In a recent Media Release from the Minister for Housing
issued under the banner of State Priority Plan R4: Building Harmonious
Communities, promotes a worthwhile cause – the building of Harmonious Communities.
Unfortunately this particular application of a NSW
government Priority appears to have been developed by a bureaucracy to suit
their own purposes at the expense of State government and local community
desire, and the associated benefit.
The residents of the area in question, Waterloo,
a suburb in inner Sydney,
have been asking since May 2005 for a whole of government approach to the
social impact on the broader community of excessive consumption of alcohol in
the suburb.
The local government authority, the City of Sydney Council, heard the pleas for
assistance from the community and did all possible within their powers to
address the issue. The root cause of the problem relocated to the local park,
commonly referred to as Waterloo Green, which is on Housing NSW property [
Title DP 553518 at Lands Department]
In September 2007, under the NSW government, an Action Plan
was finally produced as the response to the locals repeated pleas for
assistance. The purpose of the Action Plan was “To improve physical and social
amenity on and around Waterloo Green”.
The actions identified under the Action Plan were to:
1. Improve public safety and amenity on and around Waterloo
Green.
2. Reduce anti-social behaviour associated with excessive
public drinking.
3. Provide more information about services, events and local
interest groups.
4. Improve access to key human services.
5. Make more use of meeting and activities spaces.
6. Increase interaction between older residents and young
people.
7. Monitor implementation.
This Plan identified several areas of action and allocated
roles to various government departments, including Housing NSW, Police, Health,
Redfern Waterloo Authority, Disability Aging and Home Care,
Transport, Community Services, Sport and Recreation.
Monitoring of implementation and, hopefully, outcomes was
delegated to the Redfern-Waterloo Human Services Plan Senior Officers Group.
Unfortunately the Human Services Plan component of the Redfern Waterloo
Authority is due to cease at the end of the current financial year.
Overall responsibility for Anti-Social behaviour on Waterloo
Green was assigned to the landowner, Housing NSW, by the NSW Premier, through
the Office of the Premier.
There was only one component of the Plan that had a specific
timeframe – a trial of an Anti-Graffiti project that had been utilised in the
Sutherland Shire area of Sydney
by NSW Police. The time for the commencement [September 2007], running and then
evaluation [December 2007] came and went with nothing having happened.
Then on the 12th of March 2008 the Minister for Housing
announced an initiative to attack illegal graffiti in Waterloo. This announcement, delivered on the
eighth floor of a sixteen storey high-rise residential building in Waterloo referred to a
pilot program to combat illegal graffiti in and around the Marton building on
Cope Street Redfern. The initiative as announced bears remarkable resemblance
to the Anti-Graffiti project trial that never happened on the Waterloo Green.
The building was subjected to an intensive cleanup in the
areas that the Minister would be accessing. The carpets in the foyer were
shampooed twenty minutes prior to the announced time of Ministerial presence,
the area around the building from which the Minister would be approaching was
swept and cleaned. The only part of the building that was not cleaned and
primped was the exterior, the part visible from the Waterloo Green.
As of 27th March 2008 the long standing graffiti on the
outside of the building has not been removed, perhaps due to the fact that it
has not had the prescribed sticker placed on it.
To all appearances the good intent of the Waterloo Green
Action Plan has been converted into a low cost graffiti monitoring exercise
centred on a single building by the bureaucracy. Who has responsibility for the
implementation each phase of the initiative is not clear.
The delivery of the single timeframed action in the Waterloo
Green Action Plan has not been achieved and there is now no timeframe, proposed
or otherwise, for its implementation. A cynic could observe that it is much
cheaper to play around one building than to keep clean the exteriors of four
buildings and their surrounds.
It is a shame that the worthwhile concept of Building
Harmonious Communities has been perverted by a bureaucracy for the sole purpose
of avoiding delivery of a more expensive and comprehensive outcome from an
Action Plan developed at the instigation of the NSW Government in response to
Community desire.
Ross Smith – Waterloo
Source:
the Rimfire Review 31 March 2008 – National Tenant Support Network – contact
the NTSN Coordinator, Garry Mallard,
gmallard@thenexus.org.au to be added to the email list.