This page of our website contains all the media articles
(80) about issues relevent to the Block for the year 2006
Article Index - [2008] - [2007]
- [2006] - [2005]
- [2004]
2006/Dec/13 Watkins visits the
Block in Redfern - AHC
2006/Dec/10 Street drinking banned
at casino and on Block - SMH
2006/Nov/25 Rebuilding the Block
- SMH
2006/Nov/24 Alan Jones interviews
Morris Iemma - 2GB
2006/Nov/20 List of demands sent
to Morris Iemma - AHC
2006/Nov/14 Protest Rally at Parliament
House - AHC
2006/Nov/09 Sex scandal 'cover-up'
vow - SMH
2006/Nov/05 Truth on The Block.
Beyond compliance journalism! - South Sydney Herald
2006/Oct/31 Redfern and Putney
lend their support to the Leppington community - AHC
2006/Oct/27 Redfern and Leppington
join forces against Sartor - AHC
2006/Oct/25 3A projects add a
new dimension to rules - SMH
2006/Oct/19 Letter to the editor
- SMH
2006/Oct/18 Not hungry, just Aboriginal
kitsch, says former PM - SMH
2006/Sep/20 Parliament House Reconciliation
Forum - Michael Mundine
2006/Sep/13 Lost: another opportunity
for excitement - SMH
2006/Sep/12 UN Special Rapporteur
puzzled over obstacles to Pemulwuy Project - South Sydney Herald
2006/Sep/08 FinalL RWA Built Environment
Plan Released - Clover Moore's Media Release
2006/Sep/06 No favours for Aboriginal
developer - SMH
2006/Sep/03 What’s the future
of the Block? - Green Left Weekly
2006/Aug/31 Doing their Block:
blueprint for change upsets Redfern - SMH
2006/Aug/31 Sartor outlines final
Redfern plan - Australian Financial Review
2006/Aug/31 Comments to 'Locals
block Redfern revamp' - The Daily Telegraph
2006/Aug/31 Locals block Redfern
revamp - The Daily Telegraph
2006/Aug/28 Department of Aboriginal
Affairs and Redfern - NSW Parliament Transcript
2006/Aug/27 Sartor releases final
development plans for Redfern-Waterloo - South Sydney Herald
2006/Aug/18 Nothing is a surprise
in the developers' state - SMH
2006/Aug/13 Pemulwuy lives, say
hundreds who attend Block protest - South Sydney Herald
2006/Aug/12 Mundine considering
political career - SecondsOut
2006/Aug/12 Mundine undecided
- The Border Mail
2006/Aug/11 Will Mundine will
stand at the next election? - The World Today
2006/Aug/11 Comments to 'Champion
boxer considers politics' - The Courier Mail
2006/Aug/11 Champion
boxer considers politics - The Courier Mail
2006/Aug/11 Mundine yet to declare
his political intentions - Message Stick
2006/Aug/10 Boxer Mundine keen
to move into politics - SMH
2006/Aug/07 Tebbitt must cover
Block - Letter to the Editor
2006/Aug/06 Mundine squares up
to Carmel for political knockout - SMH
2006/Jul/25 Black and White unite
to keep The Block in Aboriginal hands - AHC
2006/Jul/24 Frankly, we do give
a damn - Daily Telegraph
2006/Jul/21 Young ideas for a
new Redfern - University of Sydney News
2006/Jul/20 Now was this really
a focus on Redfem?
2006/Jun/29 Frankly, these are
no Sartorial masterpieces - REDWatch
2006/Jun/17 Not in Frank's back
yard - Daily Telegraph
2006/Jun/14 Once-bullied Sartor
grows up and becomes a bully - SMH
2006/Jun/09 Slum city fears as
Sartor grabs massive project - SMH
2006/Jun/06 Street drinking bans
spark fear on Block -SMH
2006/Jun/03 Sartor slammed over
CUB - The Australian
2006/May/27 Money spent on votes,
not Aborigines - SMH
2006/May/05 Rock The Block - SMH
2006/May/03 Redfern Waterloo Residents
Demand SEPP be Withdrawn - Message Stick
2006/Apr/15 Redfern plan threatens
cultural identity, critics say - SMH
2006/Apr/12 Next stop Redfern
as a tourist mecca - SMH
2006/Apr/11 Rob Welsh Speech to
City of Sydney
2006/Apr/11 Historic agreement
boosts reconciliation in Sydney - Message Stick
2006/Mar/31 Love song to the gritty
city - SMH
2006/Mar/29 NSW State Government
grabs planning control - The World Today
2006/Mar/29 Sartor seizes council
powers - SMH
2006/Mar/27 Open Letter to the
NSW Parliament - AHC
2006/Mar/26 Labor councils turn
on Sartor as ugly fight develops over local planning - SMH
2006/Mar/22 No miracle on this
agenda - SMH
2006/Mar/20 Two tiers go to war
over planning control - SMH
2006/Mar/17 How the planning system
stifles debate - SMH
2006/Mar/13 Letters Sent To The
Editor - The Australian
2006/Mar/13 Battle for the streets
- The Australian
2006/Mar/08 Redfern/Waterloo:Land
grab plan announced - The Guardian
2006/Mar/02 Once again, Frank
gets it wrong on The Block - ALP Branch Media Release
2006/Mar/01 Letter Sent To The
Editor of SMH
2006/Mar/01 The reality behind
the Redfern plan: a boon for the big end of town - SMH
2006/Feb/24 Letters Sent To The
Editors of SMH & The Australian
2006/Feb/22 Symbolism cannot solve
unemployment and social misery - SMH
2006/Feb/20 Another time around
the Block for urban revival - The Australian
2006/Feb/15 Indigenous heartland
under threat - SMH
2006/Feb/13 Revamp for Redfern
ignores railway heritage - SMH
2006/Feb/10 The Block's revival
in rezoning renovation - Daily Telegraph
2006/Feb/10 Firth Calls on Sartor
to Rethink Pemulwuy Decision - City of Sydney
2006/Feb/10 Aboriginal anger as
Block rezoned - The Australian
2006/Feb/10 New plan on the Block
unwelcome to owners - SMH
2006/Feb/09 Sartor changes zoning
of the Block to commercial - AHC
2006/Feb/09 Redfern redevelopment
plan not about moving Aborigines: Minister - ABC
2006/Feb/07 Welcome to the Movement
Economy - Property Australia
2006/Feb/02 No Progress from
Labor in Redfern - Peter Debnam Media Release
Watkins visits the Block in Redfren
December 13, 2006 - AHC Press Release
Deputy Premier and Minister of Police John Watkins today visited Redfern on the occasion of Superintendent Catherine Burns Commander of the Redfern Waterloo LAC being announced Woman of the Year for Hefforn.
At a meeting at Redfern Police station in the presence of Mick Mundine CEO of the Aboriginal Housing Company and Kristina Keneally MP member for Heffron, Mr Watkins announced that Superintendent Burns had also been nominated for NSW Woman of the Year.
"I think it's very significant that a Redfern Aboriginal organisation has nominated its local Area Commander for an award. It shows how the relations between police and the Redfern Aboriginal community have changed over the last couple of years", said Mick Mundine.
Much of the credit for this changing attitude and new levels of community cooperation is due to the tough but compassionate style of Catherine Burns.
Crime prevention has been at the forefront of many of the success stories in the area. Crime is at an all time low in Redfern and the AHC's Pemulwuy project has played a big part in setting the social planning agenda for the renewal of the Block.
Minister Watkins also made a site visit to the Block today and had in-depth discussions with Mick Mundine about the progress of the Pemulwuy project and the various obstacles Mick felt were slowing the progress.
"The Pemulwuy project will bring a long lasting peace
to this troubled area and we want to get started as soon as the NSW Government
gives us the development approval" said Mick Mundine.
BACK TO TOPStreet
drinking banned at casino and on Block
December 10, 2006 - SMH
Caroline Marcus
THE troubled streets of the Block and those around Star City casino might become alcohol-free as part of a City of Sydney plan to cut crime and antisocial behaviour across the inner city.
A proposal to expand permanent existing alcohol-free zones into the heart of the Aboriginal housing development would outlaw outdoor drinking in eight more Redfern streets and two more in neighbouring Chippendale.
The scheme would give police the power to confiscate alcohol to help reduce substance abuse and criminal activity.
The Block is bound by Eveleigh, Vine, Louis and Caroline streets. All four streets would be made alcohol-free.
Six streets surrounding the casino in Pyrmont, including part of Pyrmont Street where the casino is located, are also included in the plan. Three more streets are proposed in Kings Cross and one each in Newtown and Surry Hills.
In June the council was criticised for imposing a partial alcohol ban in Redfern that excluded the Block. Regent Street, Redfern Street and parts of Elizabeth, George and Cope streets were included in that plan.
The new blueprint is being billed as a response to requests by residents and police. Public submissions to the council can be made until December 22.
The plan was welcomed by the Aboriginal Housing Company, which has been pushing for a street drinking ban in the areas around the Block. The company's chief executive, Mick Mundine, said much of the alcohol problem was caused by outsiders flocking to local parks and the area around Redfern railway station.
"A lot of people are coming here who are not living here, who sit around drinking and all that crap stuff, and then the Aboriginal people in the community get blamed," Mr Mundine said. "It is long overdue for sure. What is going to happen is our people are going to have a better start."
He said it would be a difficult law to enforce but would send an important message to people under 18, who make up half the Block's population.
"If there is a sign there, and police come and say, 'You can't do that', I think people will respect it a bit more. People have got to start thinking about children and the next generation."
Redfern Legal Centre executive director Helen Campbell told The Sydney Morning Herald in June: "These are chronic alcoholics. They're not going to stop drinking just because you put a sign up."
When contacted by The Sun-Herald last week, she said she was "not going to make a comment on Aboriginal policy".
Rebuilding
the Block
November 25, 2006 - SMH
By Lisa Dabscheck
The scene of some of the fiercest struggles over Aboriginal rights, the Block in Redfern is embroiled in a planning battle that could make or break the battered community, reports Lisa Dabscheck in the SMH’s the(Sydney)magazine December 06.
"You want some smoko?" asks a woman with a pram, three metres inside the Block. "No thanks." – “You got two dollars?" demands another. "No, sorry." "Liar", she snarls and stumbles towards someone else. "You got two dollars?"
A few paces towards the heart of the Block, on a grassy knoll with striking views of the city skyline, the picture is quite different. There's a fundraiser on today, to renovate a dance space at the Elouera "Tony Mundine" gym, and a band is playing on a makeshift stage. Kids dance and line up for sausages: locals and community supporters picnic in small huddles, laughing and moving to the music. Directly behind the stage is the back wall of the gym, covered with a painting of the Aboriginal flag: yellow for the sun, red for the earth, black for the skin.
To the right is Eveleigh Street, the most infamous of the four narrow roadways that frame what has become known as "the Block", the badly deteriorated urban hub for Aboriginal people in Sydney. About halfway along Eveleigh Street, the last in a row of terrace houses looks like a casualty of the Blitz. Blackened shingles hang loosely from its soot-coated roof frame.
An old yellow sign shows the crossroad is Holden Street. The name of the iconic Australian car company is the symbol of the Australian dream: the Holden in the driveway of the three-bedroom suburban bungalow. In the heart of Redfern, it adorns a burnt-out building. The irony seems callous.
In 1973, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam provided the initial grant to the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) to allow the first housing purchases on this parcel of land in Redfern and the Block became the birthplace of urban land rights in this country. At that time, there were 102 houses in and immediately around the Block. Now, only 19 inhabited homes remain. While some have fallen victim to arson attacks by disgruntled tenants, others have been razed by the AHC to prevent their use as drug houses. More than anything else, drugs have been the scourge of this place, bringing unemployment, crime, poverty, sickness and death.
The land itself is just under 8000 square metres. But what the Block lacks in size, it makes up for in significance. For the people who populate it - whether residents or visitors - it is the cornerstone of an Aboriginal presence in our biggest capital city, a meeting place for indigenous people from across the country and a landmark that serves as a reminder of our native people to the other 98 per cent of the population.
Shane Phillips lives on Holden Street. He is a long-term resident of the Block, having moved in at the age of five with his father, Dick Blair, one of the founding members of the AHC, his mother and his eight brothers and sisters.
His father went on to become the local pastor, a community role model; his eldest sister died of a heroin overdose. His experience of the Block illustrates its polarity - the way it can give hope and take it away. "It's been tough," he says. "We've learned the hard way, that's for sure."
The 41-year-old skipper of the Tribal Warrior vessels - two historic boats that host cultural tours on Sydney harbour - is desperate to find a way forward. "I'm passionate about change because generations of our people will survive because of it. If we can't have one community in Sydney - the front-line of the colony - that can be a positive place for our people, then they might as well just shoot us all."
The answer, he says, is to give successful Aboriginal people the opportunity to reshape the Block from the inside out. "Now is the time to give us a real chance," he says. "If you were to put working people in here who want to raise their kids and not worry about drugs in the street, who care about neighbourhood watch and cultural values, you'd see a vast change coming about."
That would be a major turnaround to what exists now. To many Sydneysiders, the Block is a no-go zone: a drug-, alcohol- and crime-ridden ghetto across the road from Redfern train station. Some consider it a blight on the landscape and want it bulldozed; others suspect developers have plans to seize it and exploit its obvious commercial potential.
Few seem to know that for the past six years, the AHC, together with some of the city's leading architects, has been working on a $60 million redevelopment plan to regenerate the Block into a thriving urban centre for Aboriginal people and for visitors, including tourists. They want to demolish the Block and replace it with 62 residential dwellings - two-thirds of which would be sold to owner-occupiers. The Pemulwuy Project, named after the first Aboriginal freedom fighter, would include an indigenous business college, student hostel, gym, retail outlets and an art gallery. A communal meeting place called Red Place would incorporate a playground, giant television screen and a park.
In the AHC offices on the top corner of the Block, between Lawson and Caroline streets, the housing company's CEO, Mick Mundine, speaks passionately about the plans. "This is going to give our people a bit of self-esteem and hope for the future," he says. "Our people have lived without hope but I think with this project they will be able to see a bit of hope coming to reality."
Part of the formula, he says, is that the plan would be entirely self-funding, via money raised through home sales and private equity. "We aren't relying on any government funding," he says with pride.
The project has some heavyweight advocates - its taskforce is chaired by Tom Uren, former minister for urban and regional development with the Whitlam Government, and NSW Governor Marie Bashir and Lord Mayor Clover Moore have indicated support.
It also has some heavyweight opponents. "I'm very sceptical," says NSW Minister for Planning Frank Sartor in his Phillip Street office. Sartor is also the head of the controversial Redfern-Waterloo Authority (RWA), which was set up in 2004 to oversee redevelopment in the area and has the ability to override local councils and heritage laws, to grant concessions to private developers and to compulsorily acquire land. "Extremely sceptical. But you know, the planning considerations will be on the planning merits and if they get approval, good luck to them."
On this, Sartor acknowledges he will have the final say. He has already laid out the planning considerations. Under these rules, the Pemulwuy Project - which the AHC hopes to lodge with the Planning Department in the next couple of months - won't be allowed in its current form. "The challenge for the AHC," Sartor said in August, "is to come to the table and work with us on what we can support and back as a sustainable solution."
But Mundine claims the minister has said the project is "not negotiable'. Nearly two years since talks disintegrated, he has adopted a similar stance. "This is a privately funded project on privately owned land," he says. "I think the Aboriginal community has done enough compromising on this issue."
A battle of attrition has ensued, fuelled by bad blood on both sides. The AHC have developed a belief that Sartor is out to hinder and not help them. "He says, 'It's my way or the highway," says Mundine. "He won't listen to our reasons." Sartor denies this, saying, "They have chosen not to take the conciliatory path; they've chosen the moral highway path."
Despite a history of bickering and trading insults in the press, Mundine and Sartor have more in common than they may care to admit. Both effectively want the same thing: a development that has a strong likelihood of working, based on a mixture of residential, commercial and cultural facilities tied to a robust social services program.
But they remain at loggerheads over one key issue, and it is on this issue that the project threatens to tumble. The AHC wants 62 houses. Having already shifted from his original offer of 19 houses (to replace the ones currently occupied), Sartor says 42 is the maximum number he would allow if the AHC wants commercial development there as well, which they do.
Sixty-two is significant, say the AHC, because it is the number of Aboriginal families in the Gadigal clan who occupied the land - now known as the Block - when white settlers arrived in the 1790s, before that population succumbed to smallpox. And, according to social planners engaged by the AHC, 62 dwellings equates to a population of 400 - the critical mass they say is required to make the project work. This relates to a theory that in order to create a viable community, the residents need to be self-policing - and 400 is the minimum needed to do it.
In a sense, then, the debate might be said to hinge on 20 houses. Phillips, who became a member of the AHC five years ago after a long period of scepticism towards the housing company, sighs. "You know what? In this case I can see the advantages of a compromise. It would be fantastic to see most of those houses and also Aboriginal businesses in there but they need to move quickly because the place is getting worse. Someone's got to humble themselves."
Dennis Weatherall rents his house - just a few terraces down from the burnt-out shell on the corner of Holden Street - from the AHC. "We're ready for a change," says the 59-yearold, who runs the Community Development and Employment Program for the Redfern Aboriginal Corporation. "With better housing, you'd get better tenants and they'd feel like there was a sense of ownership there so they'd look after their houses. That would give us the opportunity to grab the young people and give them the opportunity to move into full-time employment."
Daniel Ariel lives on Holden Street, just near Phillips. A retired commercial fisherman, a committed Christian and the father of 14 children, he has lived here for 17 years. "Like a lot of people, I used to believe that the AHC was brutish and that they were in it just for their own interests," says Ariel, who changed his view when the Tax Department audited the AHC in 2003, revealing it was more than half a million dollars in debt. "I said to them, 'Why don't you just sell a house?' And they said, 'We're not selling one Aboriginal house.' I thought, 'This guy is willing to stand up for what he believes in and get flogged personally for it.'"
"This guy" is Mundine. At 59, he has been around long enough to have collected his quota of critics. But on a late-afternoon walk around the Block, it becomes clear he is something of a legend here. Residents come out of their homes to say hello; others call out to him from their cars. Some ask him to fix broken fences; one wants him to "shoo some kids out of the gym° - where Mundine trains 15 young women twice a week, including his daughter Debra. He smiles and delegates the jobs to other people. He's busy, he says. He's been busy working on the Block for 31 years.
"After the late '70s, everything started going bad," he says. "One of the saddest things for me was seeing the houses on Eveleigh Street being demolished. Aboriginal people don't want to stay here like this. What we're trying to do is bring the population back and make it sustainable."
As we turn the corner from Eveleigh Street into Vine Street, the boxer Anthony "Chock" Mundine emerges from his black Holden and disappears into the gym. His father and trainer, Tony, is close behind, stopping to say hello to his brother Mick, They leave the car's windows open. No one is going to touch Chock's car.
Anthony Mundine plans to contest the seat of Marrickville which is set to take control of Redfern under electoral boundary changes, at the State election in March. "I would consider whatever strategy is needed to fight for the Block," he said earlier this year. "If that means standing for the seat, that's what I'll do."
Debra Mundine, Mick's eldest daughter, stands outside her sister Rachel's dilapidated terrace on Vine Street. The 36-year-old left the Block for Waterloo when her two sons, now aged 14 and 15, were young. Living on Eveleigh Street, down the road from Muraweena, the now-derelict pre-school, was dangerous, she says sadly. "They were chucking syringes over the fence while the kids were playing there."
Waterloo is where much of the overflow of welfare-dependent Aboriginal people on the Block seems to run. But for Debra, living there is a temporary salve, not a substitute for being on the Block, "I want to live here so I can be back in my community where I came from."
Social planner Angie Pitts, from the I. B. Fell Housing Research Centre at the University of Sydney, conducted surveys on the AHC's behalf to assess prospective applicants for the proposed 42 owner-occupied homes in the Pemulwuy Project. The results showed the houses would be oversubscribed, she says.
Sartor is unconvinced. "I don't think anyone will buy houses there," he says. Warren Mundine, National President of the Australian Labor Party, RWA board member and cousin to Mick Mundine, is also doubtful. "If I'm the type of clientele [Mick] wants to buy back in that area, then he has to do a lot of work to convince me. I've got seven kids - why haven't I bought into that area? Well, I don't like the drugs, the alcohol and the violence. I'm not exposing my children to that."
This concern, counters Mick Mundine, has been taken into consideration. The project's by-laws force eviction if drugs are found on any premises. "The biggest problem with dobbing in drug users is the malice coming from other family members," says Ariel. "If they had the law as a back-up to say, You'll have to go, otherwise we'll lose our house,' then the onus is on the person with the drugs. That's what's going to clean the place up."
The Government owns close to a third of the land in the area controlled by the RWA but its commercial value is yet to be realised, thanks to the general prevalence of high dependency housing and crime in the Redfern-Waterloo area and, specifically, on the Block. The Planning Minister, so one argument goes, must want to redevelop the area but he has one key obstacle - the Block.
Sartor dismisses the suggestion. "This is a social initiative, not a financial initiative," he says. "We don't need to develop Redfern-Waterloo for the State's economic growth per se. When people accuse us of wanting to get developers into Redfern-Waterloo, that is such a lie. That is a big fat lie. Because, in fact, developers aren't interested."
But in March last year, The Australian Financial Review reported that at a Property Council of Australia 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."
"We are trying to attract investors," says Sartor, "but it's never been driven by developers." According to an RWA cabinet document leaked to The Sydney Morning Herald in November 2004, consultants to the Government advised that a failure to redevelop the Block would decrease property values by 30 per cent. "The estimated market value of developments in the area is approximately $5 billion," it says. "In order to maximise social and economic returns, the Government must be able to offer planning certainty to the market within a strategic planning framework."
Mick Mundine says the Government has an in-house word for the Block: "the Blockage". Warren Mundine says he's never heard of it. "The problem is, we have a history here," he says. "We've got 30 years of failure. I'm going to have a cold Christmas dinner, I'm sure, with my family. But I'm not stepping away from this. Everyone needs to sit down and win confidence between each other that they're fair dinkum about what they say they're going to do is going to happen."
If that is to unfold, there is other history to repair. "All they've said is, 'We're going to introduce a component of housing and we've got the money; you've got to give us what we want,'" says Sartor. "They're breaching the planning controls. They just say, 'We're Aboriginal. If you don't do it, you're a raciest.' Now I will never be cowed by what I regard as unconscionable racist slurs or any other form of denigration that isn't based on the facts. Argue with me the facts because I'm not rolling over."
Accusations of racism have played a strong hand in this battle. When Sartor went on Koori radio in September 2005, he infamously said, "Get off your backside, Mick, and bring your black arse in here to talk to me about it." Warren Mundine called the comment "idiotic". Sartor apologised and Mick Mundine accepted. The pair shook hands outside the minister's office but the next day Mundine retracted his apology and called on the minister to resign.
Since then, the insults have flowed unchecked from both sides. Mundine calls Sartor "arrogant" and "racist". Sartor calls the AHC "an unmitigated disaster".
A well-known local character wanders in to the AHC offices. Coming down from drugs, numbed by alcohol, he declines an interview. "Money talks, bullshit walks," he says, hurtling away and then back towards me. "Want a smiley?" he asks, holding a cigarette lighter up to my arm. When I retract, he laughs and burns a small hole in the side of the reception desk.
I'm reminded of Warren Mundine's comment after our interview. "I hope no one firebombs your house," he said with a grin. He was clearly joking but the throwaway line says much of the emotion, history and politics that threaten to ignite over this topic.
But if those elements are pulled out of this equation, what's left seems simple: a plan for urban regeneration. So there's really only one question: could this plan work?
There are comparable precedents elsewhere that suggest it could, says Peter Droege, an internationally-acclaimed urban planner, who cites successful redevelopments in London (Brixton), Boston (Commonwealth) and San Francisco (North Beach Place). "Brixton has undergone a locally supported renewal after many years of race riots," he says. "The Commonwealth and North Beach Place developments are two of several US examples promising deep revitalisation of notoriously problem-ridden public housing schemes."
But he stresses the following caveat: "The plan needs to be embedded into a much wider area regeneration, urban design and connectivity strategy that does not rely on a continued 'Block' image, i.e. that would avoid an enclave or fortress connotation."
To this end, the RWA appears to be making contributions. Its "Human Services" arm is developing a National Indigenous Development Centre at the former Redfern Public School, as well as a Community Health Centre on the site of the old Redfern Courthouse.
Catherine Burn, the Redfern Police Commander, says the police have committed to a number of social services under this division of the RWA, including improvements to indigenous literacy and health. One of her key concerns is breaking down bad perceptions of the police. "There's always going to be hostility but we're trying to balance it," says Burn, who has seen the robbery rate in the area drop by 50 per cent in the last 12 months under her command. "We've got a football team now and we play with the Aboriginal people. Their sense of community is fantastic."
Having walked from Caroline Street to Eveleigh Street and around the corner to Vine Street, the final tum around the Block takes you on to Louis Street. Just 12 terraces remain along a lonely stretch. Of those, only seven are inhabited.
Ben Smith lives in one of them. A 45year-old self-employed labourer and father of six, he remembers going to pre-school when it was underneath the Tony Mundine gym. °That's how long I've been around," he laughs. "My auntie Rita was the first dark lady to move in to the area. My great auntie Polly, bless her soul, said to hang around - two weeks before she passed away - to keep the spirit of the clan going."
There's a photograph of a young T. J. Hickey in the front window. When Hickey was fatally impaled on a fence after a police chase in 2004 his death sparked a riot that brought black-white tensions to a head, raising questions of whether anything had been learned from two centuries of indigenous disadvantage. "He was my eldest son's best mate," says Smith quietly. "He would have been about 20, 21 by now."
On February 8, 2005, nearly a year after Hickey's death, Sartor met with the AHC to be briefed on their plan. It was on that day that discussions broke down. “I think it is an injustice what the Government is doing to us at the present moment," says Mundine. "If Frank Sartor gives us the approval, we can do it in about a year and a half."
For his part, State Opposition leader Peter Debnam says, should he come to power at the election in March, "we would sign off the project straight away". The State Government is yet to decide whether it will endorse it. In October, the Department of Planning listed the Pemulwuy Project on its Major Projects Register after the AHC submitted it in March to obtain the director-general's requirements, which will now allow the AHC to lodge their planning application.
In the last month, there has been encouraging news to suggest the impasse may dissolve. Sartor requested a meeting with the AHC on November 1, the first in nearly two years. Afterwards, he said: "Some misunderstandings were clarified. The project still needs to undergo rigorous assessment but the meeting was informative and productive."
"It was pretty positive," adds Mundine. "I won't be happy until the dotted line is signed but it's a big step forward."
"If both sides are willing to compromise, they will come up with an answer," says Phillips, leaning forward with an optimistic smile. "The spirit of it is fantastic; it will be worthwhile giving it a try. One way or another, whoever wins this battle, I just can't wait for it to come about."
Alan Jones Interviews Morris Iemma
November 24, 2006 - 26B Radio
Listen to the Alan Jones interview with Morris Iemma over NSW Planning Laws
List of demands sent to Morris
Iemma
November 20, 2006 - AHC Press Release
A list of demands from the people of NSW, including a call for a Royal Commission into the Metro Strategy and a ban on property developer donations to political parties, were passed onto the Premier Morris Iemma last Tuesday.
Under the cloud of last week's mass scandals and controversy at the NSW Parliament, a vocal angry crowd of about 300 people representing 15 different communities from around the state of NSW almost went unnoticed last Tuesday when they staged a passionate march to Parliament House to vent their frustration with the dictatorial planning laws that they say are ruining their lives.
"This rally was a warning shot across the bow of the Iemma Government. To everyone in NSW who is fed up with the systematic erosion of their property rights at the hands of Frank Sartor we call on you to meet at Parliament House on the 11th February 2007 to send a decisive message to Morris Iemma that this is his last chance before the election to do the right thing by the people of NSW. It's definitely their day of reckoning", said Rolf Clapham, Chairman Coalition Against Private Overdevelopment.
"Morris Iemma may have been distracted by all the other
scandals his Government has caused but we represent nearly 20 electorates
in NSW and if he ignores us for too much longer Frank Sartor's Planning
dictatorship maybe just be that one scandal too many that unseats this government",
said Angela Muller, Coordinator of Hands Off Private Property Inc.
Community groups disgruntled by the decisions of Planning Minister Frank
Sartor have been meeting for months behind the scenes to share experiences
and develop strategies to bring to the public's attention the current planning
powers that favour big property developers at the expense of small private
landowners.
"The planning powers that Sartor now has will affect everyone in NSW; it's just a matter of time. If a shopping centre, electricity substation, desalination plant, high rise development, is proposed to go next door to you; you have no grounds to object anymore if Sartor steps in. It's a case of shut up or move", said Colleen Abela, President of Rouse Hill Heights Action Group.
