Dr
Naomi Mayers, CEO, Aboriginal Medical Service Co-operative Ltd, Redfern
In
the 1960s, Naomi Mayers was on the stage, sporting big hair and singing the
hits of The Supremes alongside her sister Beverley Briggs and cousin Laurel Robinson. They called themselves The
Sapphires, after the engagement ring Mayers had just received.
But
while Robinson and her sister, Lois Peeler,
toured Vietnam in 1968 as
back-up singers, Mayers – a Yorta Yorta woman from Cummeragunja on the NSW side
of the Murray River – stayed home with her new
baby.
The
story of The Sapphires was immortalised on the Belvoir Street Theatre stage in
a 2005 play and is now in the works to become a movie. But Mayers’s own story
is just as worthy of a film script – after her parents separated, her childhood
was split between St Aidan’s Orphanage in the central Victorian town of Bendigo, Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne and her grandmother’s home in
Shepparton.
Serving
her people was in Mayers’s blood so it surprised no one when she moved to Sydney in 1972 to take up
the family’s long and proud history of several generations fighting for land
rights and legal services. °I’m a fighter,” says Mayers. “Some people
say, ‘She’ll fight; be careful.”
Mayers,
now 66, became the secretary-organiser of the Aboriginal Medical Service in
Redfern, which was then less than a year old and housed in a tiny shopfront in Botany Road. It was
the first of 139 Aboriginal medical services around Australia and today, after 35 years
with the service, Mayers is CEO and company secretary.
In
1976, she fought to get the service into bigger premises, finally convincing
the Catholic Sisters of Mercy of the Sacred Heart to give over the title deeds
to the Turner Street
building, where the service now stands. And she went on to become the
co-ordinator of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health
Organisation, where she is currently deputy chairman. The Redfern example was
crucial to the rolling out of community-run Aboriginal health services around
the country.
Mayers
has overseen a big reduction in childhood malnutrition in the area, although
drugs and alcohol remain a major problem. Still, she says, white bureaucrats
never listen to Aboriginal recommendations. “They want to take control of
Aboriginal services,” she says, stabbing her finger into the desk.
“They might take control of the others but Redfern, nuh!”
Col James, architect
According
to Col James, persistence has been
his greatest strength. “Persistence with the Block and persistence with
the Redfern mob, who I’ve got great respect for.”
In
the early 70s, James was an architect on the board of South
Sydney Community Aid when Aboriginal elder Shirley Smith
asked him to assist in the battle to acquire land in Redfern by drawing up
plans for low-cost housing. He advised the Whitlam government on the
acquisition of a dozen
houses
that would come to be known as “the Block” – effectively our first
urban land rights claim. He has continued to play a key role, helping student
planners develop social policies to rid the Block of drugs and crime.
James’s
work on the Block has always been pro bono. It’s impossible, he says, to add up
the hours he has put in every week for 30 years. And although he’s now 71, the
architect isn’t interested in retiring. He still lectures at the University of Sydney and is heavily involved in
community issues. Each semester, he conducts student tours of the
Block
to connect the two communities. ‘I live locally and I’ve got this notion of
country and people. In the last 200 years we’ve really done some damage.”
As
well as converting abandoned buildings into homes for squatters, he is working
with Aboriginal Housing Company CEO Mick Mundine on plans for a $40 million
redevelopment of the Block. “He’s been around forever and he’s still there
doing good things,” says panellist Marcelle Hoff.
“He’s made a long-term commitment, whereas other people tend to drift in
and out.”
But
the new plans have brought him into conflict with Sydney’s “minister for everything”,
Frank Sartor. James and the community
want planning approval for 62 houses – the number of Aboriginal families in the
Gadigal clan. Sartor is refusing to
budge from 42, at the same time pushing through plans to gentrify Redfern with
new apartments for 4000 people. “The fact that I was there at the
beginning means it’s not the sort of thing you can ever walk away from,”
says James. “There’s nothing like a good fight to keep your spirits
up.”
Anthony
Mundine, boxer
His
detractors consider him a sideshow who thrives on his own press. His supporters
adore him for stirring the pot and playing the maverick. Regardless of which
way you swing, there’s no doubt that Anthony Mundine has become an intrinsic
part of the sporting landscape. Throughout his career – first as a rugby league
player for St George Illawarra and then as a two-time world champion boxer –
few sports stars have made talkback crackle so much. Sydney is either with him or against him.
Mundine
has shaken things up since he first burst onto the rugby league scene in 1993
for the Dragons, his shimmering displays on the field matched only by his
comments, such as branding representative selectors racist for not choosing him
in NSW and Australian teams. When he left the game to follow in the footsteps
of his father, Tony, and become a boxer, it was done in typical understated
Mundine style – as front-page news.
The
32-year-old is more than a human headline, though. Few will forget his victory
against arch rival Danny Green in the middle of the Sydney Football Stadium in
2006. And his ninth-round knockout of Sam Soliman at the Entertainment Centre
last March saw him claim the WBA super-middleweight title.
But
Mundine knows he has a higher purpose than dancing on the canvas. From the age
of five until his early teens, his father would drive him through the streets
of Kings Cross, pointing out drug addicts to highlight the pitfalls of life.
Now Mundine sets his own example. “I’m Aboriginal and a Muslim and a lot
of kids look up to me. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke.
I
don’t do drugs. I’d like to think I’m a strong influence on them.”
Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney
From
small acorns, large oaks grow. And so it was with Clover
Moore, spurred into politics by the sad state of community
facilities and parkland in her home suburb of Redfern. She narrowly won a South Sydney council seat in 1980 and trounced a Labor
veteran four years later.
The
phenomenon had arrived. In 1988, she unseated Liberal heavyweight Michael
Yabsley in the state seat of Bligh and, in 1992 force Nick Greiner from the
premiership after she and other independent MPs were left with the balance of
power.
She
has been unmovable ever since. Such is her reputation that her storming return
to Town Hall as Lord mayor more than three years ago was a certainty.
The
big challenge for Moore
has been the conflict inherent between her vision for the city and those in
state planning and vested corporate
interests – from developers to publicans. Depending on the issue, she has been
accused or trying to bold back change or trying to force it through. Her
successful advocacy of a new boutique drinking culture is an example of the
latter.
By
2030,” she says, “I’d hope Sydney
is known worldwide for its environmental achievements, a beautiful public
domain and a unique, diverse and creative cultural life.”
At
the city’s core would be a mosaic of residential villages linked by pedestrian
and cycle paths and an integrated pubic transport system. “Strong
Partnerships between federal, state and local government – and with business
and the community – will be essential.