The Sydney Morning Herald today continues its series on outdated Strata Laws which allow apartment dwellers to be exploited. For links to previous stories, see ’strata scams’ post below. For The Greens’ comprehensive answer to the problems, plus a handy Q&A for apartment dwellers, click the Strata Living box in the right hand sidebar.
In the last five years the Labor government has received over $7 million in donations from developers and construction companies. The Liberal party got in excess of $4 million, and half of Clover Moore’s campaign funding to become Lord Mayor of Sydney was courtesy of
Living City Ltd, a large part of whose funds came from developer donations. The Lord Mayor also received a $1500 donation from local property developer C&A Haralambis.
“Only the Greens do not take political donations from developers. The LibLabs feed off them. But nothing comes without its price,” said Chris Harris.
“You only have to look at Minister Sartor’s approval of the Carlton United Brewery site to see how it works. The CUB development is going to have 11 blocks of apartments housing 2,800 residents, 4,800 workers, parking for 2,320 cars, towers up to 120 metres high, and around 500 apartments that could have little or no natural light. Read the rest of this entry »
Last night’s Four Corners program on ABC TV showed how the climate-change denial industry uses many of the same spin-merchants who used to work for Big Tobacco obscuring the link between smoking and lung cancer.
One of their new campaigns is about cutting ‘Greenhouse intensity’ rather than absolute cuts in Greenhouse emissions. Watch out for this weasel word - it means that if an economy grows by a percentage, it can raise its permitted emission levels by the same amount. We need deep and absolute cuts if we are to minimize the effects of climate change.
Meanwhile Greens Senator Christine Milne has put one of Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s bright ideas into perspective. He wants to phase out incandescent light globes in favour of low-energy bulbs, nationally. Read the rest of this entry »
Sydney developers appear to have found a new way around size and parking restrictions for new unit blocks.
First they ‘change the mix of units’ in a proposed block, losing some or all of the small, affordable units in favour of expensive three-bedroom units. Then they request a drastically increased number of parking spaces because the buyers of such units will ‘require’ two spaces each.
This in turn pushes the site beyond its allowable floorspace.
The result: Sydney ends up with more cars and less affordable housing - a double whammy to sustainability - and the developer ends up with more profit.
This was the scenario for two Development Applications (DAs) before Council last week, one in Onslow Street Elizabeth Bay, the other on the old Children’s Hospital site in Camperdown. Read the rest of this entry »
Three stories in today’s Sydney Morning Herald underline a growing crisis for many apartment dwellers. The stories point out that the major political parties, addicted to developer cash, have skewed laws against apartment owners and renters to the point where many basic rights have been lost.
That’s why Chris Harris (quoted in one of the articles) and The Greens have put forward a well researched raft of strata law reforms, as explained elsewhere on this site (just click the Strata Living button in the right sidebar). It’s also a glaring reason to ban developer donations to political parties.
Here are links to the SMH stories:
Welcome to strata life, your paradise lost
Residents losing their say about managing
Manager kneecapped after complaining about apartment defects
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