yesterday, at a Property Council of Australia's lunch at the Westin in Sydney,
Sartor said stories of "no more blacks" in Redfern were exaggerated.
What he means is that the government would not hand over a cent to replace
Aboriginal public housing once the Block is razed.
He scoffs at accusations that developers are poised to move in on the Block.
He says the authority will have three priority areas: further development
of the Australian Technology Park, the North Eveleigh Precinct and the Block.
The public housing and high rise around Waterloo will be tackled in the longer
term.
The technology park, which is only 30 per cent developed and riddled with
debt, is a prime opportunity for development of employment opportunities.
A good start would be to better connect it to its surrounding resources such
as the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and universities.
Sartor says the technology park is "Balkanised" at present and
difficult to get to.
Another opportunity is redeveloping the Redfern station precinct but this
would not work before solving the social problems at the Block, which is on
the station's doorstep.
Property Council of Australia NSW executive director Ken Morrison says the
authority should make the Block a priority.
"There is no way that Redfern is going to be that commercial mini-centre
with Aboriginal housing and the Block still in place," he says. "We
need to sort that out before any private investors will be interested."
But Morrison has given the thumbs up to the model of the authority, saying
it will be capable of tackling the tough decisions necessary to bring change.
"The government should look at other areas where it will want to marry
up planning objectives with the objectives of increasing housing densities."
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Sartor is undoing
years of work on the Block
SMH Letters 11th March 2005
With all due respect to Frank Sartor (Letters, March 8), the
Aboriginal Housing Company has spent the past five years planning a sustainable
and responsible vision for the Block. Most importantly, the vision is an Aboriginal
vision and not one handed down by government in the typical mission manager
style of the past 200 years.
For the record, over the past three years the NSW Government
has supported, encouraged and even funded the plans developed by the company
for 62 Aboriginal homes on the Block.
The suggestion now that the company's proposal is an experiment
that reconcentrates high-dependency housing and a repeat of previous mistakes
is bewildering, to say the least. We are at a loss to understand the minister's
opposition to the project, given that all the issues he has raised as a concern
have been resolved with the assistance of the NSW Government over the past
couple of years.
Michael Mundine snr CEO, Redfern Aboriginal Housing Company,
Redfern
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No point arguing around
the Block all over again
March 8th 2005 - SMH
In reading your Letters section (March 7) one might be forgiven
for thinking it is Groundhog Day. The two hoary old untruths are back: it's
a developer-led conspiracy and people who want a new and sustainable vision
for Redfern's Block must be racist. What rubbish. As someone who chaired the
Aboriginal Housing Company's advisory committee in the 1980s, I believe it's
time to find a new vision for the Block and its immediate environs.
The company's proposal calls for 62 medium-density dwellings
on the Block. But reconcentrating high-dependency housing there is a repeat
of previous mistakes. Moreover, the Government is being asked to find $25
million to $30 million for this experiment.
My dialogue with the company is based on two propositions: let's
set up a working group to develop a new vision for the Block and its surrounds,
and let's not rehouse any more than the 19 existing tenancies. The Government
would find the balance of the proposed 62 tenancies nearby.
The Eveleigh Street precinct needs to once again become a place
of optimism and positive expression for Aboriginal people - a positive icon,
not a negative icon. It's time to find a sustainable solution.
Frank Sartor Minister responsible for Redfern, Sydney.
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Australian
Democrat Speeches
8 March 2005
Location: Parliament House - Canberra
Senator Aden Ridgeway
Portfolio: Indigenous Affairs
Senator Aden Ridgeway speaks on the Adjournment: Hardly a Black face on the
Block in Redfern
"Hardly a Black face on the Block in Redfern"
I want to speak tonight about an issue that should be important to all Australians,
and I would hope that it receives a lot more debatecertainly in Sydney. I
think it goes to the question of a prevailing attitude in relation to Indigenous
affairs in this country and that there is an injustice waiting to happen.
It is not a popular issue but one that people cringe at and tend to walk away
from, and this is the question of Redfern. I raise this because there is no
other neighbourhood in this nation that carries as much weight with the mere
mention of its name. Even though there are large Indigenous populations in
areas of Western Sydney, it is Redfern that is seen as Sydney's black heartspecifically
the area known as `the Block', which is bounded by Eveleigh, Louis, Caroline
and Vine Streets.