"It's a disgrace how the hard working honest people of NSW are being treated by this arrogant government. Their stories of despair and hopelessness are heartbreaking", said Mick Mundine, CEO of the Redfern Aboriginal Housing Company.
Some of the communities that were represented yesterday included:
Rouse Hill Heights Action Group & Anti-Transmission Action Group both
from Rouse Hill; Save Our Suburbs; Hands Off Private Property representing
Box Hill, Nelson, Annangrove, Kenthurst, Oakville & Maraylya; Land and
Assets Protection Group from Leppington, Rossmore, Edmondson Park, Catherine
Fields & Kemps Creek; Farmers from Jindabyne & Cooma; Redfern Aboriginal
Housing Company & the Redfern community; Marsden Park Scheduled Lands;
Friends of Eveleigh; Friends of Callan Park; the Putney Community; and the
East Sydney Neighbourhood Association. Speakers who supported the rally
included the Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, opposition leader Peter Debnam,
opposition Planning spokesperson Chris Hartcher, Green's senator Sylvia
Hale, Democrats senator Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, and Aboriginal leader
Mick Mundine.
"The general mood was enthusiastic and positive even though we had
some very angry people there. It was good to see Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
people fighting side by side for justice. We have to develop a fairer Planning
system for NSW that doesn't sweep communities aside but instead puts people
back into planning" said Mick Mundine.
The group has not yet received a response or acknowledgement
to its demands from the Iemma Government.
Protest Rally at Parliament House
November 14, 2006 - AHC Press Release
Communities from around NSW will be marching on Parliament
House this Tuesday [14th Nov] @ 12:00 to protest against Frank Sartor and
the planning dictatorship in NSW. A large crowd is expected. Communities
like Redfern, Leppington, Putney and others from around the State will be
joined by opposition leader Peter Debnam and Sylvia Hale from the NSW Greens.
"We will send a clear message to the Morris Iemma and Frank Sartor
we will not stand by while the NSW Government destroys people's lives"
said Mick Mundine CEO of the Aboriginal Housing Company.
For several months community groups from around the State have been meeting to share information and to develop a coordinated strategy aimed at reversing some of the more draconian Planning decisions by the Iemma Government.
The Aboriginal Housing Company, for instance, has been in
a hard fought battle for two years with Planning Minister Frank Sartor over
an equitable allotment of planning controls for the Redfern. In contrast
Sartor has tried to micro-manage the AHC's project out of existence with
the aim of limiting the presence and profile of Aboriginal housing so close
to Redfern railway station and the Sydney CBD.
"The people of NSW have been swept aside and ignored for long enough;
its time to put the people back into planning" said Mick Mundine.
The community groups have prepared a list demands to be handed to the Premier tomorrow, including a ban on all political donations from property developers, fairer planning controls for the Redfern Pemulwuy project, and a Royal Commission into the Metro Strategy.
"It's good to see that Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are coming together to fight for justice for ordinary people. We won't be pushed aside to make room for greedy developers" said Mick Mundine.
THE RALLY WILL START AT THE HYDE PARK FOUNTAIN @ 12:00pm Tue
14th Nov
Sex
scandal 'cover-up' vow
November 9, 2006 - SMH
NSW Premier Morris Iemma has vowed to sack or expel any member of his government or party found to have covered up child sex allegations against Labor MP Milton Orkopoulos.
Mr Iemma yesterday sacked Mr Orkopoulos as Aboriginal Affairs Minister after he was arrested and charged with 30 drug and sex offences.
Mr Orkopoulos, 49, has vowed to fight charges he supplied two teenage boys with drugs and paid one of them for sex.
He has been suspended from the Labor Party, will be formally expelled within a week and Mr Iemma has made it clear he wants him to resign from parliament.
A police fact sheet tendered in court yesterday said one of the alleged victims complained about Mr Orkopoulos to Jillian Snedden, a member of his electorate office staff, in October 2005.
Ms Snedden allegedly told an ALP member about the complaint and the member later told her he had referred the matter to police and the state's corruption watchdog.
No such complaint was ever officially recorded, police said.
An ICAC spokeswoman would not comment except to confirm the police statement was correct, and that "it was not an MP who complained to ICAC".
Mr Iemma today said he wanted Mr Orkopoulos and anyone who knew of the allegations out of parliament.
"I want him out of the parliament," he told reporters.
"If it touches on anybody else in my government, I want them out of the government and I (don't) want them in the same party as the party I'm in."
Opposition Leader Peter Debnam today said the authorities must investigate the suggestions that someone in the government failed to report the allegations against Mr Orkopoulos.
There had been rumours in parliament for two or three weeks that a minister was under investigation by the police, Mr Debnam said.
NSW Labor Party general secretary Mark Arbib today said he did not know the identity of the party members allegedly referred to by the electorate officer in the complaint against Mr Orkopoulos.
"I have no knowledge of that and I think it's important that the government gets to the bottom of that as well as the law enforcement authorities," Mr Arbib said.
Mr Iemma's chief-of-staff, Mike Kaiser, was told on Monday that police were investigating Mr Orkopoulos but Mr Iemma was not informed until Tuesday night.
Mr Iemma dismissed the timing of his notification as "not relevant", saying he had been busy with cabinet and the federal water summit.
But Mr Debnam said it was "inconceivable" that Mr Iemma was not told about the allegations earlier.
Deputy Premier and Police Minister John Watkins became aware on Monday that police were investigating serious allegations against Mr Orkopoulos.
Mr Watkins said he was not told the nature of the allegations, but it had been "appropriate" for him to know Mr Orkopoulos was being investigated by police.
"As minister for police, I'm briefed on a whole range of confidential and security matters almost every day by the NSW Police," he said.
Mr Watkins declined to say whether he had heard rumours previously that a minister was under investigation by police.
Mr Iemma gave assurances that the police investigation would be free from any interference from the government, and ruled out an internal ALP probe.
Mick Mundine, from the Redfern Aboriginal Housing Company, said it was "scandalous" such a person was put in charge of the state's most vulnerable people.
"He should have never been appointed Minister for Aboriginal
Affairs. He should have been suspended and these allegations should have
been investigated a year ago," Mr Mundine said.
AAP
Truth on The Block. Beyond compliance
journalism!
November 5, 2006 - South Sydney Herald
A frank conversation with Elizabeth Farrelly
By Ben Falkenmire
Sydney Morning Herald columnist and Redfern resident Elizabeth Farrelly
has been a vocal critic of the Redfern Waterloo Authority [RWA) since the
State government body was conceived in 2004.
At an Independent Scholars Association of Australia Conference in March
2005, Farrelly attacked the RWA's redevelopment plans for Redfern infamously
stating, "You don't solve social problems with bulldozers."
Farrelly likened the RWA with its powers as landowner, developer and consent
authority to an apartheid organisation bent on removing the urban Indigenous
people that reside in and around the area known as The Block.
"As a landowner in the area I should just lie back, enjoy it, and wait
for my property value to rise," Farrelly had said. "But it seems
important to me that The Block, as not just a centre but our centre of urban
aboriginal culture, is not white-washed over."
Nearly a year and a half later and after the release of the RWA's final
development plans in August, Farrelly's philosophy remains rock-solid. Time
however, has left its mark on the situation.
"With more information comes more complexity and some problems remain
unsolved;" remarked Elizabeth in her conversation with the South Sydney
Herald. "The Block should be a productive and healthy cultural home
for Aboriginals, but I'm not so sure it's possible. How do you separate
drugs from Aboriginal culture?"
Challenging questions come with consistency for Farrelly, which can be partly
explained by her background. An architect by profession and Kiwi by birth,
Elizabeth spent years in London and also moonlighted as a Sydney City Councillor
from 1991 to 1995 with the likes of Clover Moore and Frank Sartor. Her decision
not to continue in politics premised on morals.
"I just want people to tell the truth", explained Farrelly. "It's
rare in a country like this".
Farrelly believes the final plans issued by the RWA prescribe too much development
too quickly.
"In principle it is an obvious place for height and density, but it
, should be introduced incrementally from the city to Redfem over time,
rather than creating a mini CBD," she said.
"The RWA plans also do not address social mix. This should be grown
organically as much as possible over time," instructed Farrelly who
resides, with her children, next to a half-way house for ex-criminals.
Elizabeth believes the media has failed the Redfern community in its role
as investigator and interpreter. "The media doesn't understand Redfern,
Journalists have not been taught properly and are engaged in compliance
journalism - too timid to question what politicians are telling them".
Having known Frank Sartor, current NSW Minister for Planning and controversially
the RWA, since he stood as an Independent, Farrelly is shrewd about his
current duplication of roles.
"There should be a separation of powers for the benefit of the wider
public", said Farrelly. "Frank thinks he's the exception to the
rule. He appears to be giving public favour to private people and the ALP
has bought into it. They've sold out their constituencies".
Elizabeth Farrelly's opinion column on planning and architectural matters
appears in the Sydney Morning Herald each Wednesday.
Redfern and Putney lend their
support to the Leppington community
October 31, 2006 - AHC Press Release
Mick Mundine Aboriginal elder and Chief Executive Officer of the Redfern Aboriginal Housing Company spoke at a Leppington community rally on Sunday to support the protection of private land rights against the greed of the Minister of Planning Frank Sartor and his developer partners.
"I was shock and heart broken to hear their stories of despair. These people have lost all hope. One old fella came to me after the meeting and told me how he was considering ending his life. He wasn't the only one" said Mick Mundine.
Members of the Putney and Redfern communities were in attendance and have now opened up clear lines of communication amongst each other.
Mr Mundine told the crowd that Redfern shares their pain.
"We know what its like to be on the wrong end of Frank Sartor's land grab agenda" Mr Mundine said to a crowd numbering close to 1000.
Mr Mundine mentioned the plight of the Putney, Chippendale and offcourse the Leppington community at the hands of Frank Sartor.
"Frank Sartor is an arrogant Minister in an arrogant Government. He has no compassion for ordinary community people. It seems if you're not a big developer who can donate to the political party there is no way you can expect fair treatment from the NSW Government on planning issues" said Mick Mundine.
A sentiment echoed in part a few days later by former Prime Minister Paul Keating when he called for developer donations to political parties to be outlawed.
The Leppington community is calling for a Royal Commission into the dealings of the NSW Gov in their area, which has seen land devalued by rezoning and forced bankruptcies and fire sales of private property to developers.
Various groups from around the state are coordinating to march
on Parliament House in November to protest their mistreatment at the hands
of the NSW Minister for Planning Frank Sartor.
Leppington Community - Katryna Thirup 0416174383
Redfern Community - Mick Mundine on 96989249
Redfern and Leppington join forces
against Sartor
October 27, 2006 - AHC Press Release
Mick Mundine Aboriginal elder and Chief Executive Officer of the Aboriginal Housing Company in Redfern will be speaking at the Leppington rally in support of the protection of private land rights against the greed of the Minister of Planning Frank Sartor and his developer partners.
"This looks like another land grab by the Minister for Planning" said Mick Mundine.
The Aboriginal community of Redfern will show support for the people of Leppington and Putney; communities that are also under attack by Minister.
"Two years ago I said that Redfern was the front line and Frank Sartor would take his agenda to the rest of NSW. Unfortunately, I have now been proven right" said Mick Mundine.
The human right to own your land and not be harassed and driven out by greedy government and developers is fundamental and should be sacred in Australia.
The Aboriginal Housing Company has waged a two year long battle against racially discriminatory treatment by the NSW Government in relation to its Pemulwuy project in Redfern. Although the Aboriginal Housing Company is not seeking government funds to build their project the NSW Government has been trying to stop Aboriginal housing on the Block by manipulating planning controls to stop the project from proceeding.
The Block at Redfern always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Leppington Community Public Meeting on Sunday 29th October at 11.30am at Rossmore Public School, Bringelly Road Rossmore. (Contact Angela Muller 0418 112 132 or 4573 6075)
3A
projects add a new dimension to rules
October 25, 2006 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
THE real problem with the arrogance that typically afflicts our upper echelons is not that it's offensive and tedious - which it is - but that it quickly becomes a learning disability, condemning sufferers to repeat their mistakes ad nauseam. That's if you weren't sick the first time.
Not surprisingly, the symptom is most marked in those who cocoon themselves with legions of head-patters, back-scratchers and toe rags. This makes Macquarie Street a hot spot. And sure, there are medics on hand. But they need your support, too. Not just your votes and taxes; they need your sympathy and understanding.
Which may be why they've bothered to mount the microscopic exhibition on the development formerly known as East Darling Harbour. You can visit or read the propaganda on the net.
But to fix your eyes on the substance of the 400-odd page document, since there's no takeout copy, it's back to the 54 slow-loading PDF files lined up like Daleks on the departmental website.
East Darling Harbour, or Barangaroo if you want its new moniker, is one of more than 70 projects in the metropolitan area - with as many again in the rest of the state - to be called in to the minister in the new planning legislation's first year.
Officially, some are "state significant" or "critical infrastructure". Others are merely "major projects". Colloquially, however, they're all known as "3A projects", after the part of the act under which they are arraigned; the part that gives the minister unprecedented discretion.
Because the economy's problem, as you know, is not that we spent two euphoric weeks peeing a gazillion up against the Olympics wall and are now in the decade of paying for it. The problem is that councils have consulted too wide and long with their constituents, impeding important development projects, starving the coffers and shrinking the economy.
So the Government was forced to add part 3A to the Planning Act "to facilitate infrastructure and other planning reform; and for other purposes".
At the time, no one took much notice. Since then, though, as developers crawl on broken glass to have projects 3A-listed and community after community has been stonewalled or sidelined, the rumblings have grown.
Quite properly, 3A projects include coalmines and wind-farms, road tunnels and rail terminals, hospitals and power stations. They also include cash oozing behemoths such as the Foster's site on Broadway and East Darling Harbour.
As well, hidden among 3A's smoke and mirrors are a number of lesser projects whose statewide significance isn't immediately obvious: the low-rise residential Pemulwuy Project on The Block in Redfern, which the minister has vocally opposed; the Government's development of the old Redfern school, which he presumably supports; a two-storey, six-unit building by Rose Corp at Canada Bay; a huge development, also by Rose Corp and refused by both council and court, on ecologically sensitive land at the coastal mining town of Catherine Hill Bay; the reviled Coca-Cola warehouse in Northmead; the 11-storey St Vinnie's Caritas residential development in Darlinghurst; the new law building at Sydney University; the Global Switch building in Ultimo; the Australian Film TV and Radio School building at Fox Studios; and the proposed lime and cement terminal at White Bay.
Less "infrastructure and planning reform", more "other purposes".
Which, of course, is where the arrogance comes in. Fast-tracking in NSW has left a trail of white-elephant skeletons, such as Darling Harbour and the airport rail link, but does the Government learn? No way.
The act gives the minister immense discretion about not just content, but publishing his criteria, or even his decision. At the same time it suspends, for the occasion, virtually all other planning legislation - conservation, heritage, bushfire, fisheries, coastal management and threatened species - and leaves the public with severely curtailed rights of appeal.
No wonder this is a club every developer in town wants to be in.
Less apparent, but no less significant, is the new 3A Alliance, a collection of disaffected and disenfranchised community groups. It's the first sign that planning in NSW may get muscular yet.
High on the 3A projects list is, of course, East Darling Harbour - renamed Barangaroo with the same cynicism that saw Harry Triguboff deliver his anti-tree rant with an Aboriginal painting as backdrop. After announcing the winning Hill Thalis Berkmeier competition scheme in March, the Government commissioned the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority to prepare a new East Darling Harbour Concept Plan.
It was always a gentle, polite kind of scheme. Now, with every soupcon of panache or personality (and virtually every mention of the architects) surgically removed, it recalls two sobering facts: that "concept plan" now means what you have when there is no concept; and that we still, as a culture, have huge difficulty shedding the suburban house-and-lawn mindset.
There's no commitment to any further consultation. Zero.
So while the blurb wishfully cites Bilbao, London's Southbank and Berlin's Potsdamer Platz as exemplars, it forgets that city-changing architecture needs flair, content and intense local flavour - plus, ideally, a Pritzker-winning architect.
A bit of warmed-over North Ryde office park, grown to 60 storeys, probably won't do it.
Letter to the editor - SMH
October 19, 2006 - SMH
Is Mr Sartor experiencing pangs of conscience – both colonial and otherwise (‘Not hungry, just Aboriginal kitsch..’ SMH Oct 19.), by suggesting the name of Barangaroo for the East Darling Harbour development?
Or is our Minister for Planning trying to make amends for his racist comments and taking control of The Block? Could the name Barangaroo be an attempt to placate the Aboriginal Housing Company?
Or is this a more insidious plot? Skilled marketing psychologists know the benefits of naming a product or a project. They know that naming leads to recognition - and recognition leads to acceptance.
The State Government wants NSW voters to accept the privatisation of 11 of the 22 hectares of public land, coupled with massive commercial and residential development. This is despite the fact that there are no plans for supporting transport infrastructure.
There is no adequate transport, freight or port strategy.
Call East Darling Harbour anything you like Mr Sartor. The renaming will not change the fact that there are no plans to cope with the massive increase of traffic generated by the thousands of workers and residents who will move into the area.
And renaming will not change the fact that once this precious foreshore land is sold off it is gone forever. The money will be used to fill a temporary hole in the budget and our children and grandchildren will have lost one more piece of their heritage.
Sincerely,
Marcelle Hoff
Independent Councillor
City of Sydney
Not
hungry, just Aboriginal kitsch, says former PM
October 18, 2006 - SMH
By Jonathan Pearlman
THE former prime minister Paul Keating has labelled the name the State Government chose for East Darling Harbour "Aboriginal kitsch" - even though he was on the committee that shortlisted the names.
Mr Keating's comments on the name - "Barangaroo, not to be confused with kangaroo" - are likely to increase controversy over the naming of the site, which many still believe should be called the Hungry Mile, the name it was given in the Depression.
The Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, said yesterday that he had decided to rename the area after Barangaroo, the wife of Bennelong, the Aborigine adopted by the first white settlers. "People will come to like it when they get used to it," Mr Sartor said. "Barangaroo is probably the first significant place named after a female Aboriginal person. There is a symmetry between Bennelong Point and Barangaroo."
Mr Sartor said tourists were able to "manage Woolloomooloo" and would not have a problem saying Barangaroo.
The name, on a shortlist of seven, was selected by a three-person panel from 1600 public nominations.
But Mr Keating said yesterday in a statement to the ABC: "I regard these completely unassociated Aboriginal names as a form of Aboriginal kitsch.
"If the NSW Government is having pangs of colonial conscience, it can support the Perth Aborigines against the Western Australian Government in the Noongar appeal.
"That would be useful rather than trivial."
Mr Keating's office said he was disappointed with his recent treatment by the Herald and declined to provide further comment. But he is believed to have supported two other names on the shortlist, Mariners Cove and Millers Cove. Other names included Waratah Bay, Eora Bay, Cadigal Cove and Argyle Cove.
Another jury member, Margy Osmond, said yesterday she supported Barangaroo.
"It was my personal favourite from the ones we had as an option," she said. "There's a nice symmetry with Bennelong Point. I think the onomatopoeia of the word is nice as well. It works."
The name was also backed by the Geographical Names Board. It said the other shortlisted names had been used elsewhere, and Barangaroo complied with the board's preference for Aboriginal names.
According to an early chronicler of the settlement, Watkin Tench, Barangaroo was respected for her strength of character and was known for wearing nothing aside from a small stick through her nostrils.
Mr Sartor said last month that he would honour wharfies who flocked to the area to find work during the Depression by giving the name the Hungry Mile to a mile of Hickson Road.
The Government yesterday published a blueprint for the 22-hectare site, which will house offices for 16,000 workers, housing for 1500 residents and 15 hectares of parkland.
Reconciliation Forum
Sept 20, 2006 - Parliament House
Speech by Michael Mundine
The following speech was delivered by Michael mundine Snr to members of
parliament and others attending the Reconciliation Forum held in the NSW
Parliament Theatrette on 20th September 2006. This forum was organised by
ReconciliACTION and focused on aboriginal housing issues in Dubbo and Redfern.
In 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King told the world he had a dream, that one day his children would not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional people of this land, the Gadigal clan.
I stand here before you as a proud Australian black man of the Bundjalung Nation from the North Coast of NSW.
My name is Michael Mundine and it is a privilege to be here today.
(pause)
What does reconciliation mean to me?
Reconciliation is about coming together as equals while respecting our differences.
Reconciliation is about changing past attitudes and resolving past mistakes.
For Reconciliation to succeed in Australia we must start by educating the next generation about our black history.
(pause)
In 2003 the NSW Government said they recognised that Aboriginal people know
best the needs of their community.
They assured us that they also established ways to make sure that Aboriginal people have a strong voice in planning and deciding how their needs and aspirations are met.
Fine words from the NSW Aboriginal Affairs Plan.
These words don't seem to apply in practice when big developer money is at stake.
The Redfern struggle shows that Aboriginal people are still treated like second class citizens in our own country.
(pause)
We have endured great suffering for many years.
In 2006 we still face many obstacles to obtain human rights to decent housing; good health care; higher education; and community safety.
It is racist attitudes and the denial of the past by Government that is the biggest threat to Reconciliation.
During my time in Redfern I have learned we can not trust or rely on Government alone to fix our problems.
(pause)
For the last 5 years the Aboriginal Housing Company has worked on the Pemulwuy
Project, to develop award winning plans that solve the social problems in
our community.
The Pemulwuy project has a lot of community support and has brought people together from all nationalities and all walks of life.
The Pemulwuy project is Redfern's contribution to national Reconciliation.
Our vision for the Block includes:
• Affordable homeownership for Aboriginal families;
• An Aboriginal business college;
• A sports and health centre;
• An Aboriginal student hostel;
• Aboriginal artist markets;
• Retail and office space;
• A spiritual place;
• And an Elder's centre.
Our project offers the only real hope of creating a healthy
and prosperous Aboriginal community in the heart of Sydney.
Government is pushing to mainstream Aboriginal services in Redfern.
They are taking away our identity and stopping our people from climbing
out of poverty.
(pause)
We are not asking for a hand out.
In fact the Pemulwuy project is self-funded.
We are asking for the same development rights as other land owners in Redfern.
The Minister for Planning Frank Sartor has increased the development rights of all the land surrounding Redfern railway station.
While at the same time reducing the residential development rights of Aboriginal owned land in the same area.
Why? Why?
Simply because we plan is to build homes for Aboriginal families.
This is discrimination based on race.
Ask yourselves - if we were proposing new houses for non-Indigenous people would anyone in the NSW Government object?
It would be a mistake for the NSW Government to underestimate the determination of our people to be treated as equals.
I have no faith left in Government because they have let us down too many times.
But I still have faith in the Australian people.
If we all work together we can achieve anything.
All we ask is that we be respected as equals and be allowed to live with dignity.
I believe Australia is the greatest country in the world.
The land of milk and honey.
The opportunity for change is right in front of us.
If we seriously want to push Reconciliation forward we should start by looking at things like Australia Day.
How many Australians out there, know that Australia Day is remembered by my people as a day of mourning.
We look at Australia Day as our day of survival.
I recommend that Australia Day should be renamed to Reconciliation Day.
It can be a special day for our nation when all people put their differences aside and come together in the spirit of reconciliation.
Thank you and God bless you all.
Lost:
another opportunity for excitement
September 13, 2006 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
GOVERNMENT is like shampoo. You have to use it, but the less you can get away with, the healthier. What's worse than one shampoo, therefore, is two. The Carlton and United Brewery site on Broadway offers a fine exemplar of this maxim: the only thing more ruinous than one level of government is two.
Developers don't see it. They think that using the state to undermine a firm-minded council will add shine and volume. Indeed, the new planning act is designed to nurture such silliness. But when the game turns to state-on-local gel wrestling, it's bad for everyone.
We don't like local government. Don't like it, don't trust it. This is how we're meant to feel. Local government in Australia did not evolve from the grassroots but was state-made to be underpowered, overexposed and abuse-ready. Once again, CUB shows the bruises, and its ordeal continues.
CUB is a big site. At six hectares, it'll set a precedent for the city's south. And yet, after years of competitions, threats, wrangling and coercion, there's still no plan, no controls, no proposed scheme. Instead, there's a possible legal challenge, a site that can't be valued, an offhand pretence at consultation and some disgruntled locals.
Foster's Group, as the site owner, has a right to develop. And Broadway is an obvious location for city expansion. But the five-year process is a case study in how political posturing, chest thumping and general acting out can destroy what little public trust remains in democratic city-making. Worse, it looks like yet another lost opportunity for excitement; yet another triumph of expedience over imagination.
It's a long and honourable line, this one: Canberra, the Opera House. Then there's the empty headdress atop 126 Phillip Street, designed to house an urban, air-cycling rainforest until it was gutted by the developer. And the fabulous opportunity for audacity at east Darling Harbour - all lost under the dead hand of narrowness, bureaucracy and fear. Now it's CUB.
In 1997 the council - under the then lord mayor Frank Sartor - exempted the site from its city plan. When, in 2003, it finally started thinking about controls, under the then lord mayor Lucy Turnbull, development pressure was already on, in the form of Australand's Brendan Crotty and a $203 million option to purchase.
The controls were supposed to emerge from a competition, overseen by a subcommittee of the Central Sydney Planning Committee that included Turnbull and the then government architect, Chris Johnson. The brief, though, perched a lowish, 15-storey height limit atop a relatively high residential height-to-floorspace density of five to one. It was a fairy riding a mammoth, headed for trouble.
And trouble it found. The competition demonstrated no more than the incompatibility of the controls: the only way to build 30 hectares of floorspace (or a density of five to one) and keep any amenity at all is with towers. Big ones. Australand made blithe noises but in March 2004, when Clover Moore took the mayoralty, Crotty took a walk.
Within months Sartor, now the Minister for Science, Energy, Cancer and the Arts, drove the Redfern-Waterloo Authority Bill through Parliament, creating an unfunded authority and nominating CUB as a source of developer levies. Never mind that the CUB site isn't in Redfern-Waterloo. Or that neither Redfern-Waterloo nor Planning was in the minister's portfolio at the time.
The threat to the council was clear. Shape up, or else.
For two years the council and Foster's negotiated beneath this dangling sword. Negotiating controls with a developer is like debating bedtime with a toddler when what they need is limits. Still, by the end of 2005, a plan was drafted.
Then the catch. Sartor, now the Planning Minister, refused permission to publish the plan until developer contributions were also agreed. Foster's wouldn't do this - naturally - without knowing its levy to the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, which Sartor wasn't telling.
So the council was screwed. On June 21, Sartor formally declared the site a major project, making himself the consent authority and the Redfern-Waterloo Authority sole beneficiary of its substantial levies. Hardly unpremeditated, the move was gazetted the same day. Sartor appointed an expert panel including Johnson, now a departmental staffer, and two members of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority board, Turnbull and Mike Collins.
The panel held one - one - public meeting, which scared the pants off locals with a gaggle of 36-storey towers. Then sent its recommendations to the minister before public responses even closed.
Why so eager? CUB levies could amount to $30 million, giving the Redfern-Waterloo Authority a direct incentive to maximise development. Meanwhile, the council, on legal advice, queries whether the minister needs reasons, rather than whim, to declare a project "major". Arguably, though, he has reasons. About 30 million of them.
But from the public side, reason pushes the other way. Chippendale residents, having spent time and passion on lengthy submissions, rightly feel insulted by a farcical process. More enduringly, they fear the product.
So consider this. Many argue that density is an enemy of nature; especially of permaculture, in which we all grow our own, clean food. But imagine if the CUB development, rather than another dollar-munching mediocrity, became an exemplar of what Tom Kvan, Dean of Architecture at the University of Sydney, calls "naturbia", or the linear city. Imagine if every built surface were explorable, traversable, climbable or fertile. Imagine a world-famous eco hood at CUB. It's do-able. Just plant the seeds, and add courage.
Course it won't happen. Government will see to that. Which goes to our initial premise: government may be necessary, but too much ruins your bounce.
Elizabeth Farrelly writes on planning, architecture and aesthetic issues for the Herald.
UN
Special Rapporteur puzzled over obstacles to Pemulwuy Project
September 12, 2006 - South Sydney Herald
By Vladimir Korotkov
The UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, visited the Aboriginal Housing Company on 3 August reports Vladimir Korotkov in the South Sydney Herald of September 2006.
Mr Kothari was in Australia during August, at the invitation of the Australian authorities, with the objective of examining and reporting on the right to adequate housing and other related rights. The issues to be covered were broad and included non-discrimination, rights of indigenous peoples and access to and affordability of adequate housing.
