Greedy developers have long been eyeing Redfern, a Sydney suburb one train
stop away from the CBD with city skyline views, sandwiched between rapidly
gentrifying inner-city suburbs. Standing in the way of billions of dollars of
corporate profit is the Redfern community, and at the heart of it the historic
Indigenous community, the Redfern Block.
The NSW Labor government has been trying to disappear this
community for years and the RWA, set up under the infamous part 3A of the
Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Infrastructure and Other
Planning Reform) Act 2005, is its final solution.
Under this law, NSW planning minister Frank Sartor can
assume “development authority” for any development he deems “state
significant”, bypass local councils and regulations and just do it.
And there can be no doubt about what Sartor aims to do. Just
a year after dramatic TV footage of the “Redfern riot” bounced around the
world, Sartor walked into the offices of the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC),
which owns the Block, and bluntly said he didn’t want any Aboriginal housing
there.
A shocked director of the AHC, Peter Walker, told the media:
“I believe … the government, for whom Mr Sartor represents, are wanting no, to be
blunt, no black faces on the Block. That’s the position pushed by some property
developers.”
This is corporate greed-driven racism in its most naked
form. The Socialist Alliance totally opposes the formation of the RWA, the
purposes for which it was formed and the structures and processes established
for its operation. We call for the abolition of the RWA and the repeal of the
legislation that forms and empowers the RWA.
The RWA is just one example of the trend by all state
governments to remove major development projects from regulation and scrutiny
by local government and other regulatory authorities charged with protecting
community and environmental interests. This has been a device to advance the
privatisation and profits-first agenda against the interest of the community
and the environment — as the experience of the first two years of the operation
of RWA confirm.
Sartor has not delivered on promises of community
consultation, and the RWA plans that have been announced reveal that this is
another private-public partnership (PPP) scam like the notorious Cross City
Tunnel and the airport rail link.
PPPs mean public subsidies for private corporations
undertaking infrastructure developments that go against the interests of the
community and the environment. The NSW Labor government has set up nearly $15
billion worth of these PPP scams, and already the public has seen some of their
terrible costs, including:
•$800 million in taxpayers’ funds squandered on the airport
rail link — a project we were promised would cost taxpayers nothing;
•$25 million already paid to the builder of the Lane Cove
Tunnel for the government’s tardiness in narrowing Epping Road to push drivers
into that tunnel; and
•the still-to-be-discovered public financial cost of the
bankrupt Cross City Tunnel.
But this is probably just the tip of the iceberg because
many of these cosy deals between state governments and their private “partners”
remain hidden on the pretext that it is commercial-in-confidence.
The Socialist Alliance believes that all development
projects, big or small, should be fully subject to public scrutiny, democratic
control and regulation in the interest of the community and the environment.
All major development projects should be under the control of the public and their
governing boards should be elected by the community; accountable to the public;
and subject to recall by the electorate; and provision should be made for major
issues to be submitted to community-initiated referenda.
Therefore, Socialist Alliance calls for direct community
participation (through direct democracy, not just “consultation”) in the
development, finalisation, implementation and ongoing evaluation of any plan
for Redfern-Waterloo. We are committed to fighting for a future for the area in
which the most marginalised have decent housing, and not just those who can
afford to live in a gentrified inner-city.
We would support a plan to assist the Redfern community
develop cooperatives and other enterprises under their control. Such a plan
should also include quality public housing.
The Socialist Alliance wants to see the number of public
housing units sharply increased and public housing extended beyond “welfare
housing” to more broadly available public housing that steadily replaces the
private housing market that is increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible for
most of the population.
The Socialist Alliance opposes the current government
position of reducing the proportion of the population in public housing in
Redfern-Weterloo by doubling the local population while maintaining the same
number of public tenants. We totally oppose public private partnership
redevelopment of existing public housing.
The Socialist Alliance opposes the sales of parts of North
Eveleigh and the former Rachel
Foster Hospital
site to fund the redevelopment of the area.
The notion that it necessary to privatise public assets to
preserve other public utilities is dead wrong. It is a refrain the NSW state
Labor government repeats ad nauseum, and it is driven by the close relationship
between the state government and its developer mates (the NSW Labor Party and
the Coalition have received over $7.7 million dollars between them in donations
from developers over the last three years).
The Socialist Alliance repledges its support and solidarity
with the Redfern Block Aboriginal community and the broader Redfern-Waterloo
community and stands alongside these communities in their fight to determine a
future that is in the interests of the community and the environment, not that
of the developers.
[Pip Hinman is the Socialist Alliance candidate for
Marrickville, which includes the Redfern Block, in the March 24 elections. A
fuller statement of the Socialist Alliance position on the RWA can be read at: http://www.redwatch.org.au/redw/elections/state2007/marrickville/sam/answersmsa/
. Other Socialist Alliance policy statements for the NSW elections can be
accessed at http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=627]