I was alarmedI would hope like many other Sydneysiderswhen I woke up at home
in Sydney on Saturday morning to read the news on the front page of the Sydney
Morning Herald that the new minister responsible for Redfern, Frank Sartor,
had told the local Aboriginal housing company in Redfern that he wants no
Aboriginal housing on the Block. Frank Sartor has already revealed that the
heritage laws will no longer apply to four sites around Redfern: the Australian
Technology Park, Eveleigh railway workshop, the 23-hectare public housing
estate and the Block. It is almost stating the obvious to say that Aboriginal
people have lived in Redfern for 60,000 years; but, to be more specific, it
has been the main area in Sydney where Aboriginal people have lived since
the 1930sattracted mostly by the work at the nearby Eveleigh railway yards.
Indeed, when my family first came to Sydney from the North Coast, we stayed
first in Caroline Street and then lived around Redfern, Alexandria and Waterloo,
because that was where Aboriginal people stayed when they came to Sydney.
The Redfern Indigenous community have been involved in the conception and
development of Indigenous community control services since the 1970s and were
amongst the first to look at the establishment of legal services, medical
services and the housing company, to name a few. I think that they provided
the models for a way forward, but there have been some difficulties along
the way. One issue was the lack of affordable housing for Redfern's increasing
population, and it resulted in an extreme housing crisis, with people living
in the Black Theatre, then the Catholic church hall and then eventually squatting
in houses in Louis Street on the Block. In 1973, after much publicity and
despite protests from non-Indigenous residents and the South Sydney Council,
the houses within the Block were bought by the Commonwealth government and
given to the Aboriginal housing company. The aim at that time was to provide
a communal living environment run by Indigenous people, for Indigenous residents,
with affordable rent.
As the housing company have promised to deliver some 62 new houses on the
Block, the new minister, sadly, announced that in the brave new world of Redfern
there will be hardly a black face on the Block. After the Redfern riot of
February last year, the New South Wales government's response of 54 extra
police and the Redfern-Waterloo Authority does not take into account or appreciate
the nature of the long relationship between Indigenous people in Redfernespecially
the Blockthat goes back over a significant period of time.
The New South Wales government's response is a tired and lazy solution that
says that the only way forward is to open up Redfern to the free market. I
read Frank Sartor's letter in the Sydney Morning Herald today, about accusations
about the government's response being racist, but if it does not come close
to it I do not know what does. It is the likes of which we have not heard
for a long time: the targeting of one race of people for exclusion. As many
letters in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald pointed out, would Mr Sartor
call for the removal of Jewish people from Bondi? Would he call for the removal
of Italians from Leichhardt? Would they remove the Chinese from Haymarket
if the developers needed that particular land? Nowhere in Mr Sartor's grand
whitewashing plan for Redfern can Indigenous people on low incomes buy affordable
housing. It is shameful that there is no talk about the people in Redfern
and in the Block having aspirations to own their own home.
This is something that the government has been going on about for some time:
moving from communal to individual ownership, yet we do not talk about and
apply that same concept in places like Redfern. I think in this respect we
have to ask the question: why can't Indigenous people hold prime real estate
in this country and why can't they make something from it? In this plan there
is still only talk about making the local residents just tenants; or, worse
still, attempting to relocate them completelyprobably to some far-off place
like Macquarie Fields. We saw what happened there and we know it is going
to happen again in the future.
It is no accident that the Block itself is in the state it is. It is the
result of decisions and policies that have maintained both poverty and crimeand,
yes, we do need to tackle those issues, but doing it this way is not the best
way forward. I think there is a lot of credence in looking at what happened
in Harlem with redevelopment there. Certainly the problems were far worse
than what they are in Redfernand probably will ever beand it is now back on
the tourist map. People have not had to relocate. In the process, even former
US President Bill Clinton relocated his office to Harlem. I see no reason
why we ought not venture down a similar path and be brave enough to do the
right thingthe morally correct thing. Redfern is, in my mind at least, the
best example of a remote community in the biggest and wealthiest city, where
local people cannot attract local jobs, they are not working in the local
retail outlet centres, and they have not got all of life's opportunities at
their fingertips. They are not unlike everyone here. In that respect it makes
it harder to understand why it is that these people do not get the same life
choice to be able to own their own home.