After being briefed about the Pemulwuy Project and walking through The Block, the Special Rapporteur said the State government's resistance to supporting the project puzzled him.
"Given the history of the area and the importance of providing housing and other services for Indigenous people, the Pemulwuy Project is a very legitimate project that should receive support at all levels of government", he said. "I do not understand why a project like this, which has so much community participation, and is on land that belongs to Aboriginal people, faces the obstacles that have been created."
In his concluding report on 15 August where he shared his preliminary observations, the Special Rapporteur identified a hidden national crisis.
In the UN media release the following groups were named as part of the crisis: "... homeless people, Indigenous peoples, children, people with disabilities and health problems (including mental health), peoples with low income, refugees and asylum-seekers, migrants, prisoners
and persons released from detention, youth, elderly, persons with complex needs (e.g. HIV/AIDS, sexual minorities), single parents and individuals and communities in rural and remote areas."
Mr Kothari's parting words to me were that this (Pemulwuy Project) "will certainly be an issue that I will look at, and an example I will use for my work". Were these comments picked up in the following statement in the UN media release: "The Special Rapporteur expressed his concerns on the poor housing conditions in the Indigenous communities he visited."
Among his final recommendations was that the "Australian Government urgently address what can be considered as a humanitarian tragedy of the lack of housing and civic services areas belonging to Indigenous Peoples."
FinalL
RWA Built Environment Plan Released
September 8, 2006 - Clover Moore's Media Release
Following is an extract from CLOVER'S eNEWS - Friday 8 September 2006 - No. 313 concerning the RWA BEP released on 30 August 2006.
The Redfern-Waterloo Authority's Built Environment Plan makes concessions to community concerns while retaining the overall thrust of the draft publicly exhibited earlier this year. Released by the Minister for Redfern and Waterloo on 30 August, the Plan establishes the development framework for the eight "state significant" sites under the Redfern Waterloo Authority's control.
The community campaign to save open space at Marian Street Park from development as an 18 storey tower has been successful, with the revised Plan reallocating the site from business/commercial to public recreation.
The maximum height of buildings north of the Watertower apartments has also been decreased from 18 storeys to 14 storeys, reducing overshadowing. Lower (five storey) setbacks on future towers along Gibbons Street may also help reduce wind tunnel effects, but the maximum heights proposed in the draft remain. Towers up to 18 storeys will be possible in the area bounded by Lawson Square and Margaret, Gibbons and Regent Streets.
The future of the Aboriginal Housing Company's Pemulwuy Project remains at risk and it is unlikely that the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) will be able to build its planned 62 residences for Aboriginal people.
The draft Plan proposed a floor space ratio (FSR) of 0.5:1 for the area largely owned by the AHC. The revised Plan marginally increases this to 0.75:1, which is lower than the adjacent area's FSR of 1:1. The maximum FSR including commercial development remains at 1.5:1.
Height limits along the rail corridor have also been increased to five storeys, with a maximum FSR of 2:1. The open space shown in the draft plan (known as Pemulwuy Park) has been rezoned, with an extension of the five storey controls all the way between Lawson Street and Cleveland Street.
Redfern Courthouse and Police Station will become a community health centre under the Plan, preserving the heritage Courthouse for community benefit.
A $6 million pedestrian and cycle bridge is proposed to link the Australian Technology Park and North Eveleigh. This promises improved access and safety, providing an alternative to the existing crossings at Lawson Street and Macdonaldtown Railway Station.
While the Government has contracted a consultant to develop a Concept Plan for redevelopment of Redfern Railway Station, there is no timeframe for this project or the associated "Civic Centre" that the Built Environment Plan lists as the centrepiece of the proposed Redfern Town Centre.
The concessions in the revised plan are welcome, but don't provide solutions for the lack of green open space, and significant traffic and transport issues. These important issues are put to the future in the promised public domain, cultural and cycling strategies. There are no concrete plans for affordable housing or the area's extensive Department of Housing properties.
The intensification of land use will increase the working and residential population, and it appears that the Government will repeat the past patterns of urban consolidation without prior infrastructure investments to support it.
Information
* Built Environment Plan: www.redfernwaterloo.nsw.gov.au/publications/reports.htm#bep
* Community comment on the Plan is available at www.redwatch.org.au/update/update060904
No
favours for Aboriginal developer
September 6, 2006 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
ALL across the state, honest developers are on their knees, wearing out their breeches in prayer. The object of their fervour is that champagne moment when the LLDC (Lib-Lab Development Coalition) will declare their site "state significant"; when they are lost no longer but, thankgoda'mighty, saved at last. Their eyes glaze and halos of tiny dollar signs glow above each head.
Becton, for example, whose contentious 117-unit resort on the eco-sensitive Byron Bay beachfront received ministerial blessing last week, fought in court for the right to the minister's lap. Foster's, similarly, whose Broadway brewery site was plucked from council purview, lobbied long and hard for the privilege.
For them, ministerial favour is a given. Some are less fortunate. To the Aboriginal Housing Company, owner of Redfern's the Block, the state's attentions taste less like champagne, more like hemlock. Like precision bombing. Like history. As the oldest and central urban Aboriginal community in Australia, the Block is the centre. It's where the songlines meet.
The new Redfern plan, gazetted the same day as last week's Byron blessing, will end that, allowing about three-quarters of the original housing. This inhibits rebuilding private houses on freehold (black) land but hugely increasing the capacity of adjacent lands owned by (you got it) the Government. It's unjust and bizarre. Down-zoning doesn't happen. This is perhaps the only inviolable rule of Sydney's erectile planning tissue: everything goes up, nothing comes down.
Why single out the Block? Not for environmental reasons, if Byron Bay's anything to go by. And not for heritage or contextual sensitivity, since all such legislation has been specifically waived on Redfern-Waterloo Authority sites.
For Mick Mundine, Aboriginal elder and Aboriginal Housing Company chief executive, the reasons are simple: "Racism and greed … It's more than bricks and mortar now. It's the morality. And it boils down to this. They want the land."
Mundine has been slow to radicalise. He was always trying to reason, trying to make peace. Now that's changed. "They never gave us anything," he says, "except the needle bus." The bus that brought the junkies, that fed the smack empire, that cost him his son, that forced him to bulldoze the diehard drug houses that were killing the Block.
It was an act of desperate courage; the trapped fox chewing off its leg to survive. It worked. But now, in a dreadful irony, the reward is official depiction of the Block as beyond help, well beyond self-help. And a ban on rebuilding. Could it be a simple land grab? So cynical, so blatant?
Well, there's no planning rationale. Redfern sits a good kilometre from the CBD. It has two towers, the TNT twins, generally seen as a mistake. Soon, under the plan, it'll have a whole cluster, a mini-metropolis there. Why? Not because it's the place for high rise. Not because it can ever be part of the central business district (at least until Central Station freezes over). But because the towers - and the towering price tags they'll generate - happen to fall on government land.
The Block, they think, threatens this. As confidential cabinet papers advised back in 2004, "if the Block is not redeveloped [to reduce Aboriginal housing], the commercial benefits flowing … would face a substantial reduction … probably in the order of 25-30 per cent". In other words it's not so much a racist government as a monetarist government, presuming on, and pandering to, a racist market.
Many blame a rogue Planning Minister. Frank Sartor, after all, gave us the "no black faces" and "get your black arse in here" gems that made international headlines. Tom Uren, whose federal ministry deeded the Block to the Aboriginal Housing Company in the 1980s and who now chairs its Pemulwuy taskforce, is appalled by the state plan. He sheets it home to Sartor. "Frank," says Uren, "isn't Labor. He's just a person of excessive arrogance who's been in the Labor Party five minutes and seems to be making most of the decisions."
But while Sartor may be hatchet man, he's clearly under orders. Appeals to cabinet (from Uren) and to the Premier are ignored or "lost". The local MP, Kristina Keneally, whose last appearance in this column had her assure Parliament at length that she's "never worn … stilettos", has also never visited the site. She attends press conferences, often disguised as a nodding dog, but her first scheduled visit last week was canceled so she could read the plan. Like, she hadn't seen it?
Carmel Tebbutt, whose Marrickville electorate - should she beat Anthony "The Man" Mundine - will next year include Redfern, has visited the Block, at Uren's behest, but changed nothing.
Sartor describes the Aboriginal Housing Company as "ideologues". He's cut funding, and plays divide and rule by appointing Aborigines (including Mick's cousin, the ALP president, Warren Mundine) to his team. They know the talk.
The "ideologues" answer with support from the Governor, Marie Bashir, the University of Sydney vice-chancellor, Gavin Brown, the City Council, Hillsong and Catholic churches, the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, and the Metro-Strategy adviser Professor Ed Blakely.
In the end, though, that's all ping-pong. The main issue is devastatingly simple. Whoever they are, whatever they say or think, the people of the Block have a right to inhabit their land. It's not terra nullius.
"Why can't we be treated equal?" asks Mundine. "We're not asking for half Redfern Station, like some people wanted. The Block is our land. What they're trying to do to us is not right.
What’s
the future of the Block?
September 03, 2006 - Green Left Weekly
By Aaron Benedek
Around 60 people attended a “What’s the Future of the Block?” forum organised by the student union at Sydney University on August 29. The forum was addressed by Peter Valilis from the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) and Geoff Turnbull, a Redfern resident and member of the local community group REDWatch.
The meeting discussed the AHC’s development plan for the Redfern Block, called the “Pemulwuy project”. The plan seeks to replace government funding with “self-funding”, through increased home ownership on the Block, the opening of a business school and business retail centre, and joint venture projects between the private sector and the AHC.
The NSW government is expected to release a final draft of its plan for the redevelopment of the Redfern-Waterloo area this week, which is likely to include building controls that will prevent the Pemulwuy project from going ahead.
The Labor state government and the AHC have been in dispute since 2004, when the government demanded the AHC cede control of the Block in exchange for development funding. According to Valilis, state planning minister Frank Sartor has already said he wants no Aboriginal housing on the Block.
Doing
their Block: blueprint for change upsets Redfern
August 31, 2006 - SMH
By Sherrill Nixon and Justin Norrie
THE final blueprint for development in Redfern-Waterloo has failed to appease the local Aboriginal community, despite allowing a slight increase in the number of houses on the Block reports Sherrill Nixon and Justin Norrie in The Sydney Morning Herald 31st August 2006.
The Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, released the built environment plan yesterday, which he said would encourage economic growth in the area and create up to 18,000 jobs.
The plan includes a $6 million pedestrian and cycle bridge to link Australian Technology Park with North Eveleigh, replacing a controversial tunnel proposed in the draft plan in February.
Other changes include the preservation of the Marian Street Park near Redfern station after a campaign by local residents. In the original plan, it was to be the site of an 18-storey office block.
Towers of up to 18 storeys will still be allowed on the other side of Gibbons Street, and a new town centre will be created around the station.
But the Aboriginal Housing Company, which owns the land at the Block on Eveleigh Street, says the increased residential density allowed at its site was much less than that allowed in similar areas in Redfern.
The limits put on the site by the Redfern-Waterloo Authority have dashed the company's plan to build 62 new homes for Aborigines on the Block.
"Really, it's about what everyone else is getting ... that's the most poignant issue here," said Peter Valilis, the company's project manager.
The community group REDWatch agreed that the Block's revised density was still insufficient, but said that otherwise the final plan had included several improvements.
A spokesman, Geoff Turnbull, described the decision to preserve Marian Street Park as "possibly the biggest win for the community ... because there's so little open space in the inner city".
New plans to convert the former Redfern court house and police station into a $10 million community health centre also "showed the Government has been prepared to made some positive concessions", he said.
Sartor
outlines final Redfern plan
August 31, 2006 - The Australian Financial Review
By Tina Perinotto
It's one of the most ambitious urban transformation projects in Australia — the redevelopment of the troubled Redfern-Waterloo area in Sydney's inner city into a trendy inner city space with a mix of television workers, technology and research types and brand new housing and shops. Report by Tina Perinotto in The Australian Financial Review Thursday 31 August 2006.
KEY POINTS
* The plan includes 440,000 square metres of employment space.
* There is room for 2000 new homes.
* But the Aboriginal Housing Company says the floor-space ratio of housing
on the Block is discriminatory.
Not to mention housing on the most contentious of the sites known as the Block for at least 60 of the area’s 2000 Aboriginal inhabitants — an issue that may still trip the government up and land it in court, according to local Aboriginal groups.
If the plans succeed, though, and the evidence is already pointing that way, it will be a stunning victory for Planning Minister Frank Sailor, a former lord mayor of Sydney as well as minister for the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, which has been handed the task of pushing through the transformation.
In delivering the final built environment plan for the area, Mr Sartor yesterday outlined 440,000 square metres of employment space and 2000 homes across eight strategic sites that are currently state-government owned, a new town centre and an upgraded railway station, adaptive reuse of heritage buildings including a $10 million community health centre, and a $6 million pedestrian bridge across the railway line, linking the North Eveleigh area with the Australian Technology Park
All up the RWA has already stimulated more than $300 million in new investments, $76 million directly from the coffers of the RWA and 18,000 jobs overall.
Mr Sartor said he had made key concessions on the draft plan, after fielding public submissions including relaxing the floor-space ratio from 0.5:1 proposed for the Block in the draft plan to a final 0.75:1 ratio.
Other concessions are protecting the Marian Street Park and a list of heritage buildings. Already committed to the area is Seven Network and its associated Pacific Publications, which will shift to a new development at the Australian Technology Park.
Babcock & Brown has a leading stake in the former TNT towers that will form the new town centre or "economic hub" of Redfern.
For the rest of the property development industry, the key interest will be on the eight state-government owned sites that will progressively come to the market with various potential.
These are: The Australian Technology Park; North Eveleigh; South Eveleigh Railyards ; Eveleigh Street Precinct (including The Block); Redfern Railway Station and the Gib
bons Street/Regent Street precinct; the former Rachel Forster Hospital; the former local court house and Redfern police station; and the former Redfern public school.
Welcoming the plan was The Property Council of Australia, which said it focused on creating much needed employment and would certainly attract investor interest in Redfern.
"This is unashamedly a jobs-first plan and we support this approach," NSW executive director Ken Morrison said.
Especially welcome was the provision of local infrastructure "to act as a catalyst for investment", Mr Morrison said.
But it won't be quite so easy. Aboriginal Housing Company chief executive Mick Mundine said his group would not be able to get the 60 or 62 dwellings promised by Mr Sartor onto the 8000 sq m site at the Block because of the floor-space ratio.
Mr Mundine said that was discriminatory.
Surrounding residential areas had been designated a 1:1 FSR, (instead of the 0.75:1 for the Block).
"I really feel he is discriminating about who owns the land and who's going to live here," Mr Mundine said. "We are being treated as second-class citizens.
"We want to see Redfern beautified and we all want to see all this happen but why can't we be part of the vision like everyone else is?
"I'm very disappointed."
The AHC might decide to challenge the government on discrimination grounds as well as in the Land and Environment Court," Mr Mundine said.
Illustration: Fresh look ... An artist's impression of a pedestrian bridge to be built between North Eveleigh and the Australian Technology Park.
Comments
to 'Locals block Redfern revamp'
August 31, 2006 - The Daily Telegraph
The graphics associated with this web article misrepresent
what has been proposed by the NSW government. The graphic showing what the
Block could look like is actually of the proposed bike and pedestrian bridge
at the new performing arts centre at the old North Eveleigh rail yards approximately
2 kilometres away from the Block! The Aboriginal Housing Company have produced
a number of images of their Pemulwuy project proposal to clean up the Block
and create a new urban aboriginal centre. The regeneration of the Block
with a mix of housing, recreational, business, cultural and educational
uses has been stopped by Minister Sartor. His stated opposition is that
the project, which includes two thirds home ownership, has too much housing.
The level of residential proposed is the same as he is allowing on surrounding
land including that owned by the government.
Posted by: Geoffrey Turnbull of Spokesperson REDWatch
Redfern
Locals
block Redfern revamp
August 31, 2006 - The Daily Telegraph
By Larissa Cummings
THE Aboriginal owners of Redfern's most notorious neighbourhood, The Block, have rejected the Planning Minister Frank Sartor's final plan for the strip.
The Aboriginal Housing Company yesterday said it was prepared to fight the NSW Planning Department in court if its demands for equal floorspace with surrounding developments were not met.
In the final Built Environment Plan for the Redfern-Waterloo community, the floorspace allocation of dwellings in The Block has been raised to allow for about 60 residences, up from 30.
But AHC project manager Peter Vasilis said the new floorspace to land ratio of 0.75:1 still fell well short of surrounding residential developments which range from 2:1 to 7:1.
He accused Mr Sartor of discriminating against residents of The Block because they were Aboriginal.
"We lodged two very strong objections to the discriminatory way Mr Sartor has used his planning powers in the draft plan,'' Mr Vasilis said.
"Now he has raised the floorspace, but nowhere near enough. Everyone else has double and even triple the floorspace we have been allocated, and it will go to court if it isn't fixed.
"Planning laws are about acting equally for everyone. It's illegal for Mr Sartor to discriminate against landowners on the basis of their skin colour. We want even-handed dealing.''
Mr Sartor yesterday said the accusations of racism were unfounded and implied the AHC was too "ideologically entrenched'' to move forward.
"I believe religion and ideology are the two greatest afflictions of humanity,'' he said. "I have read the submissions of the AHC and I still believe we can achieve their goals, but it's important that we maintain a mixed use of the site.
"If they want government support, they have to try to reach a mutual understanding ... and there's a few people who may be too ideologically entrenched to move forward.''
Mr Sartor also announced yesterday $10 million would be spent converting the former court house and police station into a community health centre, and a new $6 million pedestrian and cycle bridge would be built to link North Eveleigh St with the new Australian Technology Park.
A further $16 million has been pledged by the Dept of Planning towards maintaining affordable housing for Aboriginal residents in Redfern over the next 10 years.
In response to residents' concerns, Mr Sartor said Marion St Park would be preserved in the final plan and zoned for recreation.
He said the renewal of Redfern, which includes an upgraded railway station and town centre, would fuel create up to 18,000 new jobs.
Department of Aboriginal Affairs
and Redfern
August 28, 2006 - NSW Parliament Transcript
Milton Orkopoulos, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and his Director General had a rough time at Budget Estimates in front of General Purpose Standing Committee number 2 on 28th August 2006. The Minister was asked a number of questions about the issues concerning Redfern and The Block. The Minister appears to know nothing about The Block issues and does not see it as being something he should know about or be asked questions about. The Redfern parts of the transcript are well worth the read - Transcript 28/08/2006 Aboriginal Affairs, (PDF 977 Kb) . Can someone tell us then what exactly does DAA do and why not in Redfern?
Sartor
releases final development plans for Redfern-Waterloo
August 27, 2006 - South Sydney Herald
By Ben Falkenmire
The Redfern Waterloo Authority (RWA) released the final Draft Built Environment Plan (BEP) for the area' on 30th August, completing stage one of the NSW Government's Redfern Waterloo Plan, which includes the Human Services Plan and the Employment and Enterprise Plan reports Ben Falkenmire in the South Sydney Herald of September 2006..
Following the controversial release of the pro development draft BEP in April; the RWA purports to have made up to 700 amendments. The final plan provides for 440,000 square metres of employment space and 2,000 homes across eight strategic sites encouraging the creation of up to 18,000 jobs, says the Minister for Planning Frank Sartor.
Key features of the final BEP are the creation of a Town Centre to the east of a redeveloped Redfern Railway Station, a $6 million pedestrian and cycle bridge to link Australian Technology Park with North Eveleigh, a A$10 million community health centre at the former Redfern Courthouse and Police Station on Regent Street, and the investment of $16 million over
10 years in affordable housing for Aboriginal residents. The total $32 million investment amount will be funded by the RWA.
Concessions appear to have been - made by the RWA on matters of heritage, building heights, and open space including the preservation of Marian Park. The RWA also bowed to community pressure in The Block, relaxing floor space ratios but failing to satisfy the Aboriginal Housing Company's (AHC) push for higher density. AHC CEO Mick Mundine says the final plan is discriminatory, prescribing the lowest density ratio to The Block.
Residents are encouraged to respond to the RWA regarding the final BEP, as some aspects are still yet to be determined. The final BEP can be downloaded from the RWA's website (www.redfernwaterloo.nsw.gov.au ) and running interpretations will be posted on local community group REDWatch's website (www.redwatch.org.au ).
In related news, the RWA has appointed Aboriginal advocates Warren Mundine and Ann Weldon to their board.
Nothing
is a surprise in the developers' state
August 18, 2006
By Rod Miller
The imbroglio arising from Joe Tripodi's dealings in real estate should come as no surprise to anyone. For years now, it has become apparent that the Australian Labor Party has given itself over to the men of property, and might more appropriately be known as the Australian Developers' Party.
Why? Because that's where the money is, in spades, if I can use such a metaphor. Election funding, trips, treats and trade-offs are there for the taking.
Legislation has gone through bypassing the democratic powers of local government in favour of a Dictator of Development, Frank Sartor - a very late, opportunistic convert to the Labor cause - who seems to be overseeing some kind of developers' benevolent society.
The State Government's single-minded pursuit of a harebrained policy of "densification" is all about keeping get-rich-quick developers happy.
As it stands, we have a metropolis already bursting at the seams, in crisis over insufficient water, lacking in every facet of effective, large-city infrastructure, including transport, electrical capacity and sewage treatment, and all the while there is the insane determination to squeeze more and more people into less and less space. Think of the impact on an already limited supply with just one high-rise office or apartment building. Then multiply that by thousands. Whatever happened to planned decentralisation?
It is not just Labor; the Coalition is just as bad. It all stems from "donations" from rapacious developers and corporations. The Greens, our only honest politicians, revealed on their website how much the main political players owe these 21st-century carpetbaggers. The only answer lies in the public funding of political parties and elections. There must be no contact or collusion between political parties and any corporate donors, or so-called lobby group.
Pemulwuy
lives, say hundreds who attend Block protest
August 13, 2006 - South Sydney Herald
By Ben Falkenmire
On Thursday 10th August, more than 400 people attended a candle light vigil in Redfern in support of the Aboriginal Housing Company's (AHC) Pemulwuy Project - a redevelopment plan for the historic Indigenous precinct in Sydney known as The Block, reports Ben Falkenmire in the South Sydney Herald September 2006.
The Vigil acted as a form of protest against the NSW Minister for Planning Frank Sartor's rezoning of The Block which renders the Pemulwuy Project unachievable, despite the
AHC's ownership of 22 houses in the area and the rights it has to develop its own land.
Gatherers in Lawson Square were serenaded by Richard Green's stirring Gadigal chant before former Redfern Anglican minister, Bishop John McIntyre, who had travelled from his current post in Victoria, described Sartor's actions as discriminatory against Aboriginal people and therefore a 'racist act'. REDWatch speaker Geoff Turnbull confirmed that Sartor's draft plans to have lower density housing in The Block relative to higher density housing in other areas was in fact discriminatory.
The Vigil then made its way from Lawson Square to The Block to greet organiser of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Isabell Coe, who currently inhabits The Block in support of the commercially and culturally researched Pemulwuy Project. Isobell told the enthusiastic audience, "We're not going anywhere!", and alongside Aunty Madre Woodword, an elder from the Central Coast, led Vigil participants in a ceremonial burning of gum leaves to promote peace and justice.
In homage to Block dwellers, the Vigil then toured the neighbourhood, settling outside the Redfern Community Centre to hear a number of speakers including Pemulwuy Project director Peter Valilis. who pointed out, "It is no longer an Aboriginal issue, it's a community issue". AHC CEO Mick Mundine asked Aboriginals to stand together as one race. Then, legendary Aboriginal boxer Lionel Rose spoke and was followed by a current Aboriginal legend in the sport, Anthony Mundine.
Anthony did not confirm he would run as a candidate for the seat of Marrickville in support of the Pemulwuy Project, with The Block to become a part of the electorate) in next March's election. He did, however, speak more broadly about what he considers to be an injustice to his people.
"Aboriginal people can be the best of the best, we just need a little light," said Anthony. "The Pemulwuy Project will do good for the community".
A legend of a different kind, Tom Uren, the former Minister for Urban and Regional Development in the Whitlam Government, described Frank Sartor as "a man of excessive arrogance" who had been in the Labor party "only five minutes, yet seemed to be making all the decisions".
While Sydney's Gird Mayor Clover Moore could not attend the vigil she did arrive later in the evening and spoke with The South Sydney Herald. "I have come to show my support for the AHC and the company's right to develop its land, just as every other NSW citizen has the right to develop their own land," explained Clover. "The NSW Government has not consulted the community. They are acting as judge, jury and developer and it's simply outrageous."
A number of Greens, Labour and Liberal members attended the night as a show of support for the AHC's Pemulwuy Project.
Mundine
considering political career
August 12, 2006 - SecondsOut
By Paul Upham
Comment By Paul Upham: Leading Australian super middleweight world title contender Anthony Mundine is considering running for election in the NSW state parliament in March 2007. If there is one boxer who can gather the necessary media attention and capture the support of local voters, it is "The Man".
While he is not walking away from his boxing career just yet, state government plans to redevelop The Block housing area in Redfern, against the wishes of the many Aboriginal residents who live there, has seen Mundine 26-3 (20) considering his options. The rezoned inner-western Sydney seat of Marrickville, which is currently held by the Labour Party's Carmel Tebbutt, who is also the Education Minister, is the seat that Mundine would contest.
Former Sydney Lord Mayor and New South Wales MP Frank Sartor, who is pushing for development of The Block area, is also in Mundine's sights and he held back no punches.
"Obviously there's a lot of racism and a lot of despicable acts going on within the government, especially with Frank Sartor," Mundine told a rally during the week.
The 31 year-old always says exactly what he feels and never takes a backward step when it comes to highlighting the terrible way Aboriginal people have been treated in Australia for over two hundred years.
In his book "The Man", released in the year 2000
after he walked away from a successful rugby league career to become a boxer,
Mundine wrote, "...I'm consumed by terrible feeling of emptiness and
loneliness that only we, the Aborigines know. We've lived with it for over
200 years, like a sick person does with their disease. We're downtrodden
people and there's a sorrow which weighs on us and it's never any heavier,
brother, than on our Survival Day - 26 January (Australia's National Day)
- a day
of Aboriginal mourning."
Mundine, a practicing Muslim, has the charisma, confidence
and passion to be a leader who can make a difference for the Aboriginal
community. The former WBA super middleweight world champion indicated to
Australian Associated Press this week that he has long term political plans.
"I'll
stand at some stage in the future," he said, "but whether it's
next year's election, I don't know. I still haven't ruled it in or out."
When that day does come, his political opponents could find themselves struggling not to be knocked out of office.
Mundine
undecided
August 12, 2006 - The Border Mail
FORMER world champion boxer Anthony Mundine says it is still too early to say whether he will contest the inner-western Sydney seat of Marrickville at next year's NSW state election.
Mundine, who was reported to have announced his candidature for the seat in an address to Redfern's Aboriginal community on Thursday night, yesterday said he had never made a definite statement about his intention.
Mundine could stand as an independent.
He has previously said he was considering standing as an independent as part of a bid to stop redevelopment of The Block housing area in Redfern, which would become part of the Marrickville electorate under boundary changes for the election.
"At no stage did I confirm I would be taking part in next year's election," Mundine said.
"I said I would consider whatever strategy is needed to fight for The Block, and the changes to planning laws by Frank Sartor.
"If that means standing for the seat, then that's what I'll do.
"I'll stand at some stage in the future, but whether it's next year's election, I don't know. I still haven't ruled it in or out."
The Sydney Aboriginal community held a rally in Redfern rally on Thursday night to protest against proposed changes to planning controls by Mr Sartor and the Redfern Waterloo Authority.
Aborigines believe the changes would halve the housing on The Block.
From
pugilism to politics: will Mundine will stand at the next election?
August 11, 2006 - The World Today
Reporter: Conor Duffy
This is a transcript from The World Today. The program is
broadcast around Australia at 12:10pm on ABC Local Radio. LISTEN
TO MP3 HERE
ELEANOR HALL: Will he or won't he take the plunge? Champion boxer Anthony
Mundine last night did everything but confirm that he wants to stand at
the next New South Wales election.
The former rugby league player tested the political waters by showing up to a protest over the future of the inner Sydney indigenous housing area known as "The Block".
Mundine says he's so angered by a State Government move to limit Aboriginal development of the area that he's considering acting on his objections by running as an independent.
Conor Duffy went to the protest last night for The World Today.
(Music)
CONOR DUFFY: Traditional sounds rang out around the Redfern Police Station last night as about 400 people gathered to fight for what's known as the block.
To some it's a ghetto, plagued by problems with drugs and rioting, but for Mick Mundine, the Chief Executive of the Aboriginal Housing Company, it's been home for 30 years. He says the block won't be surrendered.
