Councillor Chris Harris

The NSW government have decided to add insult to the injury that was the failed CBD Metro by refusing to release 45 boxes of documents relating to land acquisitions and planning decisions carried out for the project.  After wasting half a billion dollars of taxpayers money on the cancelled project the government are trying to hide behind spurious claims of “commercial in-confidence” to avoid further embarrassment.

My Greens colleague in state Parliament Lee Rhiannon has been pursuing the government over this matter and recently former Chief Justice Sir Laurence Street, the independent legal arbiter appointed to determine this matter, issued a report supporting her position.  The report concludes that the majority of the documents the government wishes to keep secret either contain no information that needs to be legally privileged or can be easily edited to remove confidential information such as contact details of individuals or financial information about private businesses.

Justice Street’s conclusion leads me to wonder what the government is so keen to hide in these documents.  I suspect that they want to avoid embarrassment over a poorly structured planning process that worked in reverse of the way these things should.  Rather than plan a Metro because they had carried out a thorough investigation of transport problems in the area and found this to be the best solution they simply determined that they wanted a Metro and then went about trying to find justifications for the decision. 

In the end the government was unable to find the justification it needed for its Metro plan and was forced to scrap it, but not until it had wasted hundreds of millions on planning, publicity and administration.  Even the communities that might have gained some small benefit out of it realised that spending $5.3 billion on a disconnected 7km dead-end rail line in inner Sydney was an appalling waste of money.  It was enough money to fully fund heavy rail connections to the north-west and south west of Sydney that would have made a vastly larger contribution to improving transport across the greater metropolitan area. Plus the leftover funds would have built a significant light rail system in the City and the Inner West

It will also be interesting to see what these documents tell us about the persistent rumour of a secret deal between the State Government and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore.  While I have seen no evidence of a deal as such I was disappointed, along with many other members of the community, at the Lord Mayor’s reluctance to give the Metro the criticism it was due.  Perhaps she was simply so dazzled by her desire for the upgrades of Town Hall Square that would have accompanied the Metro that she was unable to see how flawed the project as a whole was.

Whatever the case may be, it is now incumbent upon the government to take the advice of the independent arbiter and release the majority of the documents on the CBD Metro.  In the interests of maintaining a transparent democracy and learning from this costly mistake – which cost taxpayers half a billion dollars yet produced no tangible outcomes – I very much look forward to these papers seeing the light of day.     

Image of the Montreal Metro by Denis Jacquerye, use authorised under Creative Commons.  While this image is indicative of what a Metro looks like, the CBD Metro would have never seen such a high level of patronage.  For further information on the campaign by Lee Rhiannon to have these documents released see her letter to the Clerk of the NSW Legislative Assembly requesting they be released as well as Justice Streets report.  

Harold Park’s owners have an obligation to create a development that favours the public good over profit. 

However if current plans for the redevelopment of Harold Park Paceway go ahead the iconic, though little used, race track will be transformed into a new mini suburb between Glebe and Forest Lodge.  A suburb where close to 2000 people live in eight story apartment buildings next door to a retail hub and multilevel car park built in and around the heritage listed tram sheds.  This would be a massive overdevelopment for the area that would result in surrounding streets becoming chronic traffic snarls and deprive the new residents of meaningful open space - a huge profit for the Harness Racing Club (HRC - the sites owners) but very little positive for the community.

The neighbouring streets do not have the capacity to cope with thousands of extra cars per day.  Therefore the site should be planned to attract people who do not want to own a car while integrating effectively into the public transport network and the proposed commercial areas should not include heavy traffic generators like intensive retail. 

There is also a need for far more open space than is included in the current plan. The surrounding open space includes parks that already get heavy use not just from the local community but also from people who live further afield.  The people who will live here need adequate open space within the new precinct which must also cater for those who will work in the commercial areas.  The site is currently around 35% open space and it needs to stay that way, not be reduced to around 25% as the current plan suggests.
  
Sustainability also needs much more emphasis in any new development on the Harold Park site. In this age of climate change on-site power production through solar panels and trigeneration together with water capture and recycling should be mandatory in a development of this scale.  However in the current plans they get almost no mention.

Along with many other concerned citizens I have called on the HRC to reduce the scale of the development so as not to cause the kind of the disruption to the surrounding area that has been outlined above. The same request has been made by Greens Mayor of Leichhardt Council - Cr. Jamie Parker. Furthermore the Greens view of this proposed development is supported by the Glebe Society and the Glebe Chamber of Commerce. In reply the HRC argues that they can’t accomodate our suggestions because the changes would reduce the economic viability of the project, which will fund a revitalisation of the harness racing industry.

