Instead the plan remains secret. In reply to a parliamentary
question from NSW Legislative Greens Councillor Lee
Rhiannon on October 15, RWA chief executive Robert Domm said the options would be considered by
The NSW Cabinet and would only be publicly released after Cabinet made a
decision. The lack of openness around the station plan has led community
watchdog organisation REDwatch to complain about RWA secrecy. (See
street team story on this page).
Local resident and spokesperson for REDwatch, Geoff
Turnbull, told Precinct southside:
“Everything is conducted behind closed doors until you get to the point
where they’ve made the plan and then it’s put on exhibition. The RWA Act leaves
everything up to the discretion of the Minister.”
The RWA Minister is Mr Frank Sailor who is also minister for
planning.
Secrecy over redevelopment plans for the station is just one
issue which concerns REDwatch.
The organisation, which represents a wide spread of
community interests is also disappointed that entries to a RWA design
competition for the redevelopment of North Eveleigh Railway yards will not be
open to the public until a decision has been made.
Set up in 2004, the RWA was given planning control of the
Redfern Waterloo area by the NSW government. This wrested control of planning
and development from the Sydney City Council.
At the time, local independent MP and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore warned parliament: “the worst
outcome would be that the new authority would simply add another layer of
bureaucracy, alienate the community and … the whole project would end up
being nothing more than a real estate development exercise.”
In 2005, RWA attempted to allay these fears by including in
its first public newsletter a section titled How Your Voice Will Be Heard which promised at least four community
forums a year open to the public. Geoff Turnbull said only one public meeting,
which was exclusively on the topic of public housing, has ever been held.
The RWA also set up several Ministerial Advisory Committees.
Helen Campbell, executive officer of
Redfern Legal Centre was invited to be a member of the Human Services
Committee.
She said: the minister did not attend the meetings and the
minutes never recorded what comments anybody made: “So you couldn’t look
at those minutes and know what my input was.”
Like Mr Turnbull, Helen Campbell,
who was not reappointed after her term expired this year, said she believed the
RWA Act had the effect of removing the democratic rights of Redfern Waterloo
residents.
Source: University
of Technology Precinct Southside Issue
4/2007 page 2.
Publications from the UTS School of Journalism can be
found online at www.journalism.uts.edu.au/future_students/student_publications.html
and at www.reportage.uts.edu.au/