Fingers are being pointed at the housing company, and people are saying that
it has to deal with every problem on the Blockjust because it has title to
the land. The point I make here is that it is a housing company; it is set
up to deal with the provision of housing. How does a housing company also
deal with the issues of law and order, drugs, alcohol abuse, the abuse of
women and children and so on? It simply cannot. That solution is the wrong
way forward. It also raises a question. The housing company holds title to
land that is held privately. How can a government, even using some notion
of just terms compensation, all of a sudden decide to single out one group
as against the rest and say that they are going to relocate them? It is an
absolute travesty; it is a miscarriage of justice waiting to happen. That
is why this issue does need to be raised.
Most of all, I accept the weight of public opinion: the range of problems
that have existed in the Redfern community and in communities right across
the country hardly garners support from the broader community to be able to
recognise what is there. The sad thing about the whole debate is that even
when you speak to local people they have somehow become immune or conditioned
to accepting that this is pretty normalthere is no need to kick up a fuss
or resist what the government proposes and it is okay that on privately held
land, irrespective of whom it is held by, the minister can step forward and
dictate what is going to happen in respect of that land. It seems to me that
if the new authority goes ahead with its plans, its 'us and them' mentality
will perpetuate and entrench inequality. Whether we talk about it in terms
of reconciliation or practical outcomes, we have to recognise that the whole
approach is one that entrenches the wrong outcomes and entrenches a perceived
inequality that sometimes we fail to see.
This is to me a perfect opportunity for both black and white leaders to show
leadership to create a relationship between the Redfern community and the
business community. We have to realise that you cannot just draw this artificial
line around the Block to the exclusion of what is happening beyond that. There
are the non-Indigenous residents and the business community. If we expect
to fix the problems in Redfern we also have to include those people as stakeholdersas
people who have an interestand make sure that they are involved in finding
the solutions. We are not doing any of that. We are focusing on a geographical
area and treating it very differently from what any person in this place would
expect irrespective of where they live in the country.
Whilst there is a unique opportunity and whilst I have read Mr Sartor's response
in today's Sydney Morning Herald, I think that we really do need to recognise
that something is wrong, something is amiss. We should not allow this sort
of injustice to occur. If it happens here with Indigenous peopleand I accept
that it does not always attract full public community supportit can happen
anywhere in the country to any other group. If the law is meant to apply equally
and to be colour blind, the statue of the lady who sits up there with the
blindfold has to make sure it applies here as well.
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It's
time for a Frank explanation of Redfern plan
March 7, 2005 - SMH
By Pat Keating
So Frank Sartor bows to the big developers and abolishes Aboriginal
accommodation on the Block in Redfern ("Hardly a black face on the Block
- Sartor's vision for Redfern", Herald, March 5-6). Their housing will
be dispersed throughout the suburbs, presumably because developers state that
house buyers would prefer not to live in an area with a predominance of Aboriginal
neighbours.
What an outcry there would be if other groups, who prefer to live in proximity
to their own kind, such as the Jews in Bondi or the fundamental Christians
in the Hills area or the Liberals on the North Shore, were told to leave their
chosen home sites, in case prospective buyers were turned off by their presence.
But, of course, those groups are white and privileged.
Inner Redfern was selected for Aboriginal housing in the 1970s, when racial
discrimination and bigotry were actually decreasing. Does this mean that in
the past several decades both state and federal governments have reverted
to the policy of segregation for our Aboriginal citizens?
Or is it just another example of Big Developers rule, OK?
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Hardly a black face on the Block - Sartor's vision
for Redfern
March 5, 2005 - SMH Page 1
By Tim Dick, Urban Affairs Reporter
On the hottest day last month, the minister responsible for
Redfern, Frank Sartor, walked into the offices of the Aboriginal Housing Company
and dropped a bombshell: he didn't want any Aboriginal housing on the Block.
He spoke on the evening before the board of his new Redfern-Waterloo
Authority met for the first time, just metres away from the site of last year's
riots near Redfern railway station.