The Greens reject this self serving approach by the HRC especially given that they obtained a valuable piece of land adjoining Harold Park for free in a mates deal with the state government – land which includes heritage listed tram sheds that will form part of the redevelopment.

How on Earth did the HRC get a piece of land in Glebe, almost three football fields in size and right next to a light rail station, for free?  Stay with me and you’ll find out…

The tram shed site and the piece of adjoining land between it and Johnson’s Creek were initially purchased from the state government in the 80’s and early 90’s not by the HRC but by the Harness Racing Authority (HRA), which was a government body at the time.  The HRA then proceeded to lease this land to the HRC for the paltry sum of $1 per year.  The HRC had use of government land for its own purposes for free and never had to pay land tax, council rates or stamp duty because the official owner was a government body.

But if you think that seems unfair, just wait until you hear the next part of the story.

Legislative changes eventually transformed the HRA into a non-government body, which would have taken away its ability to avoid rates, but before these changes took place the land was transferred to the HRC for a peppercorn amount of $2.  Now not only did the HRC get to use the land for free, they were given ownership of it for free.

To take the absurdity a step even further, the $2.3 million which the HRA originally paid for the land came from a grant from the government controlled Racecourse Development Fund.  The fund gives grants to be used for improving racecourses and this money was paid out on the basis that the land would be used for stabling, a use to which it was never put.  All they used the land for was overflow parking and they let the heritage listed tram sheds fall apart - as can be seen in the above image.  In hindsight it seems like they used the grant to engage in a bit of real estate speculation.

It is speculation that certainly paid off.  When the HRC previously considered selling the tram sheds and their surrounds in 2005 their estimated value was $11 million, and they would most likely be worth even more now.  Selling the land for this amount would represent a massive profit to the HRC given the means by which they obtained it in the first place.  Had the government hung onto the land instead of giving it to the HRC years ago there’d be at least an extra $11 million in the public purse right now – $11 million that the government could have spent on affordable housing, public transport improvements or research into renewable energy.  Or they could have kept the land and used it to build a city farm, a youth centre, sporting facilities or something else of benefit to the community.

It is for this reason that the HRC owes it to the people of NSW to scale back their profits a little in the name of giving something back to the community.  And I know that a large number of the residents of Glebe and Forest Lodge agree with me, as evidenced by the 100 plus people who turned out on a Monday night to a meeting on the issue that Jamie Parker and I hosted, as well as from the mass of correspondence that has come into my office.  The message to the HRC is clear – they need to listen to the community and reduce the density of the development, include significantly more open space and sustainability measures and properly integrate with the public transport network so as not to turn the surrounding streets into a traffic nightmare.  Given the good deal they’ve got it is the least they should be doing. 

Image coutesy of Phil Rogers, who took the photo for this issue of Central.

It seemed like the battle of the CoFA development was over but the University of NSW has turned its back on the community once again.  In my previous post on this topic I discussed how City of Sydney Council had reached a compromise agreement between Paddington residents and the University about the streets trucks would use during the contruction and when they would use them.  What seemed like a victory for local residents and for good faith negotiations was, however, sadly short lived.

Much to the anger of the local community UNSW have now decided that they are unhappy with the agreed traffic management plan and are applying to the Department of Planning to have Council stripped of it’s power to make traffic management decisions about the site.  This is poor form on the part of UNSW but also serves to highlight the broader issue of the pro-developer bias in the NSW planning system.

The notorious Part 3A powers of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, enacted by state parliament in 2005 when both the Labor and Liberal parties voted in favour of them, allow the planning Minister to usurp a Council’s powers to approve developments.  The effect of Part 3A is that developments that are totally opposed by the communities most affected by them have a much greater chance of getting approved - especially if the proponent of the development is a donor to one of the major political parties.

I will be doing all I can to make sure the Department of Planning does not overturn the months of negotiations that went into developing the current traffic management plan.  But this is only one battle in the ongoing war that my Greens collegues in state parliment have been fighting for many years against a highly flawed and unbalanced planning system.  

