Barangaroo consultations just ‘going through the motions’

The push for a community campaign to oppose the Barangaroo development comes amid claims that the consultation sessions organized by the Barangaroo Delivery Authority are a waste of time.

“All they are doing with these workshops is going through the motions of consultation so they can say there are no objections,” said President of the Barangaroo Action Group, Ian Campbell.

“There are no objectors because they don’t let the objectors into the building and if they do, they don’t give them space to speak.”

The Barangaroo Delivery Authority (BDA), which is overseeing the development, recently ran community engagement workshops at Parramatta, Caringbah and Sydney where sessions were held at Sydney Town Hall and Customs House.

While the forums required people to register in advance, a spokeswoman for the BDA said no one who went to the Custom House session was turned away.

But several residents who tried to attend to the Customs House session on May 24 told the City Hub the lifts and elevators to the consultation rooms were blocked off, with signs telling people to register their concerns online.

“They had signs around saying it was filled to capacity and you had to take down a number or to put your views online,” said Woolloomooloo resident Selena Blakeney who attended the Customs House forum to propose the inclusion of an indigenous art museum in the development.

The BDA spokeswoman said over 10,000 people who have visited the public display and online proposal in addition to the 400 people who attended the four consultation sessions.

“The workshops were conducted by skilled facilitators to ensure that the views, opinions and ideas of attendees were encouraged and captured for feedback into the overall design process for Barangaroo,” she said.

But Selena Blakeney said the meeting didn’t encourage participation.

“Everybody looked at me strange because I was the only aboriginal person there,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have been able to read my proposal out in there, it wasn’t the place.”

Mark Syron, who also attended the Customs House forum, was also critical of the way the meeting was managed.

“The facilitator couldn’t answer 75 per cent of our questions about where the buildings were going to be and they didn’t even read out our group’s proposals.”

“It wasn’t really consultation, it was them telling us how it’s going to be.