MICK MUNDINE: I think they'll fight tooth and nail because it's not even a black and white issue anymore, it's a people issue its the community that's really struggling and we got to really, you know, all stand up together and treat one another as human beings, because it's a community issue now.
CONOR DUFFY: The Aboriginal Housing Company which owns the
land says the Minister for Redfern Frank Sartor and the State Government
are trying to block a community development known as the Pemulwuy project.
Director Peter Valilis says the development will include business and
housing opportunities that will turn the area around.
PETER VALISIS: It will be 62 homes, 20 of those for rental, 42 of those for Aboriginal home ownership, the first time available in Redfern.
(Applause)
CONOR DUFFY: He says if the State Government controls the future of the site it will be the end of an experiment in self-determination that began under Gough Whitlam.
Time may be running out though as the New South Wales Government is expected to make a decision opposing the development within the week.
The protestors say they want to make the Government pay at the next State election and they've enlisted the high profile help of Anthony Mundine.
ANTHONY MUNDINE: As I've showed you and I'm going to continue to show you, we can be the best of the best and we just need a little light, and what this project is going to bring a lot of good for the community and now they're saying they can't do it.
CONOR DUFFY: After walking through back alleys and around park fires, Mundine rose to address an appreciative crowd.
ANTHONY MUNDINE: Obviously there's a lot of racism and despicable acts going on within the Government, especially with Frank Sartor, I'm not afraid to say it. I feel he's a racist bigot and I'm going to tell him how it is.
(Applause)
CONOR DUFFY: The World Today contacted Frank Sartor's office, but a spokeswoman said the Minister wouldn't comment on the allegation.
Anthony Mundine though didn't hold back, telling the crowd the future of Aboriginal self-determination is at stake and promising the development would be stopped.
ANTHONY MUNDINE: We purchased this land and now they want to try and come into our home and our place and say what we can and cannot do with it, and kick us out. Well, how would they like it if me and a few of the boys from The Block went to their place?
(Laughter and applause)
CONOR DUFFY: While he was talking tough, the boxer appeared less certain about a political future. He'd been widely tipped to announce he would run at the next election as an independent.
He was introduced to the rally as a civil rights leader in the mould of American Malcolm X, who was also a Muslim and was viewed as more inflammatory than leaders like Martin Luther King.
Uncharacteristically shy, Anthony Mundine failed to confirm his political candidacy in his speech and refused to do so afterwards.
ANTHONY MUNDINE: Oh I'm not sure man, my passion you know, obviously is fighting for my people's pride and Aboriginal affairs. I'm heading down that road but I don't know what's going to happen, you know.
CONOR DUFFY: The man behind Mundine's campaign, Peter Valisis from the Aboriginal Housing Company, says the boxer wants to talk to other political parties before running as an independent.
Mr Valisis is adamant the famous sportsman will soon announce he's entering the world of politics.
PETER VALISIS: Anthony will announce it when he's ready, but he didn't say he wasn't going to run for Parliament, as you heard Lyall Munro is supporting him for Parliament and I think it's going to happen, mate, I've got it from the horse's mouth, it's going to happen.
ELEANOR HALL: That's Peter Valisis from the Aboriginal Housing Company ending that report from Conor Duffy.
And we'll know for sure whether Anthony Mundine is serious about politics early next year, with the New South Wales elections to be held on the last weekend of March. But Anthony Mundine says at this stage his next fight will be a boxing bout in November.
Comments
to 'Champion boxer considers politics'
August 11, 2006 - The Courier Mail
Frank Sartor says he will create 18,000 new jobs for Redfern
locals, does he honestly think we believe for one minute that the companies
that will occupy his planned 18 storey towers will come with no workforce
just empty desks looking to fill them with under-trained and under-educated
disadvantaged Redfern locals. Yeah right. Pull the other one Frank. As for
community consultation, one meeting and 2000 copies of his plan, is a joke.
What Sartor failed to mention was the 180 submissions objecting to how the
Aboriginal landowers in Redfern were being discriminated by his draft plan.
On the other hand the Aboriginal Housing Company has been working with the
community for 5 years on the Pemulwuy Project and has distributed over 30,000
copies of its plan.
Posted by: Michael Mundine of Redfern
Champion
boxer considers politics
August 11, 2006 - The Courier Mail
Article from: AAP
FORMER world champion boxer Anthony Mundine says it is still too early to say whether he will contest next year's NSW election.
Mr Mundine was reported to have announced his candidature for the inner-western Sydney seat of Marrickville in an address to Redfern's Aboriginal community last night.
Today he said he had never made a definite statement about his intention.
Mr Mundine has previously said he was considering standing as an independent as part of a bid to stop redevelopment of The Block housing area in Redfern, which would become part of the Marrickville electorate under boundary changes for the election.
"At no stage did I confirm I would be taking part in next year's election," Mr Mundine said today.
"I said I would consider whatever strategy is needed to fight for The Block, and the changes to planning laws by (Minister for Redfern-Waterloo Frank) Sartor.
"If that means standing for the seat, then that's what I'll do.
"I'll stand at some stage in the future, but whether it's next year's election, I don't know. I still haven't ruled it in or out."
Sydney's Aboriginal community held a rally in Redfern rally last night to protest against proposed changes to planning controls by Mr Sartor and the Redfern Waterloo Authority (RWA).
The Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC), which owns The Block, fears the move is a precursor to the government's aim to take control of the area away from Aboriginal people and limit the number of Aboriginal homes that can be built on the land.
Aboriginals say the changes would halve the amount of housing allowed on The Block.
Mr Mundine, who is Aboriginal and nicknamed The Man, told
last night's rally that Mr Sartor was a "racist bigot"."Obviously
there's a lot of racism and a lot of despicable acts going on
within the government, especially with Frank Sartor," Mr Mundine told
hundreds of supporters.
"I'm not afraid to say it, I feel he's a racist bigot."
He said the Aboriginal people were still fighting the land struggle.
"We purchased this land and now they want to try and come into our home and our place and say what we can and cannot do with it and kick us out," Mr Mundine said to a cheering crowd.
The NSW government said today that plans to redevelop The Block have been devised through extensive community consultation.
Mr Sartor today released a statement advising that the government is finalising a draft Building Environment Plan for the area, which will create around 18,000 new jobs for locals, and construct 2,000 new dwellings.
Community consultation on the plan included the sending of 2,000 copies of the plan to key interest and community groups, and a public meeting at Redfern Town Hall in March, Mr Sartor said.
Mundine
yet to declare his political intentions
August 11, 2006 - ABC Message Stick
Boxer Anthony Mundine is yet to declare whether he will run for the Sydney seat of Marrickville in next year's state election.
Mundine last night attended a protest rally in Redfern where it was expected he would announce his intentions.
Hundreds of people marched to the Block last night to protest against the New South Wales Government's plans to redevelop Redfern.
The Minister for Redfern-Waterloo, Frank Sartor, wants to reduce the number of houses built there, leaving more room for businesses.
Mundine said Aboriginal people will not be moved from their homes.
"How would they like it if me and a few boys from the block went 'round to their place?" he said.
He called Mr Sartor a racist.
"If the block don't stand, then Sartor, he don't stand," he said.
The Bishop of Gippsland and a former Anglican Minister in Redfern, John McIntyre, agreed with Mundine.
"He is saying that by definition, if you get a group of Aboriginal people living together in a community, by definition they must be poor, they must be disadvantaged and they must be dysfunctional. Now that is a racist comment," he said.
Mundine said nothing of his political plans, telling the ABC he is still thinking about the decision.
Boxer
Mundine keen to move into politics
August 10, 2006 - SMH
After proving himself in the ring, boxer Anthony Mundine has another fight on his hands.
The former world champion has announced his plan to run as an independent in the inner-western Sydney seat of Marrickville in next year's NSW state election, in a move to secure Redfern's Aboriginal housing area The Block.
The suburb's Aboriginal community have reacted angrily to proposed changes to planning controls by the Redfern Waterloo Authority (RWA) and the Minister for Redfern-Waterloo Frank Sartor which they say would halve the amount of housing allowed on The Block.
The RWA also plans to increase the amount of housing the government can build on nearby government owned land.
The Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC), which owns The Block, fears the move is a precursor to the government's aim to take control of the area away from Aboriginal people and limit the number of Aboriginal homes that can be built on the land.
At a rally staged by local community groups on Thursday, Mr Mundine, who is Aboriginal and nicknamed The Man, described Mr Sartor as a "racist bigot".
"Obviously there's a lot of racism and a lot of despicable acts going on within the government, especially with Frank Sartor," Mr Mundine told hundreds of supporters.
"I'm not afraid to say it, I feel he's a racist bigot."
He said the Aboriginal people were still fighting the land struggle.
"We purchased this land and now they want to try and come into our home and our place and say what we can and cannot do with it and kick us out," Mr Mundine said to a cheering crowd.
"Well how would they like it if me and a few of the boys from The Block went to their place and there was, say, 10 people in the house (and) we said 'Listen, half of youse gotta get out'?
"If the Block don't stand, then Sartor, you don't stand."
Even though he would have little chance of winning Marrickville, which doesn't include Redfern, Mr Mundine could take votes away from Labor, currently held by Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt.
Tom Uren, a former minister in the Whitlam government, which made the first purchase of The Block, also addressed the rally.
Describing himself as once a "pug", he said he supported Mr Mundine all the way.
"I think he's (Sartor) a man of excessive arrogance," Mr Uren said.
"After all, he's been in the Labor Party five minutes and he seems to be making most of the decisions."
The AHC plans the establishment of a cultural and arts centre called the Pemulwuy Project, named after the legendary Aboriginal warrior of the early 19th century.
This would also provide housing, a business college and a sports centre.
Peter Valilis from the AHC said under boundary changes at the election, The Block would become part of Marrickville.
Tebbitt must cover Block
August 7, 2006 - Letters to the Editor of SMH
Dear Editor,
In your article “Mundine considers fight on the hustings” (August 6, 2006) you quote Carmel Tebbutt as saying "I'll be working hard to represent the people of Marrickville and will continue to do so." Ms Tebbutt’s seat of Marrickville next election stretches to cover Redfern’s Block and not just her Marrickville heartland.
Carmel Tebbutt needs to represent the concerns of the people of Redfern’s Block who are fed up with how they are being treated by Frank Sartor and her government. Anthony Mundine’s reported concerns are about what is happening in her new electorate which is not just Marrickville.
Geoff
Geoffrey Turnbull
Spokesperson
REDWatch
web: www.redwatch.org.au
Mundine
squares up to Carmel for political knockout
August 6, 2006 - SMH
Alex Mitchell and Frank Walker
FORMER world boxing champion Anthony Mundine is set to run for Parliament as an independent at the state election in March.
"The Man" will contest the inner-city seat of Marrickville, which is held by Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt, rated the most popular minister in the Iemma Government.
Mundine's move from the boxing ring to the political stage has been motivated by fury within Redfern's Aboriginal community over the establishment of a cultural and training centre in memory of Pemulwuy, the legendary Aboriginal warrior of the early 19th century.
The community, a stronghold of the Mundine family, is angry that its commercially and culturally researched Pemulwuy Project has been dismissed by the Redfern-Waterloo Authority and replaced by what it believes is an inferior proposal.
Mundine is expected to announce his protest candidacy at a public meeting on Thursday night. The Bishop of Gippsland, John McIntyre, who served as Redfern's priest for years before moving to Victoria, will be there to support him.
Mundine's entry into the Marrickville race will alarm Labor powerbrokers as he poses a real threat to the party's 94-year stranglehold on the seat; not because he would be expected to win, but because he would draw voters away from Labor.
Marrickville Mayor Sam Byrne, of the Greens, polled 40 per cent of the vote in the 2005 by-election in which Ms Tebbutt won despite a 7 per cent swing against Labor.
Mundine, a cousin of Warren Mundine, president of the Australian Labor Party, could drag even more votes away from Labor.
Mundine's appeal will have to reach beyond the Aboriginal community as only 1.3 per cent of the electorate's voters are Aboriginal. Just over 3 per cent are Muslim, which could help him as he has converted to Islam.
The seat of Marrickville does not include Redfern, where Mundine's support is strongest. It stretches from Newtown to Marrickville and from Petersham to Dulwich Hill.
Mundine is a role model for more than Aboriginal people. He has been very outspoken on injustice to Aborigines and Muslims. He first mooted a move to politics in 2003 as "The Man of the people" after winning the WBA super middleweight title.
His immediate focus will be to give voice to community anger over Planning Minister Frank Sartor, the minister in charge of the Redfern redevelopment, whom locals accuse of heavy-handedness and lack of consultation.
The election contest will reignite the bitter feud between Mr Sartor and one of Mundine's uncles, Mick Mundine, chief executive of the Aboriginal Housing Company, owner of the run-down homes project known as the Block.
Last September, Mr Sartor said in a radio interview that Mick
Mundine should "get his black arse" into the minister's office
to discuss redevelopment plans. After a public outcry he was forced to apologise.
THE MAN v THE WOMAN
ANTHONY MUNDINE
Age: 31. Partner: Danielle; four children.
Lives: Blakehurst.
Career: Former rugby league player with St George, St George Illawarra and
Brisbane.
Boxing division: Super middleweight.
World ranking: 9.
CARMEL TEBBUTT
Age: 42. Partner: Anthony Albanese, federal MP for Grayndler; one child.
Lives: Marrickville.
Career: Marrickville Deputy Mayor 1995-1998; NSW upper house 1998; Marrickville
seat 2005.
Boxing division: Political heavyweight.
Black and White unite to keep
The Block in Aboriginal hands
July 25, 2006 - AHC Media Release
Aboriginal Housing Company CEO Mick Mundine and Isabel Coe have called for supporters of Aboriginal housing on The Block to attend a historic protest against the NSW Government on August 10th. They fear that NSW Minister for Redfern-Waterloo Frank Sartor is trying to take control of The Block away from Aboriginal people.
The protest will begin outside the state Government's Redfern Waterloo Authority (RWA) offices (1 Lawson Square, Redfern) at 6:30pm. Protesters will then march to The Block, where Isabel Coe of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy will conduct a ceremony around a "sacred fire" that symbolises unity amongst those in attendance.
The protest will end with a series of speeches from community leaders including champion boxer Anthony Mundine and Aboriginal Tent Embassy founder Michael Anderson.
The AHC owns the land and properties that make up The Block. According to a draft document released by the RWA, the land will be rezoned to prevent an AHC plan for the construction of 62 new homes for Aboriginal residents.
Mick Mundine said, "The community, both black and white, need to demand that control of The Block's land remains in Aboriginal hands. The Block was one of the first pieces of land given back to the Aboriginal people and is where the civil rights movement in Australia began.
"We deserve the same rights as any other Australians and we should be able to use our land as we see fit. We will not be dictated to, or stood over by, government ministers like Frank Sartor."
Coe said, "The Tent Embassy is here to fight for Aboriginal sovereignty and that's what the protest is all about. We're going to remind Frank Sartor that The Block was created to provide proper homes for Aboriginal people.
"The new paternalism being spread by the Government is what we have to attack. It's racism in a new dress. The NSW Labor Government is adopting the same paternalism that the Liberals use at a Federal level. Enough is enough," Coe said.
High profiles members of the Aboriginal community, Australian Labor Party and Church are supporting the protest. Organisers will also draw on the resources of local reconciliation groups, including Reconciliaction and Redfern Residents for Reconciliation.
Aside from Anthony Mundine and Michael Anderson, other speakers on the night will be Isabel Coe, Mick Mundine and Redfern's Aboriginal pastor Ray Minniecon.
The Bishop of Gippsland John McIntyre, a former Anglican minister in Redfern, is travelling to Sydney from Melbourne for the protest and will also address the ceremony.
McIntyre said, "We cannot stand by and be silent on this threatened injustice being perpetrated by the State Government and their developer mates. If Frank Sartor has legitimate concerns about how the redevelopment of Redfern will occur he needs to enter into dialogue with the Aboriginal community."
Trevor Davies from the Darlington Branch of the ALP said the RWA is facing significant opposition from local members over their plans for The Block. He expects that a number of Labor politicians will join branch members at the protest.
Davies said, "The NSW Government is doing some good things in Redfern and Waterloo, suburbs which have been neglected for far too long. But their reluctance to support the AHC on the Pemulwuy Project is a black mark that will go down in history as a lost opportunity to help build a prosperous Aboriginal community in the heart of Redfern."
For further information or media inquiries, contact:
Peter Valilis, Aboriginal Housing Company, 0400 804 022
Isabel Coe, Aboriginal Tent Embassy, 0423 647 695
Trevor Davies, ALP Darlington branch secretary, 0400 008 338
Lyn Turnbull, Redfern Residents for Reconciliation, 0418 655 246
Residents
protest outside Sartor's home - Frankly, we do give a damn
July 24, 2006 - Daily Telegraph
By David Fisher, Political Reporter
A GROUP fighting an 800-house development in Putney took their protest to Planning Minister Frank Sartor's home yesterday - to "support" his wife's battle against a proposed apartment complex.
Chanting "we feel Frank's pain", the group said they understood why Mr Sartor's wife Monique Flannery was fighting the development at the back of the couple's Beverley Park home.
But the protesters said that while Ms Flannery can fight that development at local council level, they are unable to do the same as Mr Sartor has seized control of the approval process.
The Daily Telegraph revealed last month that Ms Flannery had lodged objections to the 74-apartment, four-storey development on the grounds of extra traffic and loss of privacy.
The protesters, from the Coalition Against Private Over-development (CAPO), said they also faced the loss of their tranquility but the Putney development would add 10 times as many cars to the area than the one at the back of the Sartor house.
Legislation introduced by Mr Sartor this year allows the planning minister to seize power from local councils and appoint administrators for councils deemed too slow to assess applications.
Using a megaphone outside Mr Sartor's house yesterday, CAPO chairman Rolf Clapham shouted: "We feel your pain, Frank. There's no place for a four-storey development behind your house - we support your wife's fight to stop it.
"We wish you could feel our pain. We wish you would support our fight against a much bigger development in our backyards.
"Instead of the 446 extra cars that will go on the road near your place, we'll have an 4500 extra cars."
CAPO and other residents in the Ryde area believe Mr Sartor has not listened to them regarding the planned development at the Royal Rehabilitation Centre site in Putney.
"We are not opposed to any development, we are just saying the planned one is too big," Mr Clapham said.
"But Frank Sartor is too arrogant to listen, he has made up his mind."
Mr Clapham also blamed Ryde MP and Deputy Premier John Watkins.
"He needs to stand up and show some backbone because
if this goes ahead, the traffic will clog up Ryde," he said.
Young ideas for a new Redfern
July 21, 2006 - The University of Sydney News
By Mandy Sacher
University of Sydney architecture students have been given a chance to help
transform the troubled Block area of Redfern into an indigenous cultural
centre.
Two hundred undergraduate architecture students have been asked to design
innovative buildings and iconic features for the Aboriginal Housing Company's
(AHC) Red Square urban design proposal, with an emphasis on tradition, cultural
values and spirituality.
Col James, senior architecture lecturer and member of the AHC, said it was
a great accolade "for any design student to have a sponsor look at
their work and say 'Yes, we'd like to buiid it'.'1
He said the AHC would use a selection of top student designs to commission
a development application. "We will insist that the architect employed
engages with the students," he said.
Third year student Vera Wang said students were enthusiastic about being
given the chance to design something with client support. "We know
for sure that there will be a building on Red Square that we have contributed
towards," she said.
Students from years two to five are taking part, and each year has been
assigned a different project including a health and fitness centre, a spiritual
centre, gallery, a college and hostel named after Charles Perkins, and a
commercial centre to be built around a civic space fronting Redfern Station.
Kristine Sodersten, coordinator of the Bachelor of Design degree, approached
the AHC offering to engage students in the project. "There have been
many problems in this area and we knew that the AHC wanted to develop the
Jand, so we asked them if our students could get involved and start the
process of designing for them," she said.
The top designs are being presented to AHC chief executive Michael Mundine,
who has thanked the University for its support and commended the students
for "putting their hearts and souls into the projects".
Mr Mundine said their designs would help bring the AHC's vision to reality:
'As our clear intent is to build for the next generation, we welcome the
involvement of young University students today."
Now was this really a focus on
Redfem?
By Tim Brunero
Who determines the real agenda in focus groups, asks Tim Brunero
as he reviews his participation in a recent event organised by the Redfern-Waterloo
Authority.
I got a random call at the end of March from a mob wanting to know if I
would like $70 to take part in a discussion group about the proposed redevelopment.
They wanted to know if I had any mates who might be interested. And certainly,
I could help - many late night discussions at The Royal Hotel have taught
me I have lots of friends in the area who'll give you an opinion on anything,
whether they're paid or not.
There was only one catch, I was asked if I was a member of REDwatch or a
range of other community groups - I assume if we'd been members we'd have
been excluded. Obviously, they wanted people who were interested, but not
too interested.
So, off I went along to Souths Leagues. The focus group of ten, of whom
only about four were my friends, were asked a series of questions on our
impressions of the re-development.
Residents' ideas about forcing property developers to foot the bill for
community facilities were dismissed by discussion group organisers as untenable.
And questions about The Block, the local Indigenous community and increased
government funding to solve social problems were also side-stepped faster
than a Newtown Jets halfback.
Many of the locals said they worried about increased traffic from the planned
influx of 20,000 new residents and workers. Some were concerned about the
increased pressure on parks and facilities such as swimming pools and gyms.
Others were troubled that there seemed to be no real plans to solve social
problems - except that more business in the area would create more jobs,
jobs that will no doubt require high-skill levels.
However, most of all they were suspicious of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority
and it's aims.
Yet, it was only after a barrage of questions about our impressions of the
Authority itself that the penny dropped. The 'organisers' of the discussion
group were from the Redfern-Waterloo Authority - and they weren't actually
interested in our ideas for the re-development. They were simply gauging
our reaction to the existing plans to be able to sell them.
Of course, I can't be sure. But, I can be sure of one thing: that it is
probably the end of the random calls I can expect to get.
Frankly,
these are no Sartorial masterpieces
June 29, 2006 - REDWatch
The following three breif items dealing with the CUB site ran in the Alex Mitchell and Kerry-Anne Walsh editied Naked eye in the Sun-Herald of June 26.
Frankly, these are no Sartorial masterpieces
AFTER seizing control of the $800 million development of the Carlton United Brewery site at Broadway Planning Minister Frank Sartor explained that he was concerned the City of Sydney would deliver "an inferior design outcome". For the record, during his 11-year term as Sydney lord mayor, Sartor gave the city such celebrated architectural triumphs as the Toaster on east Circular Quay, the Cook and Phillip Park moonscape, the Regis Towers in Haymarket, Victoria Towers above the Catholic Club in Castlereagh Street, various Meriton-built icons and his most enduring projects, the redesign of William Street into a "gateway" and the Cross City Tunnel, which he co-sponsored.
Experts close to home
MODESTLY, Sartor has appointed what he calls "an expert advisory panel" to oversee the CUB project. The panel is chaired by former government architect Chris Johnson, who works for Sartor's Planning Department, and includes Michael Collins, chairman of the Heritage Council and on the board of Sartor's Redfern Waterloo Authority, and Lucy Turnbull, who was deputy to Sartor when he was lord mayor and is also on the Redfern Waterloo Authority. The final member is Neil Bird, deputy chairman of Landcom and a member of the Central Sydney Planning Committee. Nothing like getting outside advice.
That was then, this is now
IN July 2002 Sartor complained bitterly about the Carr government scrapping height and density control He warned this would "end orderly urban development in greater Sydney and open the way for a developers' free-for-all'. He went on: "There are four key determinants of economic value for property: height, density, permitted uses and heritage. Any council which starts playing around with them in an ad hoc fashion open the door to uncertainty, development appeals, and corruption." Pity he doesn't follow his own advice over the CUB site.
Not
in Frank's back yard
June 17, 2006 - Daily Telegraph
ALL-powerful Planning Minister Frank Sartor has backed some controversial development projects recently -- but it is a different story when it comes to his own neighbourhood.
Mr Sartor has found himself in the middle of a planning dispute that involves a development that would back on to -- and overlook -- his Beverley Park home.
Developers want to knock down existing buildings on a car yard that backs on to his property and put up several blocks of units of up to four storeys. The proposal is for 74 units and a basement car park.
Serious opposition and objections to the development have emanated from the Sartor family home -- but it is the minister's wife who has been voicing the concerns.
While Mr Sartor keeps at arm's length, his wife Monique Flannery has attended community meetings regarding the proposed development and has written several times to Kogarah Council general manager Garry Sawyer to voice her objections.
In a letter to Mr Sawyer dated March 16, Ms Flannery said the proposed development is "excessive in both size and scope and will be detrimental to our current enjoyment of the amenities inherent in the quiet, low density, leafy environment".
"The development as planned is not in keeping with the surrounding area, is well in excess of 2(a) zones applicable to the area generally and will introduce a multitude of disadvantages for residents including loss of privacy, increased noise and traffic issues and a sudden surge in population on the one block," she adds.
Ms Flannery summarised her objections as being on the grounds of the development being of excessive height, poor design quality, "excessively dense" and because it is insufficiently set back from its western boundary, that backs on to their property.
She asked that council either refuse approval or insist on substantial change.
Mr Sartor's wife is not the only resident objecting to the proposal -- the owners of all the properties that back on to the site are opposed to it.
A spokeswoman for Mr Sartor confirmed the minister's wife had objected. "Mr Sartor has deliberately not got involved and he thinks the issue can be resolved through normal development mechanisms," the spokesman said.
A spokesman for Kogarah Council said the development, by Hosking Munro Pty Ltd, was still in the assessment stage.
Once-bullied
Sartor grows up and becomes a bully
June 14, 2006 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
IT'S that dumb-and-dumber feeling you get when someone grabs your hand and
makes you slap yourself, hard, in the face. It's how the City of Sydney
council must be feeling right now.
Last Wednesday, after 18 months of haggling with Foster's over a "voluntary planning agreement" on the Carlton and United Breweries site on Broadway, and moments from a joint announcement, the council found itself formally asking the planning minister to step in and take over. Uh, please, sir, kick me.
Say what? Why would it do that? Threats? Coercion? Ventriloquism? Well yes, actually.
The story starts here. Since 1991, all serious council planning decisions have been made not by the council but by the Central Sydney Planning Committee.
Four of the committee's seven members - a carefully appointed majority - take marching orders directly from the state but its decisions are still, legally, those of the council. This is a lie, but it's a legally stipulated lie, designed for market consumption.
What market? Us. Most of us regard most development with something between shock and horror. At the same time, and especially if we don't have to look, we want construction, jobs and economic growth.
The committee is designed to schmooze this electoral paradox, ensuring that the council wears the blame (who in God's name approved that?!) while the state gets both control and credit for growth, such as it is.
It's smart, but it's not honest. An honest system - or planning minister - would have said, two years ago when the CUB process was rebooted after the mayoral elections, "this site is way too lucrative for you local government pissants, so the state will annexe it to Redfern-Waterloo, though it is patently not Redfern-Waterloo, so we can exact developer levies under the ever-flexible Redfern-Waterloo Authority Act. To placate the developer, a major party contributor, we must of course raise heights and densities well past what is reasonable, while loosening energy-saving targets for those same, high-energy developments. You understand. It's simple dollar arithmetic."
But that isn't what the minister, Frank Sartor, said. Instead, he told Parliament: "The second untruth I need to correct is the notion that [the Redfern-Waterloo Act] is a cash-grab by the Government. As if we would try to redevelop Eveleigh or Waterloo as a cash grab!"
As if. Now, the Government proposes 18 storeys for Eveleigh-Waterloo and more than 33 for the CUB site, while in the same breath halving Basix requirements for residential towers. Cash grabbing, back scratching and bullying in a single, practised move.
Bullying? It's that old playground graduation from bullied to bully. Like when, in 2000, Bob Carr invited the then lord mayor Sartor to adopt the cash-starved Museum of Contemporary Art. He waited until the council had spent 18 months and $100,000-odd on a proposal before deciding, at the last moment, to resume MCA funding after all.
Now it's Minister Sartor who waits, while the council lavishes energy on CUB, before pulling the rug at the last moment. As an exercise in humiliation it works, every time.
The council - surprise - couldn't win. Eighteen months ago, when Clover Moore's administration was new, CUB's then preferred developer, Australand, walked out citing "delay and uncertainty".
Now Foster's, as the site owner, pleads likewise. But look closely and you'll see who's been playing funny buggers.
The delay, as a process run by the Central Sydney Planning Committee, has actually been in government control all along. Uncertainty, under the minister, can only increase, since the move takes the CUB site from known and agreed limits (a 100-metre height limit and 4:1 ratio between built area and site area) to a situation that is wholly up for grabs.
