Haberfield headache for Firth

A decision by the Department of Planning has added to Verity Firth’s headaches in the run-up to the state election, with Haberfield Public School parents up in arms over the compulsory acquisition of the school’s playground to create access to the heritage-listed Yasmar estate.

Ms Firth acknowledged that parents were aggrieved, but said the issue had been in the pipeline since 2008, when a ruling from the Land & Environment Court deemed access to the estate insufficient.

“Obviously, it’s not necessarily a situation I desired, but it’s the only solution the Land and Property Management Authority deemed feasible,” she said.

Firth said the effects would be mitigated via a compensation package she had negotiaqted for the school. “[It] will be either the Valuer General’s independent valuation of the land, which should be in excess of $60,000, or a land swap with the stables,” she said.

However, the school’s Parents and Citizens group said the offer of a land-swap was unfeasible, as the proposed area containing the stables would cost too much to convert to a practical purpose.

The owners of the Yasmar site are Italian community organisation Co.As.It. In recent years, the organisation has extensively lobbied Ashfield Council to relocate its bilingual primary school from Leichhardt to the Yasmar reserve, but has failed to gain approval for a development on the site, in part due to the existing driveway being ruled too narrow to accommodate projected uses.

The decision to acquire the land is expected to facilitate easier approval of a DA.

A statement from the Minister of Lands Tony Kelly said the issues surrounding access to the reserve were “complex” and that he had “sought to balance the concerns of the school with the need to ensure safe access to the reserve.”

He added all possibilities towards this end had been investigated.

Liberal candidate for Balmain James Falk described the acquisition as “one of many rushed planning actions taken in recent weeks by a Labor government desperate to push through decisions without consulting the community.”

Asked if the Liberals would rescind the compulsory acquisition, Falk said: “At the moment the Opposition has no information on what agreements the Labor government has entered on the Haberfield School land. We simply don’t know what the government has done or promised. No responsible Opposition can make a commitment in those circumstances, when we just don’t know what we’re going to find, or what it might cost the community to act in a certain way.”