Councillor Chris Harris

In an extraordinary move at council on Monday night, Lord Mayor Clover Moore and her team of ‘independents’ voted against a lower pool entry fee for children at the new Ian Thorpe pool at Ultimo, soon to be open.

Using her casting vote against the children of Sydney, Lord Mayor Clover Moore rejected Greens Deputy Lord Mayor Chris Harris’ amendment to reduce the entry fee for children from $4.40 to $3.00.

‘The only reason that council gave to reject a $3 entry fee for children was that it would cost the council $64,000,’ said Cr Harris.

‘I am appalled that our Lord Mayor and her team would put a $64,000 price tag on our children. All we’re talking about is a $1.40 reduction. Let’s not forget that Council made a net surplus this year of $61.7 million.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Paddington’s fig-tree lovers are furious. In the face of overwhelming resident opposition, Clover Moore on Monday night used her casting vote in Council to support a policy that will decimate one of Sydney’s few remaining avenues of fig trees.

Selwyn Street Paddington is lined by Hills Weeping Fig trees forming a cathedral-like canopy similar to the main avenue of Hyde Park. Along with nearby Napier Street, they are listed on Council’s Significant Tree Register.

When two of the trees did what trees do and invaded residents’ property, causing damage, Council decided to replace them with Lilly Pillys and to continue doing so as the figs in the street died off or became a problem, claiming that the new species was less invasive. However an independent arborist, engaged by residents, disputes this. The new species is just as invasive but will take around twice as long to grow.

Deputy Lord Mayor Greens Cr Chris Harris: “While planting Lilly Pillys might delay damage to property in the short term, it will mean that Selwyn street will have no tree canopy for around 60 years and when the trees do eventually grow, unlike the Hills Figs that allow a beautiful dappled light, the Lilly Pilly’s dense leaf mass will significantly darken the street.

“By using her casting vote Clover Moore has ensured that the magical charm the fig trees have created in Selwyn Street will be destroyed.”

Residents collected a petition of 317 signatures showing that 80 percent of Selwyn Street residents supported the fig trees.

“The conflicting arborist’s reports prove that the need to remove the Hills Figs is a matter of opinion. Given this and the amount of resident support for the fig trees, you would have thought Clover Moore would have used her casting vote to vote for the residents, not against them,” said Cr Harris.

Politicians of all shades these days pay at least lip-service to climate change. But which ones are serious when it comes to real action?

Chris Harris at Monday night’s Council meeting will present Councillors with an opportunity to get behind the community legal action challenging the concept plan for the CUB site in Chippendale.

He is asking Council to contribute $20,000 towards the estimated legal costs, backing up community members who have already donated $3,000 to the cause.

‘I imagine the Labor councillors will have to think hard about supporting action against Planning Minister Frank Sartor, but I can see no good reason why the remaining councillors should not get behind this last-ditch attempt to save the future of Sydney,’ said Cr Harris.

‘The CUB site is the largest remaining old industrial site to be developed in the CBD and given that we will have to live with its environmental consequences for decades, we have to act now or never.’

‘I support Clover Moore’s vision for Sydney. I agree with her that Sydney should be liveable, equitable and environmentally sustainable and that this depends on what we do now.’ (SMH 6/6/07)

‘If we believe this then we need to change the nature of this disastrous project which will snarl traffic and impact heavily on the environment for decades to come. The other environmental measures council is planning will be cancelled out unless we act now.

Cr Harris has fully backed the community action by letterboxing Chippendale with an appeal for loan/donations. The litigation is also being supported by Legal Aid which has indemnified the litigants against costs should they lose the case.

‘This means there is no risk to Council or anyone else who backs the action,’ says Cr Harris. ‘The choice is simple: get behind this action or face a long future of pollution and traffic chaos in Sydney.’

‘I invite residents to come to Town Hall on Monday evening to watch the debate.’

Attachments: Media Release; Flyer Page 1; Flyer Page 2.

In Elizabeth Farrelly’s piece on the Surry Hills Neighbourhood centre (Quest for green, yet engaging, public building May 16, 2007) she tells us that striving for viridity in urban design is worthwhile.

But she also says we all need to become eco-heads because we ‘can’t trust government to find the green pastures and lead us there’.

She uses the Surry Hills Neighbourhood Centre to underline her point. But is she right?

It’s true we are living in an age where greenhouse gases are at levels rarely seen in the history of the world. However being an ‘eco-head’ is not that hard.

With 75 per cent of the world’s energy being used by cities we need to design our buildings in such a way that we don’t go on pumping water from a far away dam to flush the toilets and pump our sewage to a far away ocean outfall. By the way the electricity that we use to do all this pumping is provided by burning coal, and guess what? Coal contributes 33 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions.

So how do we fix this?

First up we take less water from our rivers so our farmers can do what they do best – provide us with food. How? We simply work out what the yearly rainfall is, how much water each building needs and install water tanks to meet that need. How hard is that? If there is a shortfall – say unexpectedly low rainfall - then dam water can be used as a back up. The dam of course, by not being drained for toilet flushing, is now full.

Secondly we treat and recycle our sewage and use that water to flush toilets - 70 per cent of a non-residential building’s needs - water gardens, circulate through cooling systems and eventually, when we get over the ‘yuk’ factor, drink it as does half the known world including London and Singapore. Read the rest of this entry »

The delays with the Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre at Ultimo are not because of the inclusion of green initiatives (Pool Centre delayed till water a deeper shade of green SMH 22/5/07) but because of complex engineering problems. Nor will the addition of the Greens initiative to include an energy-saving, co-generation power partnership between the Powerhouse Museum and the pool hold anything up because this work can easily be done even after the pool is built.

On the Surry Hill Community Centre, the reason for the cost blow-out is because of the Lord Mayor’s mis-management of the project not the ‘ecologically sustainable features’. For example the cost of the water tank is less than $200,000 out of a budget of $19 million. The Surry Hills Community Centre still uses airconditioning, is still on mains water and sewerage using coal-fired electricity to pump dam water in and sewage out.This is not about the Lord Mayor’s ‘expensive green tastes’ it’s about expensive greenwash.

Chris Harris
Deputy Lord Mayor
City of Sydney 22 May 2007

(Letter to the editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, unpublished to date)