As for the assertion by Foster's that "it's been a very difficult process" dealing with the council, consider this sequence of events.
Last July, the council wrote to the Planning Department requesting clarification on developer contributions for the CUB site. No response.
In January, the council sent the minister its draft plan and, in February, answered his queries on it. No response.
Negotiations on the voluntary planning agreement commenced, and by May 16 there was in-principle agreement. Emails from Geoff Donahue, communications director for Foster's, to the council, dated May 26 and May 30, confirm that Foster's was happy with the agreement and ready for a public announcement "on Monday".
Meanwhile, however, on May 25, Sartor faxed a letter to Moore. "I am advised," it said, "that a draft VPA has not been agreed on to-date despite lengthy negotiations." The letter threatened to declare the CUB site state significant, wresting it from planning committee control.
This forced Moore to call a special meeting of the planning committee. There, on June 7, the four Government members revolted without warning, using their majority to request ministerial intervention. It was, in the words of one councillor, Shayne Mallard, sheer "political bastardry".
The irony is that the product may be fine. Certainly it's the right site. If there's any block in the state positively begging for high-rise, high-density residential development, it's this one: southern CBD, huge site, major arterial, nearby UTS tower, public transport centre of the universe.
It's the process that sucks. Whether the main push is anti-local government, anti-Clover, ancient Frank-versus-Clover rivalry or the old ALP anti-women-in-politics-other-than-nodding-dogs, hardly matters.
From the public interest viewpoint, the test will be how high the towers, how much car parking (despite proximity to Central Station) and how many dollars flow from here to the otherwise unfunded Redfern-Waterloo Authority. By then, though, it'll be too late to cry foul.
Elizabeth Farrelly writes on planning and architecture issues for the Herald.
Slum
city fears as Sartor grabs massive project
June 9, 2006 - SMH
Sherrill Nixon Urban Affairs Editor
THE Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, is set to take control
of the city's biggest residential project, igniting fears he will allow
enormous apartment blocks that will become Sydney's future slums.
The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, and Chippendale residents say Mr
Sartor's last-minute intervention in the $800 million Carlton and United
Breweries site is a blatant grab for more cash from the eventual developers.
They fear he will approve much larger apartment blocks on the Broadway site
than the City of Sydney Council was prepared to accept, in exchange for
higher developer levies which would be used to fund affordable housing in
the Redfern-Waterloo area.
"The Government is looking for money here … you are just looking
at the slums of the future," Cr Moore said.
The 5.7-hectare development, approximately the size of four city blocks,
is expected to house about 3000 people in 1800 apartments - tripling the
population of Chippendale.
It has been the subject of two years of difficult negotiations between the
council and the site's owner, Foster's.
The huge blow to Cr Moore and her council came on Wednesday night at an
extraordinary meeting of the Central Sydney Planning Committee.
The committee, comprising four government and three council appointees,
considers city developments worth more than $50 million.
The meeting was called to respond to a letter from Mr Sartor, expressing
concern at how long it had taken the council and Foster's to agree on a
range of planning issues. In the letter, Mr Sartor also directed the council
and Foster's to negotiate the affordable housing levy - a matter both parties,
and the Central Sydney Planning Committee, had believed would be negotiated
separately.
Cr Moore described the letter, which arrived just days before the council
and the company were due to sign an agreement, as a "bolt from the
blue".
At Wednesday's meeting, the government appointees used their majority vote
to ask Mr Sartor to "call in" the development and assume planning
control. Neil Bird, the deputy chairman of Landcom, told the meeting he
did not believe the council and Foster's could come to an agreement following
Mr Sartor's intervention.
"I think it's better to act professionally and request the minister
use his powers," Mr Bird said.
Cr Moore, the Liberal councillor Shayne Mallard and the Moore-aligned councillor
John McInerney opposed the motion, in a rare split vote.
"The fact is that the minister's intervention is nothing
but political bastardry in my mind. It is designed to harm you [Cr Moore],
it is designed to harm the council," Cr Mallard said.
But the committee passed a unanimous motion affirming its support for planning
controls approved in December that restrict the highest buildings on the
site to 100 metres, or approximately 33 storeys, and provide for a 5000-square
metre park, child-care centre and community centre on the site.
Chippendale resident groups fear Mr Sartor's takeover would jeopardise those
community facilities, destroy the heritage values of the site and lead to
higher-density development.
Lindsay Charles, from the Friends of the Carlton United Site group, said
that local residents believed the development allowed by the council was
already too large.
"We have got the CBD on one side of us. If we have got this [development]
directly behind us … we are just simply never going to see the sun
again," Ms Charles said.
A Foster's spokesman, Troy Hey, said the company believed it was possible
to have a higher-density development while retaining the community facilities.
He welcomed the likely takeover by Mr Sartor as a way of providing more
certainty for Foster's, but conceded it meant going over a lot of ground
that had already been the subject of negotiations with the council.
A spokeswoman for Mr Sartor, Zoe Allebone, said the minister would seek
advice about whether to assume control of the development, but believed
doing so could cut six to 12 months off the approval process.
Street
drinking bans spark fear on Block
June 6, 2006 - SMH
By Tim Dick
THE heart of Redfern, the Block, is excluded from a new street drinking ban, prompting fears more chronic drinkers will be funnelled into the troubled area.
The Aboriginal Housing Company unsuccessfully sought an extension of alcohol-free zones imposed last night by the City of Sydney on parts of Redfern, Glebe, Newtown and the city.
Its chief executive, Mick Mundine, said the partial ban would simply move street drinking from one part of Redfern to another - namely its land - and endanger the safety and health of local children.
The council's spokesman, Mark Scala, said it was too late for the Block to be included in the current application, but said new proposals would be considered in the future.
However, the Redfern Legal Centre questioned the utility of the zones. Its executive director, Helen Campbell, said: "These are chronic alcoholics. They're not going to stop drinking just because you put a sign up. We should be helping these people."
Sartor
slammed over CUB
June 03, 2006 - The Australian
By Paddy Manning
SYDNEY Lord Mayor Clover Moore accused NSW Planning Minister Frank Sartor
of making a multi-million-dollar "cash grab" yesterday by contemplating
higher density at Foster's Group's $1 billion-plus CUB site development
in Sydney's Chippendale, in exchange for higher affordable housing levies.
The 1800-unit development, on the 5.7ha site of the former Carlton & United Brewery on the Sydney CBD fringe, is one of the city's most significant, and has been in planning for more than two years.
After drawn-out negotiations the City of Sydney and Foster's were about to sign a voluntary planning agreement including a maximum floor-space ratio of 4:1 and a 5000sqm park.
The proposed VPA did not canvass an affordable housing levy payable by Foster's under the state's Redfern Waterloo Authority Act - envisaged at 2-3 per cent of the value of the development, or $20-30 million.
On May 25, Mr Sartor wrote to the City expressing concern about delays to the council's approval process, contemplating "limited FSR increases" and threatening to "call in" the development by designating it of state significance.
Ms Moore said on Thursday Foster's finance director Angus McKay had advised her that, having spoken with Mr Sartor, the company would not sign the VPA and would be likely to seek increased density in order to be able to afford the levy the Government was now demanding.
A Foster's spokesman yesterday said no levies or floor-space ratios had been determined but the Government wanted to negotiate all aspects of the development at the same time.
"It was always our belief that the site could sustain a higher FSR," the spokesman said.
"This is a process issue. None of the work we've done has been lost," the spokesman said.
Mr Sartor said any suggestion that the affordable housing levy would be higher than the envisaged $20-30 million was a "fabrication".
However, a spokesman for Ms Moore said higher levies - up
to $100 million - would be a consequence of increased density. "The
bigger the FSR, the bigger the levy", the spokesman said.
Money
spent on votes, not Aborigines
May 27, 2006 - SMH
By Adele Horin
THE Federal Government's policy of "practical reconciliation" has come spectacularly unstuck in Wadeye, the Northern Territory Aboriginal town now famous around the world for its violence, gang warfare and child abuse.
Mal Brough, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, has pointed the finger at law and order and the deficiencies of customary law. And he has made wild claims about generous government expenditure. In truth, Wadeye is a scandalous example of gross neglect and underfunding by federal and territory governments.
The public has been led to believe that billions have been spent exclusively on Aborigines, who have received special treatment over years, and that Wadeye is a typical example of government munificence wasted.
Rarely can these claims of over-expenditure on Aborigines be tested. They have become accepted wisdom, feeding a deep sense of pessimism and a blame-the-victim mentality.
But an important study, published last year, examined the assertion and found it wanting. Ironically, it focused on the very town whose troubles are being broadcast, thanks to the BBC World Service, around the globe, to the great shame of Australians.
The detailed analysis was carried out by John Taylor at the Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. The town and its surrounding area was one of eight sites identified in 2002 to test a "whole of government" approach to service delivery. This was part of the Howard Government's golden era of "practical reconciliation". As well as the federal and territory governments, it involved the local Aboriginal-run council, which brought representatives from 20 clans together for the exercise. (The clans have been trying to live on top of each other since Robert Menzies' assimilationist policies drew them in from far-flung regions after World War II.)
And guess what? Contrary to expectations and to hype, the study found that governments had spent far less per head on an Aboriginal person in Wadeye than on the average territorian - almost $2000 a year less. Wadeye, the sixth-largest town in the territory, was being short-changed to the tune of $4 million a year. Less was spent there despite the region's average life expectancy being 46, despite an average 16 people living in each dwelling, and despite high levels of sickness, unemployment and illiteracy.
Unlike so many dying outback towns, Wadeye had a high birth rate and a population predicted to double over the next 17 years when it would be the territory's fourth-biggest town. You would expect relatively more per person to be spent there given the high level of need, the Third World life expectancy rates, the large proportions of children and the growth rate.
In Canada, where a similar study was carried out comparing government expenditure on indigenous people with the average, the outcome was as expected: more was spent on the needy. In Australia, however, it seems that the least is provided to those most in need.
The main culprit was gross underspending on education. Governments spent 47 cents on a school-aged child in Wadeye for every dollar spent on an average territorian child. And compared with spending on schools in large urban areas such as Darwin, the real figure could be five cents.
The underspending was partly a result of a territory funding formula based on school attendance. Only half the eligible children in Wadeye were enrolled and even fewer regularly attended school. But when a mammoth effort was made at the start of the 2005 school year to bring virtually all 700 eligible children to school, there were not enough desks, pens or teachers.
While less was spent per head in Wadeye on education, training and job creation, more was spent on negative aspects such as welfare payments, policing and criminal justice.
Brough may be right that more police are needed to restore law and order. But perhaps if $52 million had been spent on houses three years ago, when the ANU team first quantified the cost of housing everyone adequately, the present problems would be less extreme. Now about 2500 people live in 148 habitable houses.
Why hasn't urgency been brought to the issue? The Darwin lawyer Sean Bowden, writing in the National Indigenous Times last week, showed that politicians have made decisions to spend money on crucial swinging seats in Darwin rather than in desperately poor Aboriginal centres.
Any visitor to Darwin can see it is well-equipped with modern amenities and pleasant housing - and that is partly because the Northern Territory under Commonwealth grants funding receives almost 5½ times per person what NSW or Victoria receives. As Bowden says, the generous Commonwealth funding flows untied to the territory on the basis it labours under problems of disadvantage and distance. But the funds appear to be distributed lavishly to the northern suburbs of Darwin in order to retain eight vital Legislative Assembly seats.
A Commonwealth Grants Commission working paper also shows that, compared with spending by other states, the territory underspends on "services to indigenous communities". It should have spent $161.1 million on Aborigines in 2004-05. It spent just over half that.
When government ministers point the finger of blame, they rarely turn it on themselves. They rarely question whether government expenditure on education, training, housing and job creation is adequate or equitable, let alone ask themselves whether, given the Third World conditions in towns such as Wadeye, a Marshall plan for the bush is what is needed. It is easier for them to believe their own rhetoric, and blame everyone else.
AHC Note: "although this article is not about Redfern, Aboriginal communities both rural and urban suffer from the same government neglect and negligence".
Rock
the Block
May 5, 2006 - SMH
By Katrina Lobley
Black and white unite to rock a modern sacred site.
Sydney's indigenous population considers the Block in Redfern a modern sacred site. Most other Sydneysiders feel quite differently, knowing little about the place except when they hear bad news about drugs, drink, crime and violence.
The Block, then, doesn't immediately spring to mind as a festival venue. But Rock the Block gig is very much a community event, with everyone invited. The afternoon of music by indigenous and non-indigenous artists will raise funds for a kids' dance and karate studio.
Rock the Block organiser Joel Beasant admits drawing an audience will come with more than the usual challenges.
"The challenge is for people to walk down Lawson Street and to come to this festival," says Beasant, whose rock band, Andorra, is on the bill alongside hip-hop acts Combat Wombat, the Herd's Ozi Batla, Wire MC, Jimmy Little's grandson, crooner James Henry, and more.
"To overcome that barrier that people have to being involved with the indigenous community is something that, from my point of view, I want to break down."
Beasant came up with the idea for the concert when a friend, former Bangarra contributor Donald Enoch, showed him the Aboriginal Housing Company's plans for revitalising the troubled area.
"[Enoch] said, 'I want to refurbish this gym space as a community dance studio for women and the children. Do you know where we can get any mirrors or a barre?' I said, 'I'll think about it.' Then I thought, 'Well, I don't necessarily know where the materials are, but I know how we can make some money to buy them: put on a festival.' I went out to my network and I got a whole lot of feedback from many more bands than I could possibly accommodate.
"In addition, I was surprised and pleased that the Australian Film Commission came to me and said, 'We've got a section called Blackscreen for indigenous films and we'd like to show some films at your festival.'"
The films will be screened at the Redfern community centre
during the afternoon.
Indigenous hip-hop artist Wire MC jumped at the chance to perform because
"it's a community gig, it's Block-based and, being a mission boy, this
is like the inner-city mission. I want to be here rocking the mob, representing
Gumbayngirri [his NSW mid-North Coast clan].
"I don't do it to sell records. I just happen to be an MC doing hip-hop because, to me, hip-hop is like a modern-day corroboree. It's a song-and-dance movement and I come from a song-and-dance culture. I feel that hip-hop, as a musical genre, is more accessible to underprivileged communities and underprivileged youth.
"Because I don't have a physical contact to traditional practices, my music helps me to maintain some sort of twisted Dreaming."
Wire MC - "the MC stands for My Cuz, My Community" - says he looks forward to performing for Redfern residents.
"They're mob, they're family, they're very supportive, they're honest," he says.
Ozi Batla, whose band the Herd enjoyed recent chart success with a cover of Redgum's I Was Only 19, said he signed up "to raise awareness about what is potentially a suburb under siege.
"Redfern is as important as it gets to the character of the city," he says.
He also wanted to help fund the dance studio, which is taking shape in a former storeroom on the ground floor of the Elouera-Tony Mundine Gym.
"Community centres are important," Ozi Batla says. "They give people, especially young people, a place to express themselves and to avoid boredom, as much as anything else."
Meanwhile, the AHC staff who are helping Beasant stage Rock the Block are keen to keep politics out of the event. Relations between the AHC chief executive, Mick Mundine, and the Minister for Redfern Waterloo, Frank Sartor, have soured over conflicting plans for redeveloping the AHC-owned Block.
"We've got to start thinking about the next generation or it'll be the lost generation," Mundine says.
"We can't dwell on the past; it's the present and the future that we've got to start thinking about. I don't care if we're white, black or who we are. We open our doors to everybody."
Mundine is also keen to clean up the streets. He waves his arm out the window to where people are sitting around, drinking, yelling and cadging the odd cigarette off passers-by.
"All these fellas out there don't even live here,"
he says. "They come here every day and use and abuse our community.
Because they do it, everyone says, 'Oh, look at the blacks.'
"I'm not saying our tenants are perfect - don't get me wrong - but
[those people] don't live here."
AHC general manager, Lani Tuitavake, a mother of six who has called Redfern home since 1991, says she can't wait for the space to open later this month.
"I think people are missing out on capturing kids in this area from age eight to 12," she says. "Once they get to 13 or 14, they're mummies and daddies, even though they're children themselves.
"There's a dark side to this place which has to do with the drugs, but this is a place that you could learn from. I couldn't have given [my kids] a better upbringing than being here."
NSW:
Redfern Waterloo Residents Demand SEPP be Withdrawn
May 3, 2006 - Message Stick
Source: Redwatch
REDWatch, a residents organisation representing people from Redfern, Darlington,
Waterloo and Eveleigh, today called on the State Government to withdraw
the State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) for state significant sites
in Redfern Waterloo.
Residents are outraged that plans for the development of Redfern Waterloo might be passed into planning law without proper community reconsideration following a bungled initial consultation.
"These plans have been very controversial. They prepare the ground for the sale of extensive government assets, remove parkland, prevent Indigenous housing plans for the Block and transform the character of the entire area. The public submissions we have collected on our website are overwhelmingly critical. The way things are looking the plans may become law without further consultation." REDWatch spokesperson, Geoff Turnbull said.
"We are calling on the Government to ensure the SEPP for Redfern Waterloo is withdrawn. We are calling on the RWA to make publicly available all submission on the BEP and to re-exhibit the BEP with the additional information required for a proper consultation. We want genuine opportunity for public feedback, not a cheap three card trick to prevent residents from having their say." Mr Turnbull said. "Only after further consultation on the RWA Plan do we want to see the re-exhibition of SEPP that will give it legal effect."
The Redfern Waterloo Authority (RWA) made its plans for the redevelopment of large parts of Redfern Waterloo known in a glossy Draft Built Environment Plan (BEP). Rather than wait for changes from the public consultation on the BEP the Government decided to simultaneously exhibit the SEPP required to bring the RWA Plan into law.
According to Geoff Turnbull "In a number of cases the exhibited draft SEPP and the glossy RWA Plan simply did not agree. In addition the RWA Plan did not reflect what the RWA had already agreed on Redfern School, while a lack of information on heritage, open space, traffic and transport impacts essential to understand what the RWA proposed were missing. It had all the hallmarks of an inadequate rushed consultation."
"For example the RWA Plan covers many existing heritage buildings which have been rezoned to allow higher buildings but there is no information on how the RWA will handle the heritage issues. Existing open space is removed in the Plan and there is no specific provision for new open space yet we are told the RWA will provide adequate new open space. How can residents make considered submissions when the RWA has not been frank with the community about what they propose" said Mr Turnbull.
The City of Sydney strongly recommended that the Draft Plan and the SEPP be deferred until additional information was made available. REDWatch argues the RWA plan needs to be re-exhibited with the additional information for community comment. Only after this should the SEPP giving legal effect be reintroduced.
The REDWatch Submission and other publicly available submissions can be found at http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/statesignificant/ssbackground/submissions/
Redfern
plan threatens cultural identity, critics say
April 15, 2006 - SMH
By Sherrill Nixon, Urban Affairs Editor
A PLAN to build 18-storey office towers near Redfern train station while reducing housing around the Block has raised fears that the area will become a mini-CBD, losing its cultural identity and heritage in the process.
Community and welfare groups doubt the Redfern-Waterloo Authority's draft plan for the area will provide jobs for residents, despite the addition of 440,000 extra square metres of employment space.
They are also worried about the lack of open space, the failure to protect heritage buildings and the absence of a transport strategy in the draft plan.
The harshest criticism comes from the Aboriginal Housing Company, which owns the Block and says the authority's plan for the symbolic heart of Sydney's Aboriginal community is unfair and racially discriminatory.
The vision for the Block changes the site's zoning from residential to "mixed use", encouraging business developments in buildings with a three-storey height limit but allowing only 30 homes. The restrictions kill off the Aboriginal Housing Company's proposal to build 62 new homes.
In his submission responding to the authority's draft plan, the company's chief executive, Mick Mundine, questioned why the Aboriginal-owned land was the only zone in the Redfern-Waterloo area for which reduced housing densities were proposed.
"It [the plan] proposes an unfair and racially discriminatory treatment for different land owners in Redfern without any legitimate planning rationale," Mr Mundine said.
His submission was backed by the lawyer John Mant and planner Richard Smyth, who said the treatment of the Block was inconsistent with the State Government's Metropolitan Strategy, which encourages increased housing density near train stations.
The draft plan was released in February by the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, who said the creation of 18,000 jobs and 2000 homes in the Redfern-Waterloo region over the next 10 years would "break the cycle of opportunity". It foreshadows a revamp of Redfern train station, including the development of an "urban boulevard" linking it with shops and other businesses in nearby Redfern Street, and 18-storey office towers along the main roads near the station.
In its submission responding to the plan, the NSW Council of Social Service says the huge commercial developments would make Redfern a larger business hub than Chatswood. It urges the Redfern-Waterloo Authority to better explain what the social and environmental aspects of such development would be.
While the authority says the new office blocks and other businesses will provide jobs for local people - one of the most disadvantaged groups in Sydney - community groups and the City of Sydney Council disagree.
Geoff Turnbull, a spokesman for the local community group REDWatch, said: "The sorts of jobs that are going to be on offer are not the sorts of jobs that the people in our housing are qualified for."
The City of Sydney Deputy Lord Mayor, Verity Firth, called for a greater focus on developing small businesses that would create appropriate job opportunities for local people.
In its submission, the City of Sydney has called on the Redfern-Waterloo Authority to defer the draft plan until it could provide further detail on several matters, including the provision of affordable housing and open space, and heritage protection.
The deadline for submissions is Tuesday.
Read the full objection submitted by Richard Smyth and John Mant on behalf of the AHC
Read
the full objection submitted by Michael Mundine CEO of the AHC
Next
stop Redfern as a tourist mecca
April 12, 2006 - SMH
By Tony Stephens
SOME people looked forward to the day when there were no black faces left in Redfern to get in the way of business, but that would never happen, Rob Welsh said.
Instead, Redfern's Aboriginal identity could attract tourists from all over the world, with a national gallery of indigenous art, a museum of Aboriginal history, and restaurants and markets selling Aboriginal products.
Mr Welsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, was speaking in Redfern yesterday at a signing with the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, of the City of Sydney principles of co-operation agreement. Cr Moore saw it as a formal recognition of the Redfern community's spiritual and cultural ties to the land and she criticised the Federal Government for its lack of leadership on reconciliation.
"This agreement formalises our commitment to reconciliation. It says we will continue to right the wrongs of the past and address the needs of the future," she said. Under the agreement, the city and land councils will establish a framework for considering development proposals and promoting Aboriginal culture.
The NSW Governor, Professor Marie Bashir, said reconciliation was moving ahead at the grassroots. "What I dream of seeing is a gallery of Aboriginal art that could be a magnet for people all over the world," she said.
Mr Welsh said Redfern was the heart of the Aboriginal struggle for land, justice and recognition. Most Aborigines wanted redevelopment, but with conditions.
"Most Aboriginal people want the redevelopment of Redfern and Waterloo to proceed, but we want to have a say in how this occurs. We have to be partners in this change, not passive victims of it."
This vision would not be fulfilled unless it included adequate housing for Aborigines, Mr Welsh said.
Rob Welsh Speech to City of Sydney
Principles of Cooperation Agreement Signing
April 11, 2006
Speech By Rob Welsh, Chairperson, Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council 11 April 2006.
I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation on whose land today’s agreement will be signed.
I’d also like to acknowledge our Aboriginal elders. And also the non-Indigenous elders. Thank you for sharing this day with us.
Thank you to the Lord Mayor, Cr Clover Moore, the Acting CEO, Monica Barone, councilors and staff for entering into this relationship with the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council.
Thank you also to the Governor of NSW, Your Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, for your presence at today’s ceremony and for your continued support of Aboriginal people in this state.
It’s significant that this agreement is being signed here in Redfern.
As the wording of the agreement points out, Redfern is seen as the heart of the Aboriginal struggle for land, justice, coexistence and recognition.
It was only a few kilometres to the east of here that the invasion of Aboriginal lands began in 1788.
The Gadigal people of this area were among the first Aboriginal people to see the white sails of the First Fleet round the heads and land at Sydney Cove.
They were among the first Aboriginal people to resist the invasion of their land, the first to be struck down by smallpox and other introduced diseases and the first to become decimated by random killings and massacres.
Many years later, Redfern again became a focal point for Aboriginal history when for the first time urban land was given back to Aboriginal people here at what would come to be known as the Block.
It was in Redfern that the first modern Aboriginal institutions were formed – the Medical Service, Housing Company, Legal Service and Murrawina pre school.
And it was in Redfern when the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating gave his famous speech acknowledging the truth of the frontier conflict and stolen generations.
The document we sign today recognizes all of this history.
But just as importantly, it also commits us to achieving practical outcomes that will help shape the future of this suburb and this city.
This is crucial because the history of Redfern has again reached a tipping point.
Transport pressures and the fact that Redfern is close to a CBD that needs to expand have meant that our suburb is changing forever.
Although the Redfern Waterloo Authority has been created to facilitate development and human services, the Sydney City Council still has responsibility for large parts of Redfern.
This is one of the reasons why the principles of cooperation agreement we sign today is so important for Aboriginal people. The agreement establishes formal communication, consultation and negotiation processes between Metro and the City of Sydney.
It also opens the way for possible future projects to improve employment, education and training opportunities for Aboriginal people, including tourism management and community development.
We want to work with the City of Sydney to ensure Indigenous people maintain our presence in Redfern and the suburb holds on to its Aboriginal identity.
Some are fearful of Redfern changing because they think that Aboriginal people will be forced out.
But I think this sells our people short. Most Aboriginal people want the redevelopment of Redfern and Waterloo to proceed. But we want to have a say in how this occurs.
We have to be partners in this change, not passive victims of it.
We want Redfern and Waterloo to become secure and prosperous for everybody, including Aboriginal people.
Metro Land Council wants to work with the City of Sydney as well as the State and Federal Governments to ensure that this change helps make Redfern 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 Australia?
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.
However, this vision will not be fulfilled unless it includes adequate housing for our people in this suburb.
To give you an idea of the scale of this problem, 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 recently 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 and feel safe.
Some people believe that Aboriginal housing is incompatible with a redeveloped, commercially prosperous Redfern. Some of them no doubt look forward to a day when there are no more black faces around here to get in the way of business.
But Redfern means so much to our people that this will never happen. Aboriginal people will always come back here even if we have to sleep in the streets.
Redfern always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
The real question is not whether or not there will continue to be an Aboriginal presence here, but what kind of presence?
Will our people be the faces in the street you try and turn away from as you enter your shiny new offices?
Or will there be a place for our bright young graduates working inside?
Will there also be a place for Aboriginal apprentices and construction workers building those offices?
Will there be a role for Aboriginal entrepreneurs to develop businesses that service the influx of new residents, workers and visitors to this part of the city?
Today’s agreement provides a framework for our Land Council and the City of Sydney to contribute as equals towards answering some of these questions and making our community a better place for all residents – Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
We hope that it will lead to similar cooperative working relationships being developed with State and Federal Government agencies.
On behalf of Metro I thank you Madam Lord Mayor (Clover) and your council for taking this step with us.
It’s a great pleasure to be sharing this event with our Governor, Professor Marie Bashir whose long standing support for Aboriginal people is very much appreciated by our community. I’m sure that like me you’re looking forward to hearing the Governor’s address.
NSW:
Historic agreement boosts reconciliation in Sydney says Metropolitan Local
Aboriginal Land Council
April 11, 2006 - Message Stick ABC
Source: Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council
Reconciliation in Sydney received a boost today with the signing of an historic
agreement between the Sydney City Council and Metropolitan Aboriginal Land
Council.
The principles of cooperation agreement establishes formal communication, consultation and negotiation processes between Metro and the City of Sydney.
It also opens the way for possible future projects to improve employment, education and training opportunities for Aboriginal people, including tourism management.
Metro Land Council Chairman, Rob Welsh, said he was confident the agreement would promote a greater understanding of Aboriginal culture and history in Australia’s largest city.
“This agreement builds on what is already a strong, positive relationship between Metro and the City of Sydney,” Mr Welsh said.
Mr Welsh said the agreement was particularly important given the significance of Redfern to Aboriginal people.
“Despite the creation of the Redfern Waterloo Authority, the Sydney City Council still has responsibility for large parts of our suburb of Redfern,” Mr Welsh said.
“We want to work with the City Council to help make Redfern once again a site of Aboriginal hope and achievement.”
Mr Welsh said he hoped Redfern’s distinctive Aboriginal identity could one day attract international tourists and people from all over Sydney to visit the suburb.
“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,” he said.
Mr Welsh said he hoped to pursue similar cooperative agreements with the State and Federal governments to benefit the Aboriginal community of inner city Sydney.
