Rezonings a gift for developers, too bad for Council and residents

After sweeping to power on a promise to create a new transparent and accountable planning system in NSW the Liberal government are already proceeding to do just the opposite with a raft of spot rezonings currently being considered, including on sites in the City of Sydney.

Ashmore Estate development public meeting, 22nd Feburary, Erskineville Town Hall

Plans to redevelop the Ashmore industrial estate in Erskineville into a high density residential complex are coming left right and centre.

A view of what Ashmore Estate may look like (in grey) under plans currently proposed, as seen from Sydney Park.

While we are still waiting for the current state government to rule on a plan proposed by the previous government to build 22 storey apartments on the site (as previously discussed here) a DA is before the Central Sydney Planning Committee (also ultimately government controlled) for a development of up to eight stories on another part of the site.

Court to rule on refugee death sentence

Rallying for refugee rights

Capital punishment in Australia was thankfully abolished decades ago but yesterday the High Court started hearing a case that could see three people sent to their deaths.  The case is over whether three refugees, Ismail Mizra Jan from Afghanistan and Emil and Vithuran from Sri Lanka, should be forcibly deported to their countries of origin, countries they fled from after persecution, threats and murder of family members as a result of their status as members of minority ethnic groups. 

The truth behind the Tent Embassy “riots”

Greens Senator Scott Ludlum and I at the Tent Embassy protests on Australia Day

This Australia Day I was proud to stand in Canberra in solidarity with my Aboriginal brothers and sisters and celebrate 40 years of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.  I was shocked by the disgusting political trickery and media scuttlebutt that surrounded the events there.

The tent embassy was established in the early hours of January 27th 1972 in protest at Liberal Prime Minister William McMahon’s shameful refusal to grant Aboriginal people land rights.  There has been little genuine progress in the field of land rights since then and the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians in terms of life expectancy, education, employment and a whole range of other factors is still shamefully large to this day. 

The wall comes down as shutters go up at Redfern

The corner of Regent and Redfern Streets, as it was, an unwelcoming place.

For decades Redfern, the epicentre of Sydney’s Aboriginal community, languished under cruel perceptions as a place of crime and poverty, spoken about by the rest of greater Sydney only in terms of derision.

In recent years that has all been changing. 

Against the odds and intimidation Occupy Sydney lives on

Last week I met with Occupy Sydney activists to learn of the new tactics being employed by the NSW Police Force to intimidate and harass the continuing Occupy Sydney demonstrators, a small group who is keeping the fight for economic and social justice alive as much of the rest of the world tries to forget it.

Telegraph trying to destroy Sydney cycleways

The Daily Telegraph has once again stretched the definition of “news” to breaking  point with three articles today ranting about the City of Sydney’s cycleways,

International Human Rights Day

In 1948 the United Nations declared December 10th to be International Human Rights Day.  The Occupy Sydney movement, still soldiering on after two months and repeated police actions against them, held a festival day to mark the occasion on 10th of December this year.

I was asked to speak at the commemoration and my comments on the state of Human Rights in Australia, still a shocking affair in 2011, have been placed online by the Occupy Sydney collective at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3_4-DKicjk.

Council dealing with domestic violence

A proposal for a policy to support staff dealing with domestic violence, as originally proposed by the United Services Union (USU), was debated at the last meeting of Council.

While the policy was well intentioned it sadly consisted mostly of “motherhood statements” – the right words were said but they carried little in the way of substance.

The myth of the alien cockatoos

A 1788 painting of a sulphur crested cockatoo by John Hunter

One of the arguments repeatedly trotted out by the proponents of sulphur crested cockatoo culls in the last year has been that it’s ok to kill these birds because they’re not native to the Sydney region. 

The argument goes that sulphur crested cockatoos were never found east of the great dividing range prior to European invasion, when changes in land use and possible deliberate introduction made them go from absent to thriving.