Climate change impacts become more obvious every day, meaning that any government that cares about the future of the planet should be looking at ways to replace existing coal fired power stations with renewable energy sources as soon as possible.  However Kristina Keneally’s NSW Labor Government has done the exact opposite of this by announcing concept approval for another two fossil fuel burning power stations to be built at Bayswater in the Hunter Valley and Mt Piper near Lithgow.  I find it shocking that the government can even consider a project like this, let alone approve it.  Building new pollution belching stacks is the last thing a government supposedly concerned about the future should be doing. The government’s actions are totally irresponsible, bordering on criminal negligence.

These two new plants, if powered by coal, will increase NSW greenhouse gas emissions by around 15% (the equivalent of doubling the number of cars on our roads), which means an increase in the emissions of Australia as a whole of just under 5%.  At the same time, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tells us he wants to decrease  Australia’s Greenhouse gas emissions by 5%, a very weak target far below what the science tells us is necessary to avoid a climate catastrophe.  However any small benefits that this pitiful target may have had will be completely wiped out by these two new power plants being built by Rudd’s mates in the NSW Labor party.

Planning Minister Tony Kelly has said that the plants may be powered by natural gas instead of coal.  Natural gas burns cleaner than coal which means the negative impacts of the project would be a little less severe.  However the Minister says the decision on whether to use coal or gas will be determined based on “the market”.  Given the distance of the Mt Piper site from the nearest gas pipeline and the proximity of the Bayswater site to the Hunter Valley’s many coal mines, it seems highly unlikely that these plants will be powered with gas. In any event gas is a fossil fuel and therefore non renewable and should only be considered for refitting existing coal fired plants to achieve a short term improvement whilst renewable technology is developing.

The NSW Government claims that these plants will be needed over the next decade to “keep the lights from going out” – to meet the state’s increasing demand for electricity. However this claim comes from the Owen Report – commissioned by former Premier Morris Iemma to justify his plans to sell the state’s electricity assets to private companies – which exaggerated shortfalls in electricity supply in order to build support for Iemma’s ambitions.  NSW is not running low on electricity generation capacity and if it was there are much better ways of solving the problem.

In his paper How to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% Dr Mark Diesendorf, lecturer in environmental studies at the University of NSW, explains how there are no technical or economic barriers to Australia adopting widespread renewable energy technology and that the only barrier is a lack of political will.  He points out that a combination of improved energy efficiency and greater reliance on renewables could see Australia reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next few decades, even with a population and an economy that continues to grow.  It is to these measures, rather than ones that lock us into decades more of coal dependence, that governments should be looking for the answers to our energy needs.

    
It is a sad state of affairs that in 2010 governments are still so in the thrall of the fossil fuel industries that they ignore the needs of the planet and the demands of the people for clean energy and green jobs.  My Greens colleagues and I will be doing all we can to make sure the government doesn’t get away with this, but we need your help.  Write to your local MP, whether government, opposition or crossbencher and ask them where they stand on these new power plants.  Tell them you won’t vote for anyone who is irresponsible enough to support new coal fired power stations, then spread the message to your community.  If governments won’t make the right decisions on their own, it’s up to us to force them to.  

For more information on solar energy, see my earlier post on this topic.

I attended a Climate change protest in Martin Place on Friday and the larger protest rally and march from Town Hall Square to Hyde Park on Saturday. I found the police presence to be overbearing, disproportionate, aggressive and intimidating and I found my beautiful city and its lively atmosphere reduced to that of a large town in a third world police state. We should not allow our government to suppress dissent and the public voice in this manner.

On Friday I witnessed the arrest of the man who squirted tomato sauce on a pro-Bush banner in Hyde Park. It reminded me of a pack of dogs attacking a rabbit. Numerous police armed to the teeth pushed the man to the ground, twisted his arms and wrist and jammed his face into the dirt and yelled and screamed at him with every second utterance containing variations of the word “f***”. It was nothing short of a cowardly assault. Apologies to individual police if they were “just following orders”.

The scene was frightening and deeply disturbing and presented to me as a totally disproportionate response by uniformed bullies in response to an incident that should have been dealt with by one or two police, a firm verbal request and a warning or demand of an apology.

In my view, the citizens of Sydney should resist this kind of power in the hands of police and should receive a retraction and apology for the ridiculous scare mongering by the Police Commissioner in the days preceding APEC. It looked like Sydney‘s version of “Children Overboard” and “WMD” to many of us who were there and witnessed a good-spirited and peaceful two days of protest and attempted expression of free speech.

Picture: Riot Squad ’storm troopers’ arrive at the rear of the rally, many with their name-badges removed, backed up by the new water cannon. Click on for more pictures. Read the rest of this entry »