Love
song to the gritty city
March 31, 2006 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
From wharves to warehouses, there is much to admire in our dirty old town, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
SYDNEY is a seriously misunderstood city, and no one misunderstands her more insistently and energetically than Sydneysiders. In other world cities we happily savour the underbelly, happily see the grittier parts of London, Barcelona, New York, Istanbul, Shanghai or Mexico City as giving depth and character. But we seem determined to smoothe and gentrify our own glorious town within an inch of its life, to light-blast the shadows, to rethink this old-built punishment as all glam, no grit. All party, no hangover. It's as though we think, or maybe wish, that the sanitised tourist version is all there is.
This year's National Trust Heritage Festival, Industrial Heritage - Our Working Lives, is a determined tug in the other direction. From the factories of Alexandria to the Darling Harbour docks and the Pyrmont shipyards, the festival celebrates a side of Sydney we are rapidly, thoughtlessly losing.
At one level, of course, we know better. Tours of the Tank Stream, which take the chosen down to Sydney's seamy point-of-origin twice a year, sell out so fast participants are chosen by ballot to stop the phones melting. The Tank Stream, or what is left of it, symbolises both the untried fertility of the virgin continent, and our willingness to poison our own wells for short-term convenience. This is potent stuff, and we rightly want to see it, feel it for ourselves. To taste the earthy, mossy underground of our own dark town.
This is the stuff that makes Sydney sexy. Sexy in a Maria Callas, rather than a Kylie Minogue, sort of way. Sydney is a born drama queen, a town with the contrast turned up full. Physically, it's all muscular intricacy: brilliant sun and deep, black shadows; exuberant topography and baroque shoreline; sunlit sandstone and the bottomless black under the Port Jackson fig. Our down-and-dirty industrial history has the same gritty appeal.
Sydney has always had a high-contrast, chiaroscuro character. Cowboy town it may be, but one whose slums and razor gangs, thugs and standover men, are essential to Sydney's remarkable, charismatic energy. Sydney without its Abo Henrys and Tom Domicans, without its Robert Askins, Davis Hugheses and Eugene Goossens would be no more engaging than a Canberra or an Auckland. Clint ain't Clint without the bad guys.
We know this, really. We know that cleaned-up sani-town is dull even for tourists, certainly dull for locals; that The Rocks and the Cross, Darling Harbour and Walsh Bay were all more interesting back when they were real, working places. And that in our ruthless overcleansing we have lost some subtle but irreplaceable flavour, something essentially ours that, just maybe, we could have kept.
From the lanolin-soaked hessian and clanking steel of the Darling Harbour sheepyards to the drive-in finger wharves of Woolloomooloo and Walsh Bay, work of the loud, rusted, grimy sort is being replaced by up-market residential, fluoro-lit convenience stores and air-conditioned cafes. At Woolloomooloo and Walsh Bay those great, muscular working wharves are now stuffed with multimillion-dollar apartments while at Darling Harbour, Sydney's no-expense-spared bicentennial jewel, there is a persistent sense of the dismal.
Sometimes, we vote with our feet. The bistros of Cockle Bay Wharf and King Street Wharf might be packed, but Darling Harbour itself, rehashed during the late '80s when planners worked on the expectation of total leisure, has stubbornly resisted all attempts to make it live. Why? Because it turned its back on the city, and turned its back on work.
All this sucks the blood from a town. And yet, even as we regret it, we go on doing it. Urban cleansing is full steam ahead in the Cross, where not only the hookers and the hooked are disappearing from the expensively repaved streets, but also the underfed artists and emigre bohemians, who made Australia's most densely packed urban quarter what it was.
Redfern, too, is under the knife, with plans afoot to de-black The Block, gentrify the station and turn the grungy railyards into a shiny moment in Sydney's global arc. For 75 years The Block has been an Aboriginal crossroads for people from all over Australia. Pretty soon, it'll be little more than another shard of globalism: 20-storey office towers, white-collar apartments and government-funded Koori-cultural centres. Welcome to plastic-land.
So? you might shrug. That's market forces. C'est la vie. But it's not God-given, this stuff. It's planned. And it doesn't have to be quite as deathly, or quite as irreversible.
When a city's artist, or bohemian, or Aboriginal communities get moved on, they don't simply reassemble somewhere else, in suburban Ashfield or Botany. Deprived of the special inner-city conditions that sustained them (such as density, access or value) they simply cease to exist. The individuals may survive but the communities, and the richness they offer a city, die.
The answer lies in perception; in our preparedness to see beauty in unexpected places, and to see past dollar value. Melbourne has been much more successful in keeping its city-centre vitality because, in imposing a strict city-centre height limit, it kept values down to the point where the smaller, older, less mainstream (and therefore more interesting) remained viable. In Sydney, by contrast, we tend to operate a commercial monoculture; if it can't pay for itself, forget it.
The same attitude informs our heritage legislation, where listing - notwithstanding the hysteria it generally provokes - is easily sidestepped through a Site Interpretation Strategy (glorified artwork) or direct appeal to the minister on grounds of hardship or state significance. Take Chatswood railway station, where the 106-year-old 28-lever signal box, in flawless condition, was last year demolished with special ministerial permission, supposedly for public access but really to make way for a $165 million residential high-rise.
If the Federal Government has its way, and heritage listings become voluntary and negotiable (as proposed in the Productivity Commission's recent report), this situation will become only more pronounced.
And yet, surprisingly often, the heritage mafia themselves fall for the rhetoric. Australand's recent botoxing of the last Burley Griffin Glebe incinerator remnant, for instance, which is about as lively as plastic shop-window sushi, is cited as an example of heritage loveliness.
The latest and most obvious case - which doesn't feature in Our Working Lives - is the working harbour itself. The Government spin machine, determined to turn the port into floggable waterfront real estate, has purposefully redefined work to include cruise ships and water taxis. Twelve months from now, as the Government prepares to move the last of the port space down to Botany, that's what will be left of this once-proud working port; a harbour ringed by smart apartments and glossy office towers.
Does it matter? Only if we want Sydney to be fully realised, rather than some wrinkleless, expressionless botoxed copy.
History lessons
JACQUI GODDARD accepts that not everyone sees the beauty in old power stations or railway yards, but insists our industrial heritage should be celebrated. "These are the places that formed us," says the conservation director of The National Trust, NSW. "They tell stories and there's a real fear that we will lose it all."
The trust's Heritage Festival, which begins tomorrow and runs until April 16, features more than 400 exhibitions, tours, concerts and community fairs across NSW. There will be guided visits to places such as the Tank Stream as well as talks about long-lost structures such as the Pitt Street Natatorium, a saltwater swimming pool which opened in 1888. Sydney artist Jane Bennett will have an exhibition of her paintings of Sydney's vanishing industrial sites.
NSW
State Government grabs planning control
March 29, 2006 - The World Today - ABC
Reporter: Toni Hassan
ELEANOR HALL: In New South Wales, the State Government has sparked strong reaction from shire councillors and environmentalists today, with its decision to seize planning powers which will allow it to override local governments.
The new legislation is similar to laws passed in South Australia, and the New South Wales Planning Minister saying the change should speed up development approval times and make planning decisions more transparent.
But opponents say the law strikes at the heart of local democracy, by giving unfettered powers to the Planning Minister, with no right of review or public consultation, as Toni Hassan reports.
TONI HASSAN: Ever had an issue before council and been frustrated by how long it takes for your plan to be assessed?
The New South Wales Planning Minister Frank Sartor sympathises with you.
He's increasingly used his power to call in development sites across the State and give applications deemed of state significance the green light.
The new laws narrowly approved by State Parliament overnight go further.
Frank Sartor says they are about reining in councils that are dragging their feet on all planning decisions.
FRANK SARTOR: This is about the accountability of local government. We've had reports now for a decade of the times it takes to process development applications. Councils deal with 125,000 per annum. Most of those are mums and dads, they're not developers.
Where a council has a systemic problem, what this new power allows me to do is to say instead of calling in, even the big ones, to say I will appoint a panel to operate at the local level under the Local Government Act, following the same procedures to deal with the particular area the council is not performing on.
So it's a way of saying, you're accountable from now on, you take far too long or behave inappropriately in processing these things and I could put in the panel to do your job for you.
TONI HASSAN: Frank Sartor on local radio this morning.
The legislation, seen as a win for developers, was passed despite noisy protests and backbench MPs expressing concern about the electoral impact of the bill.
Mr Sartor has used a Property Council poll, to argue the change has community support, but even business, if local talkback radio is anything to go by, worry that the new government appointed panel will be too outcomes driven.
TALKBACK CALLER: There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what planning's all about in this debate.
Planning's not about, really, about the outcomes. It's about the process and about getting process right. And if the process is right, then the outcomes should follow. But if you try and get the outcomes and manipulate the process to get the outcomes you want, you can actually end up making conflicts worse than they were in the first place.
TONI HASSAN: Alex Gooding is the Executive Director with the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils. It represents 11 councils in Sydney's biggest growth area.
Mr Gooding says two-thirds of all development applications are approved within 40 days. He says the changes are unprecedented and undemocratic.
ALEX GOODING: If the Minister wants to take over planning powers and if he says that the State Government's sufficient, why have local government at all? Why not just basically run everything out of Macquarie Street?
I don't think the community wants that. I should add that at the moment, the majority of development applications are determined by delegated authority by staff rather than councillors.
TONI HASSAN: Alex Gooding says the new planning laws overlook the fact that state planning instruments are sometimes behind planning decision delays.
ALEX GOODING: A lot of the delays, which are claimed to be the fault of councils are often the fault of state agencies.
The issue will potentially lead to a major centralisation of planning decisions in the State Government and in the Minister's hands and the question that everybody has to ask is, is whether the Department of Planning is capable of handling that workload?
TONI HASSAN: Is it?
ALEX GOODING: Well I think, to be frank, there are serious doubts about that.
TONI HASSAN: With just a year out from the next state election, opponents of the change will be keen to establish if it generates any electoral backlash.
The new planning laws come at a time too when NSW has fallen on harder times, and is looking for new sources of investment and revenue.
The legislation also allows government to introduce new state levies on development and has been approved the same day the Iemma Government launched an advertising campaign aimed at getting NSW a bigger slice of GST revenue.
ELEANOR HALL: Toni Hassan in Sydney with that report.
Sartor
seizes council powers
March 29, 2006 - SMH
By Bonnie Malkin and Anne Davies
THE Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, has been given sweeping powers to seize councils' planning powers after a knife-edge vote in the NSW upper house last night.
Councils that take too long to approve developments or resist the State Government's policies on urban consolidation now face having their planning powers seized by an administrator or a government-appointed panel.
The legislation passed by two votes in a first reading, with the help of Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party, the independent David Oldfield and the Shooters Party's John Tingle.
Now, if a council's performance is thought unsatisfactory, a planning minister can put in an administrator or a panel, without an inquiry to establish the council is not fulfilling its functions under the Local Government Act.
Councils in Mr Sartor's sights include Ku-ring-gai, Sutherland and Byron Shire. Ku-ring-gai has resisted medium-density development in the past, Sutherland, has been criticised for slow approval times, and Mr Sartor has criticised Byron Shire Council over its handling of the controversial Becton development.
But to win the cross-benchers' votes Mr Sartor had to accept amendments making him improve the reporting on council performance before he uses his new powers. He also agreed to limit panel tenure to five years, with a review after two years.
The Local Government and Shires Associations has fiercely resisted the new powers, yesterday holding a rally outside Parliament. The president of the Local Government Association, Genia McCaffery, said replacing councillors with unelected panels would make assessment less transparent. "We live in a democracy, and in a democracy we elect people to make decisions and at least these people are then accountable at election time to the community who lives with their development decisions," she said.
She said panel members such as town planners and architects would face conflict of interest problems because they also worked for developers.
The Greens' Sylvia Hale said the bill was a property developer's dream. The property industry had donated $1.3 million to the main parties last year, she said. "That is a clear indication of which voices were being heard when this bill is brought before Parliament."
But developers, including the Property Council of Australia and the NSW Urban Taskforce, have welcomed the changes as a shortcut through council red tape.
Mr Sartor has defended his powers, saying he received eight requests a week from developers asking him to declare their projects state significant and take planning control from councils. The changes to the act would actually reduce his role in the decision-making process, he said.
"The panel idea is about being able to say, 'I don't want to call this in'. If there's systemic problems we may consider appointing a panel with local people on it as well to sort it out."
The changes also include powers for Mr Sartor to intervene on section 94 plans and contributions that are levied by councils on developers to fund local infrastructure.
Under pressure from the Property Council, Mr Sartor has agreed to amendments that require consultation with industry associations before he alters a section 94 plan.
The final vote late last night was expected to confirm the
initial vote earlier in the night.
Open Letter to the NSW Parliament
March 27, 2006 - AHC Media Release
Redfern’s peak Aboriginal housing company has weighed into the debate about the latest Planning Bill before the NSW Parliament this week.
“I was very alarmed to read in the newspaper that the independents and the Christian Democrats are considering supporting the new planning Bill, giving the NSW Government the authority to ignore community objections in favour of developers”, said Michael Mundine CEO of the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC).
This is one of the most undemocratic changes to planning laws in the recent history of NSW. Minister Frank Sartor and the NSW Government are in the process of destroying the Aboriginal community of Redfern, with no accountability to anyone. This new Bill, before the parliament, clearly reveals their agenda to expand this despicable attack on basic human rights to participate in the planning process and determine the shape of our own communities, to the rest of NSW.
“This has gone too far!” said Mundine.
“I was shocked and felt incredibly betrayed to think that compassionate and principled spiritual leaders like Fred Nile and Gordon Moyes would even consider being part of this disgraceful and obvious assault on our democracy; simply to appease a handful of greedy developers who see the community’s views and aspirations as an encumbrance to their profit margins”, said Mundine.
“Minister Frank Sartor is an arrogant racist man who deserves nothing but our contempt. I appeal to the members of parliament not to give him the power to do to the rest of NSW what he is already doing to the Redfern community. The NSW Government has consistently failed to honour the spirit of the Redfern Waterloo Act, so how can we trust them with even more power?”, said Mundine.
“I predicted over a year ago that if the NSW Government was successful in knocking over the Block in Redfern they would take their pro-developer agenda to the rest of the State”, said Mundine.
We can not imagine this is the legacy our politicians want to leave the state of NSW.
Labor
councils turn on Sartor as ugly fight develops over local planning
March 26, 2006 - SMH
By Alex Mitchell State political editor
PLANNING Minister Frank Sartor's bid to seize statewide planning powers to override local councils has been hit by an avalanche of protest, especially from leading local government figures in the Labor Party.
Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore will address a protest meeting outside NSW Parliament in Macquarie Street on Tuesday as MPs resume debate on the controversial planning legislation.
The protest has been called by the Local Government Association of NSW and the state's Shires Association to implore upper house MPs to block the bill and force the Iemma Government to withdraw it.
Mr Sartor faces a further obstacle at the Labor caucus meeting on Tuesday morning when backbench MPs will express their concern at the damaging electoral impact of the bill.
This follows fierce condemnation of the Sartor legislation from Botany mayor Ron Hoenig, who is chairman of the ALP's local government committee, Blacktown mayor Leo Kelly and Tony Hay, who is the president of the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils representing 18 councils in the city's west.
In a move to deflect criticism, Mr Sartor has seized on a Property Council of Australia survey showing widespread public support for reform of local government planning.
"In light of these findings, my proposed reforms are very modest - and to oppose the bill before Parliament would be self-serving in the extreme," he said. "The Local Government and Shires associations and [their] hangers-on might keep barking, but the people have spoken."
In a direct appeal to wavering MPs in the Legislative Council, Mr Sartor said: "I urge the upper house and councils to embrace these limited reforms - or risk further erosion of public confidence in local planning decisions."
A critical vote on the Environmental Planning and Assessment Bill is expected on Tuesday night, with enormous pressure being applied to Christian Democrat MPs Fred Nile and Gordon Moyes, Unity MP Peter Wong and Outdoor Recreation MP Jon Jenkins to support the Government.
The wild card is expected to be David Oldfield, the One Nation co-founder, who has not declared which way he will vote.
The major shot fired over the Government's bows comes from Labor-controlled Blacktown Council, which unanimously voted to called on Premier Morris Iemma and Mr Sartor to withdraw the legislation.
Backed by Mr Kelly, a veteran Labor powerbroker, the resolution said: "This council registers its strongest possible objection to the legislation as issues of local concern should remain the decision-making responsibility of the elected representatives of the local community, being local councillors."
On the Liberal side, Willoughby mayor Pat Reilly, president of Northern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, said: "The legislation strips councils of their long-held role in working with the community to provide sustainable development in an appropriate context.
"It is a step towards doing away with local government and the community of interest will be abolished.
"The current Planning Minister has already demonstrated a willingness to call in sites all over Sydney under the basis that they are state significant.
"Communities don't want the potential for more deals between major developers and planning ministers at their expense."
No
miracle on this agenda
March 22, 2006 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
WHAT would Jesus make of planning NSW? This question, which may sound fanciful or even (God forbid) cheeky, is momentarily pertinent. By next week, it'll be over. Then, ideas of the meek inheriting anything, much less the earth, will seem as risible as ever. Come Tuesday, Parliament will, barring a miracle, vote in drastic new planning laws. Until then, though, what Jesus thinks matters. For seven days all that resists the collapse of local democracy in NSW are the twin towers, the reverends Moyes and Nile.
It's good sport, watching right-wing Christians defend grassroots democracy against the Lib-Lab development coalition, comprising a "labour" party that uses "socialist" as a term of abuse and a "liberal" party that rants against the bill but declines to vote for fear of upsetting the developer lobby. You've seen Christians v lions; here's Christians v snakes.
To some extent, it's a pecking-order thing. Every culture needs a whipping boy. In Spain's version of Fawlty Towers the Spanish waiter, Manuel, becomes a Neapolitan. In the same way, Australia needs New Zealand (as the butt, so to speak, of all those sheep-shagging jokes) and state government needs local government. It's why they created it, back in 1842. And just as the bullied become bullies, council-bashing is especially prevalent among state politicians themselves, in Minister Sartor's immortal phrase, ex-"local government pissants".
Ours is the roads, rates and rubbish model, custom-designed to fail. Underpaid, underpowered, underprotected councils were shaped for maximum cost and minimum responsibility, to attract mainly self-serving ratbags, to be deeply corruptible. Designed, that is, to be sacked.
In 2003 the then planning minister, Craig Knowles, spent vast sums to inflate Planning NSW into the mega Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources, promising "a smarter planning system which is simple, effective and efficient … [and] a huge reduction in red tape". Two years later, the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, split it back into its component parts for precisely the same reason, "slashing red tape", and providing "certainty" for developers. He amended the Planning Act to jettison red tapes like heritage and consultation, and build a slippery, secret sluice-gate for projects deemed - by him - "state significant".
The latest amendment bill brings the minister three more shiny new powers: to replace councils' planning with an administrator or "independent" panel; to control councils' detailed development control plans; and to exact special infrastructure contributions on top or instead of the familiar "Section 94" levy, channelling yet more cash from councils to the state.
No reasons are required. No evidence produced. The arguments used are tardiness, inefficiency and waste. But these needn't be proved. The minister can take the planning powers if he "is of the opinion that the performance of a council … is unsatisfactory", giving them to an administrator or panel "who have, in the opinion of the minister, relevant skills". There will be no public meetings, minutes, or even decisions unless the minister wishes it. The minister's opinion becomes an item of cruel and unusual importance.
Good, you think. Get them, local government pissants. Some decisions are just too important for democracy. But here's the irony. It's still democracy, of a sort. And state politicians, bureaucrats and appointees are quite as corruptible as their local confreres. Better shredders, perhaps, but not better humans.
Never mind that it was Clover Moore who, as an independent, saved Frank Sartor from sacking, when he was Lord Mayor. Never mind that the one NSW individual empowered for the big-picture planning we so desperately need (like transport) will be too busy micro-stuffing flats into Kur-ring-gai or Westfield's rehashed Centrepoint into Pitt Street. Sartor has a good planning mind and a strong strategic grasp. Shame to waste them on a mudslide of mini-issues.
In the Legislative Assembly, the Opposition walked out rather than vote. Even the Deputy Leader, Barry O'Farrell, whose Kur-ring-gai constituency is lined up as the bill's first casualty, sat on his hands. Now, in the upper house, everything rests on the Twin Towers, Christians of the aptly named crossbenches. Will they crumple when the planes hit?
"I try to trust the Government," says Nile, although Moyes's spokesman adds: "We're very disappointed with the abuse of planning powers so far." The reverends are concerned about the bill's social impact. Their plan, though, is not to oppose but to amend, dilute.
What would Jesus do in their place? Go for the moneyed, secret option? Or defend the little guys? And what's the word for cannibalising democracy anyway? Hypocrisy? Or maybe just mockracy?
Elizabeth Farrelly writes on planning and architectural affairs for the Herald.
Two
tiers go to war over planning control
March 20, 2006 - SMH
By Anne Davies
'APPALLING. An astounding grab for power," says the president of the Local Government Association and North Sydney Mayor, Genia McCaffery.
"Sensible changes" is how the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, describes his latest bill, which will increase significantly the power of the State Government to intervene in planning decisions of local councils.
The changes have been mostly welcomed by developers but have galvanised local government into what it sees as a fight for its very existence. What voters think may well depend on whether they share Sartor's view that local government is by and large a bunch of "pissants" or whether they value this third tier of democracy.
These changes, due to come before Parliament again next week, could become the next big political headache for the Iemma Government as it heads into an election year. Already they are causing fractures within Labor and Coalition ranks. Several Labor councils are unhappy and when the bill went through the lower house 10 days ago, the Coalition was so split on the issue, it took the extraordinary step of not turning up for the vote.
There are two contentious elements to the bill, the hottest being provisions making it easier for the minister, Sartor, to effectively take away a local council's planning powers.
At present dismissing a council requires an independent hearing to establish a systemic failure in the council's administration and that it is no longer meeting its obligations under the Local Government Act. Another less draconian option open to the minister is to appoint an administrator to take over the planning functions.
The bill proposes a less stringent test, with the minister able to appoint an administrator or a panel to take over the council's planning powers if "in the opinion of the minister the council's performance is not satisfactory".
This could mean the council loses all its planning powers or just a portion of them, say, the more complex developments such as blocks of units, or it could involve putting in a panel to take over preparation of a local environmental plan which guides development more broadly.
Why? Because according to Sartor, cabinet is concerned about the cost and delays in development which is driving up housing costs and arguably sending business interstate.
Last year the former planning minister, Craig Knowles, gave himself the power to call in major projects and fast-track "critical infrastructure" such as the desalination plant. And after defining a major project as anything more than $50 million, just about every developer is banging on the State Government's door to take over the approval of their project. Overwhelmed, the Department of Planning is turning projects away.
So Sartor thinks these latest amendments might provide another way of speeding up the process.
He notes that only 40 per cent of councils meet the 40-day time frame for dealing with development approvals and that in 2003-04 the worst performing council took an average of 159 days to process a development application. He says panel approvals work well, pointing to the City of Sydney where a joint body of state and council representatives approves development in the CBD.
He says he has no intention of taking over planning for most councils. But there are definitely councils in the firing line: Ku-ring-gai, Sutherland and Byron Shire councils are top of his list as laggards.
McCaffery warns there will be an almighty backlash. "The minister has underestimated the level of fury out there on this," she says.
"Local government feels the minister is rubbing its nose in the dirt. Planning only works when we have close co-operation between local and state government."
While McCaffery admits that councils don't always meet the 40-day time frame for development applications, she says only 4 per cent actually get dealt with by the council, with the bulk handled by staff.
Of those that do go to council, it is poor documentation, delays by the developer, or the sheer complexity of the building that leads to problems. Then there is the second leg of the legislation: proposed curbs on council power to levy developers. Councils charge section 94 contributions on developers to pay for infrastructure such as libraries, child-care centres, parks and other facilities. For example, Liverpool charges levies of about $50,000 a lot.
The trouble is the State Government also wants to use levies to fund rail lines, roads and schools in the new release areas in north-west and south-west Sydney. The state levy, originally set at $65,000 a lot, is under review. Clearly a levy of $120,000 a lot on new land is untenable. Sartor's answer is to give himself the power to cut back what councils are charging.
Just as the State Government has accused the Federal Government of not delivering a fair share of GST, so local government is accusing the State Government of doing the same thing: pegging its ability to raise rates and now cutting its ability to raise levies, making it impossible for it to meet its obligations to its constituency.
The proposed bill is facing a perilous path through the upper house. The Opposition's shadow cabinet rolled its planning spokesman, Chris Hartcher, who wanted to support the bill, but will now oppose it. So will the Greens who are big supporters of grass-roots democracy. This leaves it in the hands of independents. The Government has two votes - those of the Christian Democrats Fred Nile and Gordon Moyes - but it needs two more.
It will probably get through, but one wonders whether taking over planning powers on contentious developments could well turn out to be as politically smart as the vendor tax was.
Anne Davies is the Herald's state political correspondent.
How
the planning system stifles debate
March 17, 2006 - SMH
In NSW bureaucrats have too much power to make crucial decisions on development, writes Robert Stokes.
'THE long way is always the short way" was the cryptic advice I received as a law clerk. Yet it points to the importance of providing a process for public input into planning and development proposals.
Public participation is a fundamental element of good planning. Theorists and practitioners point to its role in achieving better results as local knowledge and interests help planners adapt new developments to the neighbourhood. Even where such interests are rejected, at least the public can feel confident they have received a hearing.
The right for the public to participate in planning was only won after a long and hard fight. Until the 1970s, planning was left to bureaucrats. There was no easy way for communities to support or fight proposals that would permanently alter their local area. It was only after community action like the green bans at Kellys Bush and The Rocks that State Parliament was forced to respond, providing "increased opportunities for public involvement and participation" as a bedrock objective of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.
Yet, during the past decade the State Government has progressively gutted opportunities for public participation from the planning process. In 1998 the planning system was "streamlined" so that neighbours would have no right to respond, or even be notified, of developments labelled "local" or "complying". Planning instruments enforcing medium-density developments were applied over neighbourhood controls designed by and for local communities.
Councillors were put in the farcical position of having to apply standards imposed in these state policies, even though many were elected on platforms that contradicted blanket urban consolidation. The result was an escalation in litigation, and a concerted attack on the Land and Environment Court, which had to interpret and enforce complex and uncertain policies.
Last year the Government decided to further erode public participation by giving itself the power to declare certain developments "critical infrastructure" or "state significant", where public participation is either eliminated or limited. Appeals to the Land and Environment Court on critical infrastructure proposals were abolished. Even public comment on the amending legislation was muzzled. The original 1979 act only proceeded after six months of public comment. The 1998 changes followed three months of comment. But the 2005 bill was introduced without any public input.
Now State Parliament is discussing whether to give the Minister for Planning the power to unilaterally impose an administrator or a panel to take over all the planning functions of a council. These technocrats will be able to make plans or determine development applications in place of councillors elected by the community.
In addition, the minister will be able to make development control plans that provide guidance on how neighbourhoods should grow and change. Previously, this was a function of local councils in co-operation with the community. It was the only level of planning not subject to ministerial control or veto. No longer, it seems.
The Government still ostensibly recognises the importance of public participation. In the 2001 PlanFirst reforms "the existence of formal opportunities for public participation" in planning was lauded as one of the strengths of the NSW system. But by failing to reconcile its rhetoric with reality, the Government will only exacerbate conflicts in the system, as residents realise meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions that affect their environment are illusory.
The Government says this is all about moving from a "process-driven approach to an outcomes-focused service". But this reveals a fundamental misunderstanding. Planning is process. It is the process that produces good outcomes, not the other way around. As Dwight Eisenhower commented, "plans are nothing, planning is everything".
Robert Stokes is a senior lecturer in law at Macquarie University
and is vice-president of the NSW Young Lawyers.
Letters Sent To The Editor
March 13, 2006 - The Australian
Unfortunately, Imre Salusinszky’s article ‘Battle for the Streets’ (Australian 13/3) reveals no awareness of The Aboriginal Housing Company's ‘own renewal plan’ for the Block in Redfern, the Pemulwuy Project and repeats Frank Sartor’s misrepresentations of it. The first of these is that the plan involves ‘concentrating a whole lot of people who are on welfare together’. In fact, of the plan's 62 units, two thirds are available for home ownership and as few as 20 for low income rental. Secondly Salusinszsky doesn’t mention that the plan (developed in co-operation with the Government Architect's Office and the Premier's Department) also includes an office/retail centre, an Indigenous business college, a museum, a cultural centre, Aboriginal markets, and a fitness centre that surround a public square looking down on the carefully deployed housing units. He doesn’t mention the Aboriginal employment these businesses will provide. Nor does he mention that the plan won an international award for Crime Prevention through Environmental Design and a national award for its Social Plan. In fact, it will engender a proud community, add a splendid looking development to Redfern, become an iconic tourist attraction and contribute in an unexampled way to solving the problems of the area.
