Councillor Chris Harris

Hello to all who attended the community meeting last month at the Paddington Town Hall where we discussed the activities of Fox Studios and the airborne and waterborne emissions that are coming out of the site. See below, over the fold, for a summary of the information provided to the community by Dr Chris Winder & Dr Mark Donohoe.

If you didn’t attend the meeting or would like to hear the speakers again, recordings of the main speakers are provided here in MP3 format in two parts.

1. Introductory remarks and then presentation by Dr Chris Winder: MP3 stream or MP3 download (35 MB)
2. Presentation by Dr Mark Donohoe: MP3 stream or MP3 download
   (15 MB)

If you have further questions or observations I would be interested in hearing from you.

The meeting was held at Paddington Town Hall on August 17 betwen 6 and 9 p.m.

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A letter in last Friday’s SMH draws attention to the promotion of gambling culture to children in local clubs.

The letter’s author,
David Jerome from Berry, is right on the money. Children playing pokies for toys are being seduced into the government sponsored gambling rort.

In 2004/05 in Australia, $53 billion was lost in poker machines and of that $3.17 billion was lost in the 5379 machines installed in the City of Sydney clubs and pubs. This vast amount of money came straight out of the pockets of mainly lower to middle income families.

This isn’t a game - these people are hooked on a habit that destroys families, causes domestic violence and puts people in gaol when they steal from the boss to feed their addiction.

Isn’t it time that councils and the state government stopped profiting from these misery machines and regulated them out of existence?

Download:

• Greens to remove the NSW Government’s dependence on poker machines. (Microsoft Word) Media Release Sept. 11

The Greens had a great breakthrough last night in winning the Deputy Lord Mayor ballot despite the Lord Mayor’s attempt to shut down the election.

In a bizarre twist at the City Council last night the Lord Mayor panicked at the prospect of losing the Deputy Lord Mayoral position and tried to shut down the election. The first indication that something was amiss was that the ballot had been moved later in the agenda without explanation.

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The Greens have been researching the donations made to the NSW and Federal divisions of the main political parties (see www.democracy4sale.org) as a first step towards reforming the way our elections are funded and disclose the influence of large political donations on the policies and actions of government.

In line with this campaign, our local Greens group has endorsed a policy to disclose all donations over $200 made toward funding our campaign. A record of all such donations is being made available on this website.

I call on all other candidates running in the NSW seat of Sydney to do the same so everyone can know who funded their campaigns.

For more information and the record of donations made to the seat of Sydney campaign so far this year, please see the Donations Disclosure page.

Sydney Water has decided to subdivide the Crown St reservoir in Surry Hills and flog off the portion facing Crown Street (estimated value $12m-$14m). They have ignored the pleas of the local community and propose to sell it to a developer.

At Committee on Monday 11th September I was the only councillor - along with Cr Lee - who was willing to support purchasing the site. Amazingly the Clover Moore team refused to support us.

Open space is already at a premium in inner Sydney so it is in the interests of the Surry Hills community for the City of Sydney to protect the site from greedy high rise developers.

How? By the City of Sydney purchasing and preserving the site. We have done this before - in 2004 we paid $10M to buy the Water Police site in Pyrmont and in 2005 we forked out almost $20M to buy yet another property in Town Hall Square.

The Council has the money - all it takes is the courage to act and some forward thinking.

If you want the Crown Street reservoir site to be kept for the benefit of the public, contact as many Councillors as you can as well as the Lord Mayor.

You can make a difference and preserve your neighbourhood.

Cr Clover Moore - cmoore@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
Cr Phillip Black - pblack@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
Cr Verity Firth - vfirth@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
Cr Marcelle Hoff - mhoff@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
Cr Robyn Kemmis - rkemmis@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
Cr Shayne Mallard - smallard@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
Cr John McInerney - jmcinerney@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
Cr Tony Pooley - tpooley@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au