The reaction among the company's assembled Aboriginal directors
was almost as hot as the 38-degree temperature outside. According to the directors,
Mr Sartor said he wanted no Aboriginal housing on what has long been the focal
point of urban Aboriginal life in Australia - a point his spokeswoman did
not deny yesterday.
The company had planned to build 62 new homes on the Block,
but Mr Sartor's rejection of this prompted one of its directors, Peter Walker,
to say: "I believe ... the Government, for whom Mr Sartor represents,
are wanting no, to be blunt, no black faces on the Block. That's the position
pushed by some property developers. I, as a director, am totally against that."
According to a confidential briefing paper prepared by the housing company,
Mr Sartor said if he was forced to accept some Aboriginal housing, he would
consider no more than 20 homes, as long as few of them were for affordable
housing and the remaining land was used for other purposes.
The paper, obtained by the Herald, said either option would
force the company "to abandon its charter" to provide affordable
housing. "The AHC has promised to deliver 62 houses on the Block for
five years with the State Government's blessing and assistance, there will
have to be some serious consideration as to how the AHC can back down from
this promise without looking like it is bowing to Government pressure ...
"By not providing an adequate amount of houses on the Block,
or something other than houses, the AHC loses the opportunity to create a
beacon of hope for the next generation ... Fewer people living on the Block
didn't stop the riot from happening. Whereas our research shows that, if we
had more good families on the Block, we could have eliminated the problems
before they got out of hand ...
"There is a very real possibility that the minister's opinion
is being influenced by developers who have publicly stated they would like
to see no Aborigines living on the Block before they invest in Redfern ...
The Minister strongly indicated that the pressure was on him to cut a deal
well before the next election."
Mr Sartor's spokeswoman, Zoe Allebone, said he had made it clear
he did not believe the 62-house plan was "a sustainable vision for the
Block" but declined to say why.
"The minister also made it clear there's no intention to
reduce the level of public housing or Aboriginal housing in Redfern or Waterloo,"
she said.
The Government's position is that any Aborigines moved out of
the Block would be accommodated elsewhere in the two suburbs.
Mr Walker, recalling the meeting with Mr Sartor, said he "came
across pretty strong," making it clear he wanted no Aboriginal accommodation
on the Block. Another director, Bruce Gale, said: "I wasn't happy when
Sartor took over. He's got an agenda. He doesn't want any Aborigines in Redfern.
He wants the area developed totally commercial ... The Block is a significant
area for Aboriginal people. They're not going to move out of it."
The community would be "livid" if Mr Sartor got his
way and "I want Frank at the head of the queue when the riots start".
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Council
wary of Redfern revamp - SMH
February 22, 2005 - SMH
By Tim Dick
There will be no City of Sydney representative on the new Redfern-Waterloo
Authority board, after the council decided to snub an invitation because of
concerns over "draconian" confidentiality clauses.
The Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, would be liable for an $11,000 fine if she
sat on the board and proceeded to reveal confidential details of its work.
Further media guidelines say members should not criticise the authority or
any State Government policy and seek the guidance of authority CEO, Robert
Domm, in preparing speech notes. Mr Domm, the City of Sydney's former general
manager, had a public falling out with Cr Moore and her deputy, John McInerney,
last year. He was appointed by former lord mayor and now minister responsible
for Redfern, Frank Sartor, to head the body charged with rebuilding one of
Sydney's most troubled suburbs.
Cr Moore has strongly criticised the authority's existence, saying it has
"unfettered power" to override normal planning controls.
At last night's council meeting, she changed her mind about appointing the
council's new general manager, Peter Seamer, to the board, deciding instead
to seek to establish a "working group" with the authority.
Before passing a self-congratulatory motion about the New Year's Eve festivities,
Cr Moore said the controversial disco ball may become a permanent feature
in central Sydney. After debuting on New Year's Eve, it was hung on the Harbour
Bridge for the duration of the Sydney Festival, but has now been removed and
dismantled.
The council is also investigating installing a permanent rainbow flag, the
international symbol of gay rights, at the heart of gay Sydney. Cr Moore directed
officials to ask gay groups for their views on how best to permanently acknowledge
the birthplace of Mardi Gras.