There is no need to fear that realizing the Pemulwuy Project will make the redevelopment of Redfern Station unattractive to developers and so, less profitable to the Government.
Joseph Castley
Dear editor,
I was disappointed with Imre Salusinszky’s feature because his article unfortunately misrepresented the debate over the Block. The article implied the dispute is between a residential project proposed by the AHC vs. a mixed development proposed by Sartor. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is the AHC's Pemulwuy Project has always been a mixed development, with a 2:1 ration in favour of commercial. The commercial elements of the Project include: artist markets, gym/sporting facilities, offices/retail, a business college and an elder’s centre. Our objection to the RWA Built Environment Plan is the aim to coerce the AHC to reduce the number of houses, under the ridiculous guise of not concentrating high dependency residents. What the article failed to mention is that 2/3 of our housing project will be occupied by homeowners. Since when are middle class homeowners considered high dependency residents; or is it just because they will be black families? The AHC is not seeking any State public money to deliver the project so what right does the NSW Government have to interfere as much as it does? Unlike Sartor, the AHC has already attracted plenty of interest from developers to build the project and commercial tenants to occupy the buildings. The AHC's Project also enjoys majority support from the local businesses and the general community. This is a very important project to Aboriginal Australia, and for the future of the general Redfern community, so I believe it deserves a fair and balanced hearing, without deference to Government spin.
Michael Mundine.
Dear editor,
As a 27-year resident of Lawson St (bordering the Block) I am concerned by your article in today's paper. Imre Salusinszky's feature on the redevelopment of the Block is either sloppily researched or deliberately misleading. Salusinszky quotes Frank Sartor claiming the Aboriginal plan for the Block (known as the Pemulwuy Project) is unsustainable. Yet Sartor's Government helped fund the project development, which has won planning awards for social design and crime reduction. Leaked cabinet documents said the project could go ahead if the Aboriginal owners surrendered control of the project to the state bureaucracy. Salusinszky also implies that the development is for public housing, when in reality it is for a mix of private housing types in line with the Government's own policy. Finally, the restrictions on residential development proposed for aboriginal owned land have not been equally applied to the government owned land in the same area. Salusinszky is happy to go along with the government’s spin on the Pemulwuy project rather than be inconvenienced by the facts.
Yours,
Geoff Turnbull,
Spokesperson,
REDWatch community residents association.
Battle
for the streets
March 13, 2006 - The Australian
Plans to fix Sydney's Aboriginal ghetto have angered locals and white activists.
But that does nothing to solve The Block's problems, writes Imre Salusinszky
'FRANK would like to see no indigenous people here, or very few -- and that's just not possible," says Peter Valilis, project manager with the Aboriginal Housing Company, which owns the notorious Block in Redfern, in inner Sydney.
"Frank" is Frank Sartor, the bustling, bristling, take-no-prisoners Planning Minister in Morris Iemma's NSW Labor Government. His plan for redeveloping Redfern, and especially The Block, unveiled last month, has brought him to a head-on collision with the indigenous owners.
Sartor, a former Sydney lord mayor who was parachuted into state cabinet by former premier Bob Carr in 2003, is known for many things, but diplomatic finesse is not one of them. This was exemplified in a radio interview last September when he instructed AHC head Mick Mundine to get his "black arse" down to Sartor's office for talks.
But in the face of criticism that his plan favours business over indigenous residents, Sartor is not about to take a step back: "Where you have a separatist push for something that, in itself, is not sustainable, then it's hard to guarantee a win in the long term," he tells The Australian. "You wouldn't concentrate a whole lot of people who are on welfare together.
"What we're looking for here is a presence for Aboriginal people in a sustainable way in the broader community of Redfern. When you can integrate them better -- not in a homogenous sense but in a harmonious sense -- there are wins for everybody."
Handed over to Aboriginal owners by the Whitlam government in 1973, the two hectares of The Block once symbolised the whole progressive vision of how Aborigines could interact with the mainstream community: separate but equal.
More than 30 years and $30 million of taxpayers' money later, The Block symbolises nothing more vividly than the collapse of that vision. There are now only 19 ramshackle terraces remaining on The Block. As aspirational Aborigines have fled the area, the AHC has bought up the derelict properties and knocked them down. The resulting open ground has been turned into what the new Redfern-Waterloo built environment plan euphemistically describes as "an informal park area" -- in reality, a Third World wasteland of violence, family dysfunction and drug and alcohol abuse.
If any place in Australia is due for a break, it's The Block. But the latest tragedy to befall the area appears to be that, having gained the full-on attention of the state Government's Mr Fixit, in the shape of Sartor, local indigenous leaders seem prepared to squander it on bickering over details.
Instead of becoming a testing ground for practical reconciliation, The Block has become the latest battleground in the reconciliation culture wars. And the protagonists seem to have stepped straight out of central casting. Along with the can-do, iconoclastic Labor politician, more interested in outcomes than symbolics, we have an Aboriginal leadership divided between an older language of identity and resistance, and a newer language of economic advancement and property rights -- the language closely associated with Noel Pearson, director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership.
Meanwhile, barracking from the sidelines, there is a familiar chorus of white activists and conservationists, also intent on berating Sartor and his department.
While we have seen this conflict between two visions of indigenous advancement -- one symbolic and separatist, the other pragmatic and integrative -- played out before, the physical settings for that conflict have been remote to most Australians -- such as Hindmarsh Island, in South Australia, and Coronation Hill in Kakadu. This time, it is all about the most famous plot of indigenous ground in urban Australia.
It was just down the street from The Block, in 1992, that Paul Keating chose to make his keynote address on reconciliation, which he said was "a test of our self-knowledge" that would have "a significant bearing on our standing in the world".
"The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians," said Keating in his Redfern Oval speech. "We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us."
But after the drug-fuelled riots that gripped the area two years ago, the state Government realised that what Redfern needed was fewer displays of white self-knowledge and empathetic imagination, and a completely new plan. It got to work on a vision of urban regeneration for the area.
Sartor's is a vision that stresses the creation of jobs through the rezoning of key sites to attract developers and businesses to the war-torn area. For The Block, that means the replacement of some housing with commercial and retail space.
The AHC and its supporters say Sartor's plan will destroy the cultural significance of a place that has been sacred to Aborigines ever since the ancient Gadigal clan made it part of its its annual hunter-gatherer circuit.
They have their own renewal plan for The Block, much more focused on living and cultural spaces -- and Sartor has gazumped it.
"We're going to fight tooth and nail to prove to him that he's wrong," says Mundine of the Sartor plan. "The Block is an icon -- it's like sacred ground. I blame Bob Carr and [former treasurer] Andrew Refshauge. They put Frank in, thinking he'd come down and kick some black heads around."
Sartor's urban design would place irresistible zoning pressure on The Block's owners to reduce the number of new indigenous dwellings to about half the 62 they have planned. Even the arithmetic of that represents a symbolic affront to Sartor's opponents:
"It's a very spiritual number," says Mundine, "because there were 62 Gadigal families wiped out by smallpox [in the 1790s]. It's like a memorial to them."
While Sartor guarantees the retention of 62 designated indigenous public housing units, he says they will be spread around the Redfern-Waterloo area.
"You've got to learn from history," he says. "We are trying to stop a concentration of high-dependency housing because there the probability of anti-social behaviour and crime is greater. Thirty-five years of history here is not something you'd want to repeat."
Meanwhile, trying to build a bridge over these troubled waters is Labor Party president Warren Mundine, a prominent advocate of Aboriginal integration into the mainstream economy.
Mick is Warren's cousin and was best man at his wedding. Of the fight over The Block, Warren Mundine diplomatically says: "You have to have a mixture of commercial activity as well as residential activity.
"If they could sit down and talk that through together, there could be a win-win situation. The problem is, we shouldn't go back to the bad old days, with lots of residential, when a minority dragged the whole place down."
Just to add to the intensity of the culture war that is brewing in Redfern, white activists and conservationists are also fired up over Sartor's plans. Former Whitlam government minister Tom Uren, a sponsor of the AHC counter-proposal, told The Australian yesterday: "It's sad that Sartor took such an arrogant position. He makes decisions and then says, 'we can talk'.
"The thing is that the land near Redfern station is very valuable [government-owned] real estate, so his general attitude was they should minimise, if not get rid of, the Aboriginal influence there."
This criticism -- that he is selling out indigenous residents to white developers to bolster government coffers -- is one Sartor vehemently rejects: "Contrary to the propaganda that this thing is developer-driven, the truth is the opposite. We want investment, but my problem is getting developers interested."
That doesn't convince Sartor's critics in the latte belt. Elizabeth Farrelly, planning and architecture writer in The Sydney Morning Herald, has described Sartor's plans to bring jobs and development to Redfern as "Machiavellian", "dastardly" and "terra nullius, all over again".
"If The Block is no longer a living community," she wrote earlier this month, "it won't matter how many government-endorsed indigenous cultural centres you build there, it'll still be just another faked-up bit of white-flight conscience-salve."
Another vocal critic has been Sydney Deputy Lord Mayor Verity Firth.
"What worries me most is that urban renewal doesn't have to be just about sitting down with the business community and deciding what they want," she says. "Jobs are important, but I don't think the debate for having a more community-driven renewal is anti-job. Seriously, how many of these jobs are going to be local jobs?"
To the calls from such people, whom he labels "Gucci socialists", for broader community consultation, Sartor says: "Interminable public meetings do not a sustainable society bring. I just have a conviction that the way we do everything has to be different."
On that point, at least, there seems to be near-unanimous agreement. The plain truth is that Farrelly's phrase, "a living community," would be an extremely far-fetched way to describe The Block today.
"I wouldn't live in the area myself," says Warren Mundine. "I'm thinking of my children."
And Mick Mundine has a no less bleak account of a place that, perhaps for thousands of years, was a sacred watering-hole in the travels of the Gadigal people: "At the moment, it's a stagnant well."
Imre Salusinszky is The Australian's NSW state political reporter.
Redfern/Waterloo:Land
grab plan announced
March 8, 2006 - The Guardian
By Peter Mac
Two weeks ago at a gala launch, the NSW government revealed the draft Redfern/Waterloo Built Environment Plan, the first stage of a blatant attempt to commercially redevelop these suburbs, and incorporate them into an enlarged Central Business District.
The Plan intends to authorise 440,000m² of development in Redfern, with five 18-storey towers, and 2,000 new dwellings, with no more than 30 on the Block. The Block, as it is known, is an Aboriginal housing complex in Redfern. It was returned to Aboriginal ownership by the Whitlam Labor Government in the 1970s. The proposal for the Block halves residential capacity as formerly planned by Aboriginal leaders, and nearly trebles the commercial yield.
The Plan would rezone the Block from residential to mixed use, including commercial, cultural, educational, retail as well as some residential use. This would effectively eliminate the possibility of Aboriginal families finding affordable housing in Redfern, and would put unceasing financial pressure on the Block’s owners, the Aboriginal Housing Company, to sell out. The proposal is a ruthless attempt to eject the residents of the Block which has been continuously occupied by Aboriginal people, longer than any other site in Sydney’s history.
The Aboriginal Housing Company was not invited to the launch.
That other plan
The government has overridden the Aboriginal Housing Company’s own proposal, the Pemulwuy Plan, which envisaged a four-storey redevelopment of The Block. This would have provided new housing for low to middle income Aboriginal families, as well as a public space, commercial area, artist markets, student hostel, sporting facilities and an Indigenous business college.
The Pemulwuy Plan was developed over six years by a team of architects, urban planners, Aboriginal community leaders and local business owners, all chaired by former Federal Minister for Housing, Tom Uren.
The 62 new homes proposed under the Pemulwuy Plan is equal in number to the local Aboriginal groups wiped out by smallpox after European settlers arrived in the Sydney area.
However, this did not impress the Minister for Planning and Waterloo/Redfern, Frank Sartor, who sneered: "Symbolism is laudable, but it can never be a substitute for sustainable planning".
For the government, "sustainable" means commercial with a vengeance. Of the eight precincts envisaged under its plan, six are commercial. Only the former Rachel Forster Hospital site would be rezoned as residential, but in practice this means that the government would sell it off to the private sector, which will not be interested in providing housing for underprivileged people.
Priceless real estate
The Redfern/Waterloo land grab has many historical precedents, including the attempt to demolish the historic suburbs of the Rocks and Waterloo, in the 1970s. These initiatives were eventually defeated by the action of local community groups, with the support of unions and heritage organisations, as well as left and progressive political parties.
However, Redfern and its adjacent neighbour Waterloo are of potentially huge real estate value. This latest land-grab attempt was foreshadowed after the 2004 Redfern riots. Liberal leader John Brogden immediately advocated "bringing in the bulldozers". Not long afterwards, the super-powerful Redfern-Waterloo Authority was created, to be run by Frank Sartor.
Sartor has used vandalism and the demolition of houses in the Block as an argument for taking it over, rather than dealing with the area’s severe social problems of chronic unemployment and poverty, lack of affordable housing, health care and other essential services.
Other victims
Under the government’s plan, heritage sites within the Redfern/Waterloo area would lose protection from redevelopment. Even the historic 19th Century North Eveleigh railway yards could be demolished. The Sydney Electric Train Society, which has struggled for years there on a shoe string to preserve Sydney’s oldest electric train carriages, is likely to have to find other premises. One of the magnificent siding sheds is already being converted into a contemporary arts centre at the government’s behest.
The scoundrel’s second-last refuge
Jobs and Opportunity! The government has claimed that redevelopment will boost employment in the area. After the launch, the Minister trumpeted: "Only jobs and opportunity can make a lasting difference to all the residents and allow true self-reliance and self-determination."
The government declares that developers would be required to provide a certain percentage of the employment on the site for local people — a promise described by one commentator as "unachievable and unenforceable".
The coming storm
Relations between the government and the Aboriginal community have been frozen for a year, because of the government’s arrogance and lack of concern for the Aboriginal community. The situation was not helped last year by Sartor’s unforgivable comment that Mick Mundine, the manager of the Aboriginal Housing Company, should get his "black arse" over to see him.
The message that the poor have no right to live on potentially valuable real estate is most evident in the proposals for Redfern, formerly described by The Guardian as "a place where greed, racism, callousness and philistinism all intersect in the interest of developer megabucks".
Moreover, the saga of the Block reflects the ruthless historic drive of conservative Australian governments to dispossess Aboriginal people of their land.
But this is not 1788. The Aboriginal people of Redfern, and their supporters among the Australian community, will prove a match for the land thieves of Macquarie Street.
Once again, Frank gets it wrong
on The Block
March 02, 2006 - Darlington/Redfern branches of the Australian Labor Party
Media Release
The failure of Minister for Redfern-Waterloo Frank Sartor to adequately address the housing issue on The Block has outraged inner-city Labor Party branches. On Tuesday February 28th, the ALP's Darlington and Redfern branches were briefed on The Block by a number of players and eventually moved a motion to express their support for the Aboriginal Housing Company's Pemulwuy project.
High profile speakers who attended the meeting include CEO of the Redfern Waterloo Authority Robert Domm, Deputy Sydney Lord Mayor Verity Firth, who supports the Pemulwuy project, Col James, who helped design the Pemulwuy Project, and Geoff Turnbull from REDWatch.
The meeting ran for an hour more than it was scheduled to and hosted a fiery debate about The Block's future. Before the meeting concluded, branch members affirmed their support for the RWA as a means of initiating positive change in Redfern and Waterloo. However, they urged the NSW Government to reconsider their stand on the AHC's Pemulwuy Project.
The branches collectively said, "We call upon the Government to enter into immediate talks with the AHC and have the view that the project should start immediately."
A spokesperson for the meeting, Darlington Branch Secretary Trevor Davies, said, "Most people can see the merits of the Pemulwuy Project. From shock jock Alan Jones to old lefties like Tom Urenn, everyone has offered their support to the development. Even former Liberal Leader John Brogden, who said The Block should be bulldozed, has come out and supported the AHC.
"We'd love for the Premier to come and have a look, I'm sure as hell that he'd have a change of heart."
For further information contact:
Trevor Davies, Secretary of the ALP Darlington Branch Ph: 0400 008 838
Letter Sent To The Editor of
SMH
March 01, 2006
Dear Editor,
Elizabeth Farrelly [The reality behind the Redfern plan 1-3-06] clearly has a way of unravelling and articulating even the most cryptic of NSW Government spin. That’s quite a handy talent with today’s dog whistle politics. Make no mistake Sartor’s Redfern “smoke and mirrors” Plan intends to simply cherry-pick government owned sites for maxim government profit, at the expense of the Aboriginal community and Redfern’s long term future prosperity. Redfern is a cash-cow for the NSW Government, and Sartor is their appointed auctioneer ready, willing and able to sell Redfern’s assets to the highest bidder. To add insult to injury, it is the NSW Government’s neglect of Redfern [for 30 years], that has allowed our neighbourhoods to deteriorate into slums and created the social misery we have today. Sartor’s solution to Redfern is to pick-pocket the most disadvantaged in the community, while they are trying to pull themselves out of poverty. The only thing standing in the way of Sartor’s Grand Sale Plans is the Aboriginal Housing Company, a small unfunded organisation that is little match for the massive propaganda machine of the NSW Government. Sartor can try to starve us out, demonise us, and spread all the misinformation he likes, but the AHC will never replace the award winning Pemulwuy Project with Sartor’s ill-considered alternative.
Michael Mundine Snr. J.P
Chief Executive Officer
Aboriginal Housing Company (Redfern)
The
reality behind the Redfern plan: a boon for the big end of town
March 1, 2006 - SMH
By Elizabeth Farrelly
'JOBS, jobs, jobs," boomed the minister. "This plan is about jobs and opportunity, opportunity and jobs, jobs and opportunity." The only job on offer at this particular sun-baked news conference was a consummate snow job. It was a small, select news conference, with a handful of the hand-picked standing around in the sun waiting for the Minister, who was a half-hour late taking up his spot in the shade.
But that was OK. This was news conference redefined; news conference as closely kept secret, with potential dissenters filtered out beforehand and the select grateful just to be there.
Where ministerial staffers brusquely hush anyone tedious enough to ask hard questions ("Quiet there. This is a press conference.") and the local MP, blonde and stiletto-heeled, bobs in the background like the Minister's nodding dog, should anyone query his veracity.
It's a new kind of language, too, where, for instance, the much-abused "sustainable" has come full circle to mean something like comfortable, or acceptable, or expedient.
Last year the Redfern Waterloo Minister, Frank Sartor, said the Aboriginal Housing Company's plan to rebuild its original 62 houses on The Block (which it owns, freehold) was "not sustainable". No reason given. This year he insists that the big issue for The Block is "self-sustainability", which entails replacing virtually all its housing with commercial development.
For the locals, this is the opposite of sustainability. If The Block is no longer a living community, it won't matter how many government-endorsed indigenous cultural centres you build there, it'll still be just another faked-up bit of white-flight conscience-salve.
It's a David v Goliath scene, really, set up in last year's Metropolitan Strategy with its "global economic corridor" arcing from the airport, through the central business district to Chatswood and Macquarie Park, with Redfern slap-bang in the middle.
Now, globalism may taste and smell like cultural puree, but it has its defenders, even now. And annexing Redfern to the CBD might make an abstract kind of sense - except for two minor technicalities. One, office vacancy rates are still high throughout the global arc, even without the huge influx to come from both East Darling Harbour and Parramatta, so, as the former city planner Councillor John McInerney notes, "there is no real argument for office space at Redfern".
Still less palatable, though, is the calculated removal of the city's oldest continuous Aboriginal population from its own land. This is technicality No. 2: The Block. Right in the centre of Redfern, a veritable fly in the global ointment, sits The Block. Recognising this, and recalling the international eyebrows raised by the Minister's last move on Redfern, when the attempt to de-black The Block made the pages of Britain's Guardian, this plan is quite as dastardly, but much, much more Machiavellian, hoisting the indigenous owners on their own economic petard.
Here's how it's done. Make a plan that appears to affect only government property. Into it slip a piece of private land - The Block - but call it, innocuously, Eveleigh Street. Couch the plan in abstractions like heights, zonings and floor-space ratios so no one will get it anyway. Then devise a mechanism for so dramatically increasing the value of "Eveleigh Street", all the while sterilising it for residential development, that the incumbents will be more or less forced to sell - if not voluntarily, then by internal community pressure.
That way a government can zone its own land high and loose, flog it, rake in the cash, then simply wait for the Aboriginal community to unstitch itself while insisting that it was entirely self-determined.
The plan proposes about 18,000 new jobs in a clutch of five 18-storey towers, and 2000 new dwellings - no more than 30 of them on Aboriginal land. This halves the 62 houses proposed in the Aboriginal Housing Company's long-planned Pemulwuy Project, intended to provide genuine self-determination and affordable home ownership for its people plus an array of performance, cultural and commercial centres around a central "Red Square".
"We've made dozens of efforts to consult with the Aboriginal Housing Company," said the Minister. "I even had a coffee with [Aboriginal elder] Mick Mundine, I think about last November," (the Minister was no doubt referring to the close relationship that followed his elegant "black arse" invitation in September) without actually inviting the housing company, mere landowners, to the launch.
Mundine's view was less personal: "The … zoning changes dash any hopes," he said, "for affordable home ownership for Aboriginal families on The Block.".
The new plan halved The Block's residential capacity but near-trebled its commercial yield. It also raised heights, changed zonings from residential mixed-use to commercial mixed-use, and rendered the blanket heritage listing null and void. The effect is to explode the land value and shift its highest and best use immediately to commercial. Jobs, like the man said, and opportunity.
But opportunity for whom? Well, for locals, obviously. The Minister assured his audience that developers would be required to provide "a certain percentage of the employment on the site for local people". This is nothing more than blackwash, of course. Unachievable, unenforceable.
Still, the Minister was pleased. "I think we've done pretty well," he said. Nod, nod, went the blonde, right on cue.
Elizabeth Farrelly writes on architectural and planning issues for the Herald. Her column will appear on Wednesdays.
Letters Sent To The Editors
February 24, 2006 - SMH & The Australian
To the Editor
My firm Cracknell and Lonergan Architects have been engaged to prepare the application for the redevelopment of the "Block" for the Aboriginal Housing Company, "the Pemulway Project"
I am frankly bemused at the Ministers outbursts in "Symbolism Cannot Solve Unemployment And Social Misery" SMH 22 02 06, but particularly his claim that he is straight talking.
1. The Minister claims the Aboriginal Housing Company has boycotted formal talks on the future of the Block, however the Aboriginal Housing Company met with the Director General of his Department on Wednesday 8th February at 10:30 am for some hours, and prior to this my advisors had spoken to senior planning staff at the Redfern waterloo Authority all year. In addition the Aboriginal Housing Company met with Robert Domm, the CEO of the Redfern waterloo Authority on the same afternoon of 8th February.
2. The Minister, who claims, the Aboriginal Housing Company have boycotted formal talks describes in detail the 'latest proposal' the 'number' of houses, the 'height', and number of 'stories', although claiming he has no detailed plans and no talks.
3. The Minister claims that a development application is 'yet to materialise, when there has been no mechanism to lodge an application with the new Draft planning instrument and his department. A development application is not the mechanism for making the application, and the required mechanism has infact commenced and if he talked to his department he would know this.
Despite the spin produced by the Minister's outburst, I must say that my instructions are to comply with both the Redfern Waterloo Authority's Draft built environment plan and the new SEPP (which is still in draft format). In every respect, and, in principle promote commercial employment opportunities for Aboriginal people with the component of housing prescribed by the ministers plan. The minister's letter is mischievous, racism at its worst.
Just remember that this land is privately owned. How would you like it if the Minister told you, you have no say in the future of your own property
Any queries please feel free to contact me
Yours sincerely
Peter Lonergan
When I read the comments by Frank Sartor ("Symbolism cannot solve unemployment and social misery", February 22), I had a chuckle and thought to myself, "Which project is he talking about?" If I were to rebut all the mistakes Mr Sartor made I would run the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam. But I have to set the record straight on the issue of consultations with the NSW Government.
The minister would like to give the impression that the Aboriginal Housing Company is dragging its feet; however, for 2½ years the AHC worked hand in glove with the NSW Premier's Department on perfecting the social and urban planning for the Pemulwuy project, before we were stabbed in the back and Mr Sartor started making comments such as everything in Redfern is negotiable but the Block.
The minister also seems to have conveniently forgotten that Mick Mundine, my CEO, has briefed him twice in person since the racial insult on Koori radio. The AHC has also briefed Redfern-Waterloo Authority representatives about the project on many occasions over the past six months. Most recently our team met the Director-General of Planning to discuss how best to submit our development application under the new Redfern-Waterloo Authority planning guidelines. The government spin doctors are obviously out in force.
Peter Valilis Aboriginal Housing Company Ltd Redfern
Dear Editor
What is worrying about Planning Minister Frank Sartor’s article Symbolism cannot solve unemployment and social misery (SMH 22/2/06) is that he is changing zoning to try and force the owners of the Block to abandon their plans.
There are two areas both next to Redfern station, both to be zoned “business zone – mixed use”. One has existing medium residential zoning and includes land owned by the AHC. It will have its residential floor space halved to 0.5:1. The other site is government owned and has no existing zoning. It is equidistant from Redfern station and will be given a 1:1 residential ratio.
If this was just about planning surely the 1:1 residential should stay in its current location and reduced residential occupancy would be applied to the existing non-residential area. This would not affect the Minister’s employment space or other aspects of his plan.
This is of course is not about allowing the planning system to assess projects on their merits. It is about changing the rules so one project can no longer be considered.
Geoffrey Turnbull
ROSS Fitzgerald's opinion ("Another time around the Block for urban revival project", 20/2) neglects to detail how Frank Sartor's plan will radically alter Redfern's urban landscape. Of the eight key sites designed to "kick start the urban renewal process", six of them are re-zoned as business zones of varying descriptions. In many places, buildings up to 18 storeys will be permitted. This is not so much urban renewal as the creation of a second CBD, along the lines of development at North Sydney and Chatswood.
Urban renewal should suggest a process that is compatible with, and benefits, the community. In the case of Redfern, any urban renewal must recognise Redfern's unique heritage; built, cultural and indigenous. On this point, Fitzgerald consigns the innovative Pemulwuy initiative to the dustbin of history before a sod of earth has been turned. This is very unfair.
The team behind Pemulwuy have worked assiduously to avoid the mistakes of the past. Their redevelopment would mix affordable housing with community facilities and indigenous-controlled enterprises that would create employment opportunities for local residents. The Pemulwuy initiative is not infallible but for the revitalisation of Redfern to work, the voice of the community must be acknowledged. So far, this has not been the case.
Verity Firth
Deputy Lord Mayor City of Sydney
Symbolism
cannot solve unemployment and social misery
February 22, 2006 - SMH
By Frank Sartor
Redfern and Waterloo are bigger than just one block, however needy, writes Frank Sartor.
IT IS time for some straight talking about the Block in Redfern. In 1985, when I was the ward alderman for Eveleigh Street, the Block was a no-go zone. Twenty years later, most of the houses that once stood at the symbolic heart of black Redfern have been demolished, after falling victim to vandalism and drug dealers. Just 19 homes remain.
Over the years, the Aboriginal Housing Company - which owns the Block - has prepared a number of proposals to rebuild these dwellings. In the meantime, it has received a sizeable slice of public funding: up to $30 million from the Commonwealth since 1973, and $8 million in state and federal funding for repairs and insurance over the past eight years alone.
But the same problems remain. There is no evidence to suggest reconcentrating high-dependency housing on the Block will miraculously solve its social problems. There is also little evidence to suggest that the housing company has improved its governance arrangements in order to manage such a development, for which it initially sought $27 million in taxpayer funding.
Its latest proposal for the Block - the Pemulwuy project - is essentially a residential development of up to four storeys. It centres on 62 new homes, symbolising the number of local Gadigal families wiped out by smallpox. Symbolism is laudable, but it can never be a substitute for sustainable planning. The only long-term solution for these problems is to provide jobs and opportunities for local families, supported by improved human services.
The housing company's Pemulwuy proposal was presented to me a year ago, though I have never received any detailed plans.
Regrettably, a development application for the project is yet to materialise, despite repeated promises. The housing company has also boycotted formal talks on the future of the Block for the past year.
In the meantime, the Government has exhibited and adopted plans to improve human services in Redfern and Waterloo and provide more jobs and training for locals, especially indigenous residents.
The new Redfern-Waterloo Authority has turned its attention to land use, and a draft built environment plan is on exhibition for public comment until April 14. It anticipates the creation of 18,000 jobs and 2000 dwellings over the next decade.
