Giggling, they hobble off. I check the blacktop. No needles.
Of course, or I wouldn’t have let the dog out unshod. But I’m shocked all the
same.
Shocked by the casual, unpremeditated racism, so
lighthearted you’d almost call it innocent. Shocked by the presumption these
are shared views. Shocked by that “when”. Not if they get rid of the
blacks, when. As if the decision to whitewash Redfern were all over bar the
shouting.
The couple’s ethnicity is irrelevant. Suffice to note a
strong resemblance to the smack-sellers who run my back lane. Second
generation, I’d guess – city workers who have snapped up one of Redfern’s smart
new apartments. Partakers of the Great Cup of gentrification.
And it’s this that threatens Redfern’s Aboriginal community.
Opinions on the Block vary widely, even on the Block. Some
blame Frank Sartor for his two-year inaction on the Aboriginal Housing
Company’s proposal to build 62 freehold dwellings. He is expected to reject the
application as he publicly opposed it even before lodgment, for which the
company has been asked to pay a $60,000 assessment fee.
Some blame the housing company for achieving little in its
30 years beyond steady house-by-house demolition of those dwellings. And some,
like the company itself, blame smack. It all went pear-shaped in the 1980s,
they say, when heroin arrived. The need to stymie the dealers, says the housing
company’s chief executive, Mick Mundine, forced the demolitions.
So far, so murky. But what is clear is that the smack came
with the cops. That’s the irony. The blacks had been there since the 1930s,
when they were fettlers at Eveleigh Railyards. And in the decade from Gough
Whitlam’s deeding of the land until the arrival of heroin, things looked
reasonably promising. Movement was, at least, forward.
But during the 1980s, Redfern’s sinister TNT towers – all of
30 seconds’ walk from the Block – were home to the Australian Federal Police
drug squad. The unit, including Michael Anthony Wallace (jailed first for
filching $20 million of heroin, then for murdering his girlfriend) didn’t muck
around. It dealt whitegoods by the kilo. To have the Block over the road, a
ready-made market-cum-scapegoat, could hardly have been more convenient.
Fast-forward 20 years. When Sartor’s “no black
faces” strategy made headlines in 2005, he said his push was not
anti-black but anti “high-dependency housing”. But five minutes away,
in Waterloo,
this same Government is even now rebuilding its high-dependency housing, albeit
in a “self-funding” mix.
The housing company is perhaps the only landholder ever to
be underwhelmed by a Part 3A listing – the only developer that might expect
greater leniency from council than the minister, despite its charitable status
and the much-needed affordability of its proposed housing.
In truth, the push is probably less racist than monetarist.
Redfern station is Sydney’s
second most highly serviced, but only 10th busiest. Underscored by the petrol
crisis and the fact that most of the land is publicly owned, this makes it
prime CBD-expansion territory. All except the Black land.
But the racism – the linking of Aboriginality with drugs in
the public mind – eases the political way for the scheme’s rejection. Just like
it eased the Government’s resurrection of the internationally discredited
development corporation model, known for its soulless products from Darling Harbour to the London Docklands. Eased
acceptance of its patent conflict of interest, zoning its own land 12 to 16
storeys but the nearby housing company land three to five. Eased the whitewash,
generally.
For on its own site, North Eveleigh,
the Redfern-Waterloo Authority pretends, fawningly, to ask the minister’s
permission to lodge. In fact, Sartor’s approval is pretty much a foregone
conclusion, the Minister for Planning being also the authority’s boss. What,
like he hasn’t already stamped every word of the proposal?
A proposal that “found it necessary” to exceed its
own height limit, demolish most heritage on the site, build on top of the old
Paintshop, and add almost 2,000 car spaces 30 seconds from the station. The
density is fine – this is the place for it. But the reasons will convince no
one.
These include “better urban design”, natch, and
that other towers – those TNTs and the equally loathed Waterloo babies, themselves rumoured for the
chop – are visible from the site. (By that token, Centrepoint is visible from
the Block). Mostly, though, just because they can.
It’s that old vampire in charge of the blood bank trick. And
guess what? The police are right back in those evil TNT towers. And – no
connection – business in my back lane is booming.