False reprieve for Woolloomooloo Garden

When The City News approached David Borger, Minister for Housing, over the eviction by Housing NSW of Woolloomooloo Community Gardeners with only four days notice, he granted a reprieve saying “Housing NSW is talking to City of Sydney to try and identify alternative sites for the garden”.

Talk they did – for about five minutes. The Minister made his statement on Friday 17 July, deferring the eviction due the following Monday 20 July. On Tuesday 21 July Carl Kneipp, convenor of the gardening group, was called to a meeting in the Sussex Street offices of Housing NSW on the understanding that it would be a stakeholders’ meeting including Council representatives. To his surprise he was faced by Housing NSW bureaucrats who simply told him they would change the lock the very next day, when heavy machinery would enter the site for soil testing operations.

Mr Kneipp pleaded for extra time to remove and store garden materials but it was refused – although a contractor was provided to saw in half and remove to storage 90 railway sleepers the garden had bought with Federal grant money.

There was no attempt to find an alternative site and Councillors and staff who support the garden were excluded from the process.

Meghan Hibbert from Housing NSW claimed “she had been in communication with the Minister” but according to Mr Kneipp did not explain why the Minister’s commitment was being overturned.

In the event, the heavy machinery did not appear until the following Wednesday 29 July.

The apparent backflip means either the Minister was not sincere in his offer of a reprieve, or his bureaucrats have defied him. The Minister did not respond to this proposition. Instead, Housing NSW responded with: “Housing NSW continues to work with City of Sydney to identify an alternative site for the group to utilise.”

Housing NSW has until December 2010 to build new public housing on the site, a condition of new Federal infrastructure funding, part of the national economic stimulus strategy.

There are concerns at the probable removal of several large eucalypt trees which have grown on the site during its decades-long period as a vacant block. A possum that appeared in broad daylight – for the first time to Mr Kneipp’s knowledge – and posed for the City News camera for our previous report (July 23) represents native fauna on the site which are now in danger.

Greens Councillor Irene Doutney is concerned about native fauna in the city and said she would investigate ways Council could intervene to save and rehouse the animals living on the site.

by Michael Gormly

photo: Rozee Cutrone