Changes are proposed for all sites of state significance in Redfern, including railway land and the Australian Technology Park. Essential heritage features will be preserved, as they have been at the Australian Technology Park and the former North Eveleigh Carriage Works, which is being transformed into a $40 million contemporary arts centre.
Work and training opportunities on these projects are also earmarked for indigenous job seekers. Nineteen are being employed at the carriage works and another 26 are due to commence at a Redfern-Waterloo Authority construction project at the Australian Technology Park, with more employment deals to come.
The overarching aim of the draft built environment plan is to favour uses which create jobs. This same approach has been applied to the Block and other parts of Eveleigh Street. The proposed changes increase its total development potential by 50 per cent, but reduce the number of dwellings which could be permitted to about 30. However, the Government has committed itself to provide a total of 62 dwellings in the area.
It should be noted that the Pemulwuy proposal contravenes existing height controls for the Block, which are set at six metres, or two storeys.
The new controls, if adopted, favour mixed-use development, including residential, cultural, educational and even some retail. It has not been rezoned commercial - as reported recently - although commercial uses will be permitted. The aim is to reinvigorate the area and make it more sustainable, while preserving its Aboriginal identity and ownership.
I am sure that pathways can be found to address the future of the Block.
In 1985 I gave the housing company my support and agreed to chair its residents' advisory committee.
I also resisted calls for the Block to be levelled.
But now it is the Block's indigenous owners who have torn down most of its houses, and want to redevelop the rest.
It is a landmark place for indigenous people, and indeed for Sydney. But residential gentrification or reconcentrating high-dependency housing is not the answer to the area's entrenched problems. Unemployment and social misery cannot be solved by symbolism.
Redfern and Waterloo are bigger than just one block, and the views of locals more diverse than those promoted by the housing company.
Only jobs and opportunity can make a lasting difference to all the residents and allow true self-reliance and self-determination.
Frank Sartor is NSW Minister for Planning and the Minister for Redfern Waterloo.
Ross
Fitzgerald: Another time around the Block for urban revival
February 20, 2006 - The Australian
After years of failure, plans to kick-start an inner Sydney wasteland are
worth serious consideration
IN 1973 the Whitlam government handed urban Aborigines the Redfern area in inner Sydney that became known as the Block. Since then it has been an emblematic place for indigenous Australians.
This clutch of terrace houses, originally a symbol of land rights, was supposed to be a fresh start for a community beset by poverty, dependency and landlessness.
Tragically, in the ensuing years it became a virtual wasteland, run down by rampant crime and substance abuse. Houses were turned into drug dens, and streets and open spaces were littered with needles and broken beer bottles.
Last year the Aboriginal Housing Company unveiled plans to redevelop the Block and build 62 new homes, to commemorate the 62 indigenous families that traditionally lived in Redfern before they were wiped out by smallpox.
The AHC's Pemulwuy Project, named after the indigenous warrior who led the first significant resistance against British settlers, aimed to create "the best urban Aboriginal community in Australia and, in doing so, set the benchmark for other communities". This vision statement has an eerie echo. In 1974 the Redfern Housing Project proposed renovating 41 terraces for indigenous families as a "model for inner-city communities".
But more than three decades later, many of Redfern's indigenous residents still live in the "slums and pigsties" that were to be eliminated by providing Aboriginal-owned housing on the Block.
In the intervening period, the AHC acquired 100 parcels of land, but most of its houses fell into disrepair and disrepute. Forty-one of the families on the Block eventually chose to relocate to escape the local drug trade, and the AHC was forced to demolish all but 19 of its properties.
It was a failed experiment, according to the NSW Minister for Redfern Waterloo, former Sydney lord mayor Frank Sartor, who argues for a new approach that retains existing homes but incorporates indigenous sporting, cultural, educational and commercial pursuits on the Block.
He maintains that it is time the Block took its rightful place as the symbolic heart of black Sydney. Sartor has repeatedly ruled out compulsory acquisition of the AHC's land and has promised not to cut the level of Aboriginal housing and public housing. Despite that, AHC project director Peter Valilis routinely alludes to a plan to resume the Block.
The AHC initially sought $27 million in taxpayer funding to build 62 homes but now says it is organising private funding. However, concerns remain about its finances. Since 1973 it has received about $30 million from the federal government and over the past eight years almost $8 million has been funnelled to it from federal and state coffers. A 2004 audit found the AHC was $1 million in the red and its council rates in substantial arrears.
Earlier this month Sartor released a land-use strategy for Redfern and Waterloo, targeting eight key sites to kick-start the urban renewal process, including Redfern railway station, the Eveleigh rail yards and the Block. Now on exhibition for public comment, the plan focuses on redevelopment for the sake of employment, not residential gentrification.
It proposes to rezone the Block from residential to mixed-use, limiting the number of dwellings to about 30 and providing greater scope for community, educational and even some commercial uses. The draft plan complements the work being done by the new Redfern-Waterloo Authority, which was set up last year with an annual budget of $7.2 million to try to fix some of the suburb's entrenched problems. It's already working to improve human services in the area, which cost up to $40 million a year, and aims to provide 18,000 new jobs over the next decade.
Local and indigenous jobless will be given targeted assistance to secure these positions, and are already being trained and employed on the NSW Government's $40 million project to turn the old Eveleigh Carriageworks into a performing arts centre.
An $850,000 vocational training centre will be established at North Eveleigh to provide locals with hospitality, construction, transport and information technology skills, including an indigenous cuisine jobs program run by a local elder and a team from Edna's Table, a well-known Sydney eatery. And as part of an overhaul of human services, new youth precincts will be established to provide one-stop shops for services.
To that end, the Redfern-Waterloo Authority has brokered a $25 million deal for the Indigenous Land Corporation to negotiate the purchase of the old Redfern Public School. The new Aboriginal youth facility will offer leadership and mentoring initiatives, food and learning programs run by the Exodus Foundation, and sporting programs on an upgraded oval.
There is considerable goodwill and support for a new approach at state and federal levels of government. Certainly a bipartisan approach is needed to avoid the repetition of past mistakes and to begin the social and economic rejuvenation of one of Australia's most afflicted communities. To this end, and despite discontent among some indigenous residents of Redfern, Sartor's plan deserves a thoughtful and considered response.
Indigenous
heartland under threat
February 15, 2006 - SMH
Redfern's Aboriginal heritage could be lost to a restoration project that favours business, writes Verity Firth.
THE State Government's revitalisation plan for Redfern and Waterloo is a long overdue initiative. Decades of neglect have created complex social and economic needs. While this regeneration of the area is welcome, the Government's single-minded focus on high-density commercial development as a solution is misguided.
Under the Draft Built Environment Plan released last week by Frank Sartor, the Minister for Planning and Minister for Waterloo-Redfern, 444,000 square metres of commercial development will be created. Developments of up to 18 storeys will be permitted, and parts of the Block - the spiritual and actual home of the indigenous community in Redfern - will be rezoned from "residential" to "mixed-use".
Of the eight precincts identified in the plan, six are rezoned as "business zones" of varying descriptions. The only rezoning to "residential" is the Rachel Forster Hospital site, which was formerly zoned "special uses" and looks like it won't last much longer in the public's possession.
It follows that the draft plan provides developers with significant incentives to concentrate on commercial rather than residential projects. In effect, this plan will transform the heart of Redfern - the area surrounding the railway station - into another central business district.
The Draft Built Environment Plan is but one of many that are to be implemented by the Redfern Waterloo Authority but, at this point, the "vision" seems mundane. This is an opportunity for the Government to create innovative and interesting urban renewal at the heart of our city. It is also an opportunity for Redfern's cultural heritage to be celebrated and captured by such renewal.
Redfern was the site of urban land-rights when, in 1973, the reforming zeal of Gough Whitlam brought about the Aboriginal Housing Company and affordable homes on the Block.
It is an area with significant architectural heritage including the railway yards, tracks and the warehouses of north Eveleigh, which date from the late 19th century and which are placed under threat by the draft plan.
Residents don't want a bland, gentrified copy of what already exists in the central business districts of North Sydney and Chatswood. They want urban renewal - but they want it to recognise the unique character of Redfern.
Residents want Redfern to retain its eclectic social mix, and its sense of community. They also want the Government to recognise the work that has already been done in Redfern. Not everything has to be re-invented from scratch.
Take, for instance the Pemulwuy Housing Project, which calls for the Block to be redeveloped to create 62 affordable homes for middle- to low-income indigenous families, a public civil space and commercial area, artist markets, a student hostel, sporting facilities and an indigenous business college.
Under the Government's plan, which allows for a maximum of 30 homes on the Block, Pemulwuy - a project that is six years in the making - is no longer viable.
The project's taskforce is chaired by Tom Uren, a former minister for housing, urban and regional development in the Whitlam government. It consists of a broad coalition of architects, urban planners, indigenous community leaders and local business people.
Apart from preserving the Block as a centre for Aboriginal identity, culture and spirituality, Pemulwuy would have also acted as a catalyst for culturally appropriate economic development in the Redfern area.
Part of the project was the creation of a "civic space" to be located across from Redfern railway station. The area would have provided for market stalls, community enterprises and a performance space run by indigenous residents of the area. It also provided valuable open space for an inner-city community where it is at a premium.
The Pemulwuy project may have required modifications, but it is an idea stemming from the local indigenous community and it deserves better consideration that what it has apparently received.
For this project to be discarded with the stroke of a pen is very disappointing.
Most residents want a renewal that keeps the indigenous heritage of Redfern alive, that involves local people in its planning and that doesn't just mean a skyline littered with skyscrapers.
Verity Firth is the Deputy Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney.
Revamp
for Redfern ignores railway heritage
February 13, 2006 - SMH
By Bonnie Malkin Urban Affairs Reporter
SYDNEY may lose a large part of its railway heritage under plans to revamp Redfern and Waterloo, the National Trust has warned.
The conservation manager of National Trust NSW, Jackie Goddard, said the State Government's redevelopment plan, which it released on Thursday, threatened to destroy historic parts of Redfern and damage the suburb's unique character.
The plan earmarks disused railway land for residential, cultural and commercial development and includes the complete transformation of Redfern Station.
The Redfern Waterloo Authority, the body in charge of the project, is not obliged to adhere to heritage orders because it has powers to override the Heritage Act.
Ms Goddard said the trust was particularly concerned about the fate of the railway yards, tracks and warehouses in North Eveleigh, most of which date from 1887.
"We have been lobbying for a long time to retain the Railway Heritage Group's storage and workshop facilities and this wipes them out completely," Ms Goddard said.
"It also wipes out the fan of tracks that comes into the workshops area."
Ms Goddard said the plan, which aims to revitalise the area by bringing in 18,000 jobs and 4000 new residents in the next 10 years, failed to take into account Redfern's strong history of railway activity.
Any development should contain reminders of the site's past, she said.
"The whole area was built to house workers at Eveleigh, so if you don't have Eveleigh what have you got?"
Ms Goddard said the Government's plans for Redfern Station put the suburb's unique character under threat.
The station dates from the 1870s and was the site of the first double-decker tram trip in 1879. "When you look at the drawings for the railway station there's no sign of the history or place at all," she said.
"The concept drawings have missed that basic sense of place which is so important for everybody, particularly the Aboriginal community who have a very strong sense of attachment to place."
The trust would seek to meet the authority to discuss their concerns, she said.
The deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, Labor's Verity Firth, also spoke out against the plan.
Cr Firth said the decision by the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, to rezone the Block for commercial use was "regrettable" and should be reversed.
The rezoning kills off the Aboriginal Housing Company's proposal to build 62 houses on the Block.
"With one stroke of the pen this innovative development has seemingly been abandoned," she said.
The release of the plan comes one week after City of Sydney council lodged a development application for the demolition of the Redfern Oval grandstand.
The move follows a controversial decision in November to turn the site into a public sportsground.
The resolution angered fans of South Sydney football club and the local Police and Community Youth Club, who wanted to replace the grandstand with a larger stadium and a commercial development.
The Block's revival in rezoning
renovation
February 10, 2006 - Daily Telegraph
By Mark Scala - Urban Affairs Reporter
MORE than 2000 homes and commercial development for 18,000
workers in buildings up to 18 storeys high will be built around The Block,
in an effort to revitalise Redfern.
But at the same time as launching the rezoning plan for the troubled suburb,
Planning Minister Frank Sartor acknowledged it has been one of Sydney's
hardest areas to redevelop, suffering from a lack of interest.
The 35ha plan which takes In The Block, Eveleigh railyards, Redfern railway
station and the former police station and court house, will mostly limit
buildings to 12 storeys. Current restrictions limit them to four.
In The Block itself buildings will be limited to five storeys with no home-owners
forced out, but Mr Sartor said it would be up to the Aboriginal landowners
to determine what actually goes into the zone.
Across Redfern all public housing tenants will be allowed to remain.
At the Australian Technology Park, buildings will rise an extra two storeys,
to a maximum of 11.
"Developers need to be encouraged to come into Redfern ... they're
not knocking on my door," Mr Sartor said yesterday. "The cards
are on the table, my door is open and we bave a real opportunity to make
a difference. The critical theme that has been provided in the built environment
plan is one of employment and one of opportunity.
"There is nothing in this plan that would displace people in the area.
"Whether developers go in The Block or not is up to The Block."
A town centre around an upgraded station will also be built, with most residential
building restricted to the north of the railway lines.
Aboriginal Housing Company CEO Mick Mundine said they had hoped for 62 homes
in The Block, up from 19 currently there, with the new plan limiting them
to about 30.
He said the plans pressured them into commercial development, forcing them
away from housing.
"It looks pretty bad on face value," he said. "What they're
saying is you will get some value if you build commercial instead of residential.
"At 30 the project's not viable, financially it won't work and socially
you will have worse problems."
NSW Urban Task force director David Tanevski said there was developer interest
in areas like the Australian Technology Park because of proximity to the
city.
Anne Weldon from the NSW Aboriginal Housing Office welcomed the plans and
disputed claims The Block plan was unworkable.
"The Block belongs to every Aboriginal person, not just the shareholders
of the company," she said.
Firth Calls on Sartor to Rethink
Pemulwuy Decision - City of Sydney
February 10, 2006 - Media Release
From Verity Firth Deputy Lord Mayor, City of Sydney
Labor Deputy Lord Mayor Verity Firth has expressed grave concern at the State Government's apparent abandonment of the Pemulwuy Project.
“Yesterday's decision by Minister Sartor is regrettable and should be reversed. It has made the realisation of the project impossible,” said Clr Firth today.
The Draft Built Environment Plan rezones the block so that only 30 homes can be built rather than the 62 provided through the Pemulwuy Project.
“The Pemulwuy Project promotes mixed use of the block and includes plans for affordable family homes, a public civic space and commercial area, artist markets, a student hostel, a sports facility and an Indigenous business college.
“For six years a distinguished coalition of Indigenous leaders, community activists and internationally respected urban and social planners has worked hard to develop the initiative. State Government bureaucrats even attended project workshops.
"With one stroke of a pen this innovative development has seemingly been abandoned.
"We had self-determination in action. It resulted in a credible redevelopment plan that was supported by the residents and the local business community. Now we are told that it's been a waste of time.
“I call upon the community to use the upcoming consultation period urge the Minister to re-think his position and give Pemulwuy the consideration it deserves.”
Aboriginal
anger as Block rezoned
February 10, 2006 - The Australian
John Stapleton
LONGSTANDING tensions between Sydney's Redfern Aboriginal community and the NSW Government escalated yesterday after Planning Minister Frank Sartor announced that Redfern's Block, a centre of Aboriginal activism for more than 30 years, would be rezoned for commercial use.
The land was given to the Aboriginal community by the Whitlam government in the 1970s. Although relatively trouble-free over the past year, the area, in Sydney's inner-south, has been plagued by riots and heroin dealing since the mid-1990s.
The Government says its proposals, contained in the Built Environment Plan released by the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, will create 18,000 jobs and revitalise the area.
The scheme includes a new town centre next to Redfern rail station, but puts an end to the Aboriginal plan known as the Pemulway Project to redevelop the Block with residential housing, an Aboriginal business college, retail centre and markets.
Mick Mundine, chief executive of the Block's owner, the Aboriginal Housing Company, described the scheme as a big win for developers.
"This is a disgraceful betrayal of Aboriginal people," Mr Mundine said. "The federal Government gave us this land. It is very degrading and very racist what the state Government is trying to do. They do not understand how important the Block is to us."
Longtime resident Bill Simon said the scheme was racist.
"We are just fighting for this little bit of land," Mr Simon said. "This is the heart of Australia. If they take this away, they are ripping our heart out."
Lyn Turnbull, a member of community group Redwatch, said it was time Mr Sartor started listening to the people's desire to live in the area.
"The rezoning is all about stopping Aboriginal families being part of a viable Redfern community," she said.
"People have to remember there was a very good, very family-oriented community on the Block before state government policies allowed the escalation of the drug trade during the 1990s.
"This area has always been at the forefront of reconciliation, and the majority of Redfern's non-indigenous families strongly support an ongoing Aboriginal presence here."
But Mr Sartor, who is Minister for Redfern Waterloo, defended the scheme, saying it was a balanced plan. He said the rezoning was consistent with the proposed surrounding land uses.
"This is about the big picture," Mr Sartor said. "The Block is only one component of that.
"The benefits of this economic growth must be shared across these suburbs, which house some of Sydney's most disadvantaged residents."
NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam attacked the Government for its failure to consult local groups.
Mr Debnam, who visited the Block last week, said discontent among Aboriginal residents of Redfern was strong.
"State Labor has taken 11 years to come up with a Redfern Waterloo plan, but still couldn't get the community consultation right," he said. "Putting Frank Sartor in charge was a guaranteed way to ensure the local community was not properly consulted."
Mr Debnam said Mr Sartor's aggressive approach had alienated residents, and called on him to resign from his Redfern Waterloo portfolio.
New
plan on the Block unwelcome to owners
February 10, 2006 - SMH
By Bonnie Malkin and Sherrill Nixon
THE symbolic heart of Sydney's Aboriginal community - the Block in Redfern - will be transformed into a bustling commercial hub under a State Government plan to attract investors and reverse the fortunes of the troubled inner-city site.
The new vision for the Block alters the site's zoning from residential to "mixed use", increasing the height limits on buildings from two to three storeys and encouraging business developments.
The draft plan, released yesterday by the Minister for Redfern Waterloo, Frank Sartor, also flags a revamp of Redfern train station to make it safer and more attractive, with shops at ground level and disabled access.
An "urban boulevard" will be created to link the station and the Redfern town centre at nearby Redfern and Regent streets, where shops, other businesses and accommodation will be encouraged. Developers will be able to build office towers up to 18 storeys along Gibbons Street near the station.
Mr Sartor said the plan was a "measured and sustainable approach" that would provide the Redfern-Waterloo region with 18,000 new jobs, 440,000 extra square metres of employment space and 2000 new dwellings in the next 10 years. "Unless we do this we will not break the cycle of poverty and lack of opportunity in this area," he said.
But the Block's owner, the Aboriginal Housing Company, has accused the minister of trying to bribe the company into building shops and offices on the site of the first urban land rights claim in Australia.
It has previously put forward a plan to build 62 new homes on the Block, but only 30 houses would be allowed under yesterday's plan developed by the Redfern-Waterloo Authority.
"He's saying if we build commercial we'll make much more out of it," said Mick Mundine, the head of the Aboriginal Housing Company.
"That's his carrot. His stick is if we choose to remain with residential he reduces the floor space ratios and the height."
The zoning changes killed any hope for affordable home ownership for Aboriginal families on the Block, he said.
"They want to stop us from living on our own land; however, we are determined to fight to the end to deliver our commitment to provide 62 homes on the Block," Mr Mundine said.
He has the support of a local community group, REDwatch, whose spokesman, Trevor Davies, said 30 homes was too few to encourage a good community at the Block.
Mr Sartor defended the efforts to lure commercial developers to the Block, saying the main aim of the plan was to provide employment for locals.
He said the Aboriginal Housing Company, as the land owners, had the right to decide the site's fate."Whether the Block is ultimately demolished or redeveloped is still up to them."
Yesterday's standoff over the Block is the latest chapter in the souring of relations between the Aboriginal Housing Company and Mr Sartor, after the minister demanded on Koori Radio in September that Mr Mundine "bring his black arse in" to discuss a dispute over redevelopment.
Also under the new plan:
• Business and residential buildings would be allowed on the site of the former court house and police station on Redfern Street, although the heritage court house would be retained;
• Houses would be built on the old Rachel Forster Hospital site;
• Serviced apartments, hotel and other accommodation would be encouraged on the former Redfern Public School site.
The public is invited to comment on the plan over the next two months.
Sartor changes zoning of the Block
to commercial
February 9, 2006 - AHC Media release .
NSW government Minister Frank Sartor today announced that he intends to rezone Aboriginal owned land in Redfern to mixed-use to stop the AHC's long standing plans to build 62 Aboriginal homes on the Block.
"This is a disgraceful betrayal of Aboriginal people by the NS W Government" said Michael Mundine CEO of the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC), "what do you expect from a Minister like Frank Sartor?"
The NSW government has taken an aggressive approach, pressuring the AHC to dominate the land, intended for affordable housing, with commercial buildings.
"This makes a mockery of land ownership in NSW. What's the value of owning land if the NSW government can change the planning rules anytime to suit their own agenda?" said Mr Mundine.
The zoning changes dash any hopes for affordable homeownership for Aboriginal families on the Block.
"The Block is the first urban land handed back by the Commonwealth government. The NSW government doesn't understand that the Block represents a beacon of hope for the next generation. Sartor's plan will destroy five years of hard work by the Aboriginal community" said Mr Mundine.
“They want to stop us from living on our own land, however, we are determined to fight to the end to deliver our commitment to provide 62 homes on the Block"
These zoning changes represent a big win to the developers and the NS W government that will cash in on the sale of Redfern's assets.
Redfern
redevelopment plan not about moving Aborigines: Minister
February 9, 2006 - ABC
The final stage of the New South Wales Government's plan to redevelop Redfern has been released.
Minister for Redfern-Waterloo Frank Sartor says under the built environment plan there will be more commercial space to attract jobs and 2,000 new homes in the area.
Mr Sartor says he hopes the Aboriginal housing company which owns 'the Block' will look favourably on the plan.
He says it is not about moving the Aboriginal population from the suburbs.
"There's nothing in this plan that would displace the existing residents or people in the area - we are not displacing them - I mean we are wanting to simply provide more opportunities for them," he said.
Welcome
to the Movement Economy (Note: Martin Butterworth
is a member of the Pemulwuy Vision TaskForce)
February 07, 2006 - Property Australia
By Chris Larsen
Attracting people, and investment, to cities has become a science. Chris Larsen talks to an analyst who says movement through a space is more important than “attractors” when planning public places.
Cities really are no ‘field of dreams’. According to Martin Butterworth, if you build it, they might come.
Butterworth – managing director of consultancy Space Syntax – says cities that rely on ‘attractors’ alone for success are planning to fail.
His company is a specialist in providing evidence-based analysis to build ‘movement infrastructures’ and generate urban economies. In other words, assisting the movement of people and vehicles in order to make the ‘attractor’ property viable.
Space Syntax uses evidence and computer modelling to demonstrate how movement through a space – including a building’s interior – will work or fail.
Butterworth, who originally studied architecture, says cities work best when their urban centres are organised around highly accessible spatial layouts that naturally generate pedestrian and vehicular movement.
Land uses that seek movement – such as retail and commerce – migrate to these movement-rich streets and urban places, producing an economic multiplier effect which attracts more diverse building uses and increased densities.
Space Syntax calls this the ‘movement economy’, and says it generates economic vitality and social cohesion in cities.
But the reverse is also true – when spatial accessibility, movement patterns and land use do not add up, then economically unsustainable and anti-social environments emerge.
This principle applies not only to cities but to master-planned communities and other property developments, and even to building interiors.
“A foundation stone for a prosperous city is a vibrant public realm, well populated by pedestrian movement,” Butterworth says.
“Public and private transport networks are the additional means by which pedestrians are delivered to a city centre for easy access to urban facilities.
“Spatially integrating those urban facilities with a highly accessible public realm produces key economic multiplier effects that were once prevalent in cities.
“A basic requirement for a viable pedestrian infrastructure is a simple, interconnected, spatially integrated, continuously animated and intelligent public realm.”
Put simply, it is not enough to have a ‘build it and they will come’ mentality towards attractors if it is not easy for people to get there in the first place.
“This attractor idea of planning is one of the problems, because you don’t look at how the city works,” Butterworth says. “You provide arbitrary links to them and say ‘they’ll work’.”
And no urban space is immune to betterment.
“Great cities around the world have underperforming areas that can be improved,” Butterworth says.
“We’ve found around 20 percent of movement – vehicular and pedestrian – is to do with attractors alone.
“About 70 percent or so tends to do with the accessibility patterns of how to get to those facilities.
“By spatially integrating the new you can produce far more joined cities ... through (a) diagnostic and prognostic process.”
Butterworth says fragmentation is another classic mistake of urban planning.
“Urban fragmentation lies at the heart of some of the problems of modern cities because it constrains economic potential, so that individual developments find it hard to create sufficiently good levels of natural movement,” he says.
“Fragmentation happens when accessibility is unintelligible.
“At the large scale, urban fragmentation spreads spatial inaccessibility across cities in patterns of isolated and segregated suburban areas, producing enclaves rather than communities.
“Residential areas are isolated from employment areas.
“Office parks and industrial estates are sufficiently segregated that they do not achieve local retail potential.
“Easily walkable urban centres with convenient public transport links are limited to older parts of cities.
“The main problem of urban fragmentation is relying solely on attractors to make a new park or urban centre work.
“While attractors produce some pedestrian movement, if they also have poor urban accessibility they will not take advantage of the local urban layout to generate economically sustainable amounts of natural pedestrian movement.
“The critical question for urban performance, then, is how well will the street system function with the right amount of pedestrian and vehicular movement to make attractors achieve their full economic and social potential ...?”
Space Syntax’s work has produced some surprising results – some with important implications not just for property development but also for investment.
For example, the usage of Trafalgar Square in London was increased by 1300 percent, “by the use of a strategically located staircase, essentially,” Butterworth says.
He also points out the unusual example of the suburban high street at Auburn in Western Sydney, which has the same number of pedestrians per hour as the best part of Flinders Street in Melbourne.
“It questions the way we consider investment,” Butterworth says. “You could say that Auburn is a very powerful place that isn’t even on the radar of investors. Melbourne could be improved.”
Think globally, act locally
While the mistakes of the past might have long-term effects into the future, Butterworth says it’s never too late to improve the planning of Australian cities, nor learn from experiences overseas.
“I think there are people now who realise we can’t just keep making problems for ourselves in cities,” he says.
“It’s important for politicians to understand this evidence-based (planning)...
“We can no longer use the ‘I thought it was a good idea at the time’ approach.”
Borders – whether national or between councils within a city – can be parochial barriers to better understanding of how to make cities more successful.
“We’re making the same planning problems across the world,” Butterworth says. “We don’t seem to learn from our mistakes.
“Parts of our cities are quite successful. (But) we’re building large parts of cities that aren’t working the way we wanted them to.
“We’d be better to go and look at places that fail as well as succeed to get a better understanding.
“We usually consider projects (ending at) the dotted line of a project boundary. We need to consider beyond that, and sometimes to great distances.
“It’s often global understanding we find to be the missing link ... that’s the link between economics and transport.”
Thinking globally but acting locally might just be the tonic for poorly planned cities.
“What happens for urban centres between council boundaries may affect other urban centres ...” Butterworth says.
“The localness is needed in that there’s a political responsibility. But there’s also a responsibility of councils and state governments to work hand-in-glove ...”
No Progress from Labor in Redfern
February 2, 2006 - Peter Debnam Media Release
NSW Liberal Leader and Shadow Minister for Redfern Waterloo Peter Debnam said today Labor’s arrogant approach to Redfern Waterloo continued unabated.
Mr Debnam and Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Brad Hazzard met today in Redfern with Aboriginal Housing Company boss Mick Mundine and other representatives of the AHC.
“I was updated on the progress of the development and negotiations with the Labor Government,” Mr Debnam said.
“From those discussions with the AHC, it is clear very little has changed in the Premier’s attitude.
“Premier Iemma and Minister Sartor are still adopting the arrogant approach which led Mr Sartor to abuse Mick Mundine last September.
“The redevelopment of the Redfern Waterloo site is an important issue requiring leadership from the Labor Government.
“It remains clear Labor is incapable of co-operating with the community.
“I call on the Premier to show some leadership and step in to try and repair the damage Mr Sartor has caused.
“Labor must finally come clean on its plans for Redfern so the AHC and the community has some certainty,” Mr Debnam said.
MEDIA: Brad Burden 9230 2270 or 0401 672 145
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