Councillor Chris Harris

In a notice of motion put before the City of Sydney Council, Greens Deputy Lord Mayor Cr. Chris Harris has proposed that while the council is legally obliged to provide existing employees with a ‘Workplace Relations Fact Sheet’ designed by the Federal Government, it should also provide staff with an alternative non-political fact sheet.

This is especially timely given the Queensland government’s legal challenge in the Federal Court – the NSW government is considering joining this action - where it is seeking a declaration that local government bodies are not constitutional corporations and therefore are not subject to Work Choices legislation. Read the rest of this entry »

Draft Late-Night Trading Premises Development Control Plan 2007

As reported widely in the media, new draft approval guidelines have been designed to change the mix and type of licensed venues in Sydney. They will soon be exhibited for public comment.

The new rules, if ratified, will be less strict for smaller, ‘Category B’ venues which will be able to extend their trading hours more easily than larger ‘Category A’ venues.

This is intended to encourage smaller, more intimate bars of the kind more common in Melbourne and European cities.

Approval for extending operating hours beyond ‘base’ hours will be granted on a trial basis only. Larger venues will be limited to a one-year trial period before re-assessment. Smaller venues (those with a floor area under 200 square metres) will enjoy a maximum five-year period.

But trial periods mean that late trading approvals for either category become a privilege, not a right, and they give the City the power to withdraw consent if a venue consistently fails to meet its consent conditions. A full legal process is required to achieve this during a trial period. It seems the primary intention is to review eligibility at the end of each trial period.

This has been criticised as ‘de facto approval’ but venue owners on the other hand would no doubt be concerned about the extra paperwork and expense of repeatedly re-applying for consent.

Further, venues applying for extended hours will be granted extensions in increments − two hours extra per approval for large venues, three hours for smaller venues. Read the rest of this entry »

The environment.
R.I.P.

It was a black day for Sydney as Justice Jagot in the NSW Land & Environment Court ruled against the environment in favor of unsustainable development and the unfettered powers of Minister Sartor.

This was the first Australian case (Drake-Brockman v Minister for Planning) dealing with the climate change effects of a large urban development. The development – the Carlton United Brewery site (CUB) in Chippendale – was formerly owned by Foster’s Ltd and recently acquired by Singapore based Frasers Property. 

Justice Jagot upheld that while Minister Sartor should encourage sustainable development, under the law the Minister was not compelled to, nor was it in the court’s jurisdiction to force the Minister to do so.
 
Deputy Lord Mayor, Greens Councillor Chris Harris: “Under Part 3A Minister Sartor can do whatever he likes to the environment and the Land and Environment Court is powerless to stop him. 
 
“Thanks to this ruling, the CUB development could legally spew out millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from the 2300 cars approved for the site. Using coal-fired generated electricity it could pump hundreds of thousands of litres of water to the site and hundreds of thousands of litres of sewage from the site and into the harbour every year.   Not only that but this development will be the benchmark for every other development approved in the city.

“If Labor wanted to lower the bar on sustainability and kill off the environment they couldn’t have found a better man for the job than Mr Sartor.

“Ironically businesses, schools and ordinary Australians are the ones coming up with innovative ideas to counter climate change. Hopefully Frasers will join this group and differentiate themselves  from Fosters and the Labor government who are so blinded by the pollution they create that they sacrifice future generations for profit?” Cr Harris said.

The judgement in full can be found here.

The court case, Matthew Drake-Brockman v the Minister for Planning and others (Foster’s has sold the CUB site to Frasers) regarding the environmental disaster that will be the Carlton United Brewery development has completed.

In two days of debate barristers for both sides argued the case for the importance of ensuring that environmentally sustainable measures were incorporated into the approval process for the site.

With climate change threatening the way we live it was astonishing to hear counsel for the Minister and Frasers argue that “ESD (ecologically sustainability development) should not take primacy over economics” and that under Part 3A the Minister is under “no obligation to take ESD considerations into account.”

Tell that to the future generations when their health, work opportunities and environment are destroyed.

We now await a judgement within the next few weeks.

Below I have included a summary of the arguments in the CUB Hearing including the submission from Francis Douglas QC, counsel for Drake-Brockman.

I would like to thank everyone who took an interest and supported this landmark case that deals with climate change in an urban development. If you would like to read the full submission please email me at charris@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au and I will send these to you.

Cheers 
Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney
Greens Cr Chris Harris Read the rest of this entry »

‘The guy in the torn t-shirt playing guitar on the pavement’ is an indicator of the cultural wealth of a city, which is in turn an indicator of its economic prosperity, said Richard Florida, author of The Creative Class, at a City of Sydney talk a couple of years back.

But despite taking a high profile on high culture, the City seems to be interfering unnecessarily with how these ‘guys in torn t-shirts’ ply their trade..

An update of the City’s busking policy is about to go on public exhibition.

Arguing that more residents have moved into traditional entertainment areas, the draft policy imposes time limits – 9am to 10pm weekdays and 9am to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

Yet anyone who goes out in Sydney knows that places like Kings Cross and Oxford Street hardly get going until 10pm or midnight. And early-rising buskers make better money entertaining morning commuters who are all at work by 9am.

The policy ignores the fact that some busking is silent – like human statues or the Kings Cross Poet who wrote rhymes on request or Kate de Jude the wire sculptor whose raunchy figures deliver an electric tingle or a wetting to cheeky punters. (Pictured: a human statue in Barcelona’s Rambla)

Would-be buskers are expected to pay a fee and get a licence – $10 for three months or $40 for twelve months. Presumably the fee is to cover the administrative cost of charging the fee.

Those caught busking without a license will be fined under the policy. Why fine them? Why not help them. Why can’t rangers just tell them that they need to get a license and even give them a form to fill in with directions to the closest one stop shop.

The policy update allows musicians to sell their cds in two places only, both in Taylor Square.

Why not anywhere else, like Kings Cross for example?

And why have the rule at all? When I asked that question I was told firstly –‘To reduce street clutter’

Really, a few cds in a guitar case are hardly going to bring down the city.

The second reason was that we need to protect the CD retailers in the city. Well, if these guys had a recording contract they wouldn’t be busking and selling their CD’s on the street. The small CD sales that they achieve allow them to survive. CD shops wouldn’t sell their music anyway. Read the rest of this entry »