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Moore
rethinks her Redfern job
February 19, 2005 - SMH
By Darren Goodsir, Urban Affairs Editor
The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, is considering stepping down from
the government body given the task of rejuvenating the troubled inner suburbs
of Redfern and Waterloo.
Concerned that her membership of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority would effectively
gag her from speaking out on social issues and that she is the only politician
on the 10-person board, Councillor Moore will ask other councillors if she
should resign.
Cr Moore is the state member for Bligh, an electorate which takes in the
disadvantaged suburbs. She will present a mayoral minute at the first full
council meeting of the year on Monday.
Cr Moore has relentlessly attacked the authority since its inception last
October and she reportedly now wants to raise the prospect of the city's new
general manager, Peter Seamer, taking her authority position. Mr Seamer takes
up his Sydney Council post on Monday.
After tabling the minute, Cr Moore will ask other councillors for their views
on what representation the city should have on the board, which held its first
meeting on February 9. Cr Moore was the only board member not to attend that
meeting.
If Cr Moore did take up the position, she would sit alongside the former
lord mayor, Lucy Turnbull, and the city's previous general manager, Robert
Domm, with whom she dramatically split last year after a feud over development
along the city-airport corridor.
Just a few weeks after leaving, and lambasting Cr Moore for being out of
touch, indecisive and building "a royal court of advisers", Mr Domm
was appointed by Frank Sartor, the minister in charge of the authority's operations,
to become its inaugural chief executive. Mr Domm was the previous chief of
staff to Mr Sartor when he was lord mayor.
On the eve of the first meeting, Cr Moore faxed a letter to the board's secretariat,
explaining she would be unable to attend because she had not had sufficient
time to discuss the position with other councillors. Before Christmas, responding
to a question from Cr Shayne Mallard, she argued she had not been formally
invited to join the board, despite her involvement being mentioned in Parliament
and the media.
The Premier, Bob Carr, declared Cr Moore as the first board member at the
time he revealed his intention to set up the board, which is chaired by David
Richmond, the former head of the Olympic Co-ordinating Authority.
Other members include the renowned architect Richard Johnson, indigenous
leader Marcia Ella-Duncan, the chairman of the NSW Heritage Council, Michael
Collins and Sam Mostyn, an executive with the Insurance Australia Group.
The head of the Premier's Department, Col Gellatly, and the director-general
of the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources, Jennifer
Westacott, are also on the board.
Cr Moore and the other members were appointed by the NSW Governor, Marie
Bashir, last month, and sent board papers.
Mr Sartor said he was extremely disappointed by Cr Moore's failure to attend
the first meeting, and accused her of indulging in a "semantic debate"
about whether she had received a written invitation.
"This is a very high level board, which had a very positive first meeting,
starting a dialogue on how to deliver positive outcomes," he said.
"Obviously, I am very disappointed for her not attending, but I am not
interested in semantics.
"Our invitation is an honest and earnest one."
An authority to change
* The Redfern-Waterloo Authority was set up last year to assume control for
improving housing, transport, and employment opportunities.
* It has extraordinary powers to override planning and heritage controls,
and even annex other parts of NSW to be under its rule.
* Clover Moore, and other independents, attacked what they described as undemocratic
powers, accusing the Carr Government of setting up a cash cow and siding with
developers.
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Redfern
team set for long haul
January 15, 2005 - SMH
By Tim Dick
Work on the $5 billion redevelopment of Redfern and Waterloo will begin on
Monday, but the governing authority says any physical developments are still
a long way off.
The Government has a decade-long plan to demolish Waterloo's residential
towers and bring in thousands of private renters, seeking to double the area's
population in an attempt to alleviate its social problems.
Zoe Allebone, spokeswoman for the responsible minister, Frank Sartor, said:
"This is a long-term plan to revitalise Redfern. Changes aren't going
to happen overnight and we're going to be listening to the community as we
develop a way forward."
On Monday Robert Domm, the former general manager of the City of Sydney council,
will join a skeleton staff in new offices on the top floor of one of the former
TNT towers near Redfern Station.
The space is being leased from the council, which will lose much of its control
over the area from Monday, although the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, is on the
board. She will join her predecessor, Lucy Turnbull, at the first meeting
next month, although Ms Allebone said no date had been set.
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