Westconnex snubs Baird’s Inner West boss

BY WENDY BACON

While other communities prepare for local council elections in September, Sydney’s Inner West residents will remain locked out of the democratic process.

Despite calls for immediate elections, the Baird government has refused to hold elections until next year. This means that power in the new Inner West Council (IWC) that was formed by merging Leichhardt, Ashfield and Marrickville Councils is in the hands of its administrator Richard Pearson.

The explosive anger that resulted in the first meeting of the Inner West Council (IWC) being abandoned altogether has not disappeared. Many residents believe that their elected councillors were dismissed because of their opposition to the Westconnex tollway and Urban Growth NSW’s plans for large-scale redevelopment. So on Tuesday evening this week, a smaller but still angry crowd rallied outside the third IWC meeting in Ashfield. They were joined by Save Our Councils protesters from other Councils that are resisting mergers. As one protester told City Hub, “our councillors were sacked because they’re anti-corruption & hidden deals. In other words they were actually representing us rather than being corrupt.”

Residents who wish to attend IWC meetings must now register before being given a card with a number and escorted to the meeting by security guards.

Community lawyer and resident Anna Kerr complained at the meeting that a protest sign she wanted to hold signaling her opposition to the legitimacy of the Council was seized before she was allowed to enter the building. She demanded to know under what powers the Council was acting when it banned a sign that was in no way unlawful. She described the action “as a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” which guarantees the right of individuals to use whatever media they choose to impart information.

Once inside the meeting, many residents held up A4 paper signs stating ‘Democracy not Dictatorship, Bring Back our Councils’ and ‘Stop the Demolitions, Stop WestCONnex’. There were constant interjections throughout the meeting calling on the administrator to answer questions and allow motions, including one supporting a plebiscite on amalgamations.

The democratically elected Councillors who were sacked by the Baird government are divided between those who have agreed to go on a Local government representatives’ committee and those who believe that to do so adds legitimacy to the new anti-democratic Council.

After protesting outside, Rochelle Porteous, previously a Greens Mayor of Leichhardt Council, registered to speak at the meeting and was cheered when she criticised those Councilors who had agreed to join the Representatives’ Committee that meets “behind close doors”. She said the Committee has no decision-making power and was designed to give a misleading sense of democracy when there is none.

Porteous told the meeting that although Pearson might be a ‘pleasant gentleman’, he refused to allow people to ask questions at the previous meeting. She asked, “How can you have a democracy when you can’t ask questions in the only public forum that has been left to the community? Democracy is about… respecting the community, it’s about listening to the community, and it’s about a two-way conversation.” She said that residents were allowed to ask questions at Leichhardt Council meetings.

Porteous told the meeting that she was aware a number of “very valuable staff who are leaving” because they have been made redundant or because there is “no longer a culture that they can continue to work within,” and that “we are seeing a restructure of the organisation” that should be openly discussed in public forums.

She was critical of past Councillors who attended a closed presentation by Urban Growth NSW of its controversial plans for development across the Inner West and Inner Sydney. She said ex-Councillors should be “calling very loudly for anything that is presented to the administrator to be made public”.

Several ex Councillors argued that they believed they were performing a valuable role on the committee. Ex-Labor Mayor Lucille McKenna rejected criticisms of her actions and said she was still working to mitigate the impact of the WestCONnex M4 East tollway on Ashfield and Haberfield.

Administrator Richard Pearson has stated that the merged IWC is opposed to the Westconnex tollway but he will need to campaign hard and more publicly to convince opponents of the project that his commitment amounts to more than words. He listed amongst his achievements so far funding a community campaigner until the end of 2017, arranging for a NSW Planning Department compliance officer to be based at the IWC and obtaining legal advice on whether court action to stop the project is possible. So far, that advice has been negative.

Several residents spoke of the distressing devastation of Haberfield including the late night obliteration last week of a number of large trees in the Reg Coady reserve that Westconnex requires for a truck parking lot. They said that while they rejected the legitimacy of the Council they had no choice but to engage with it.

Pearson said that he had been trying to negotiate some improvements for Haberfield residents but that he was “extremely disappointed” because his suggestions to the Sydney Motorway Corporation (SMC) of “things they could do differently” had a success rate so far of “nought out of ten.” He said this was a sign of “the intransigence” of SMC, the publicly owned but unaccountable private company that is constructing the WestCONnex.

An application from WestCONnex for a road-opening permit for 11 weeks of electricity works that include tree removals in St Peters was on last night’s agenda. These works, which are required before any work on the St Peters Interchange can go ahead, are already behind schedule. But Pearson said he would refuse the application leaving SMC to rely on the draconian powers of the NSW Roads Act. In fact, WestCONnex did not even wait for the IWC decision and has been digging up streets and cutting down trees since Monday. SMC has refused to supply IWC with a copy of its tree removal plans.

Another sign of the SMC’s intransigence is its approach to a school zone near St Peters School on the Campbell Street that would be near one of the main exits from the New M2 tunnel. The Council papers noted that, “ A request to SMC for consideration for a school zone along Campbell Street …was not submitted to RMS. The SMC has advised that it does not wish to apply for a school zone as they may slow the flow of traffic …”.

As a Stop Westconnex speaker pointed out in a sarcastic speech, the very purpose of school zones is to slow traffic. He compared the language used in the Council report to an episode of the ABC satirical series about infrastructure Utopia. WestCONnex Action Group spokeswoman Janet Dandy Ward urged Pearson to act much more strongly against SMC’s willingness to put the speed of traffic above the safety of children.

Before its sacking Marrickville Council decided to do further traffic modelling to examine the impacts of traffic on Campbell, Euston and other roads at the end of the proposed New M2. This work is continuing but RMS and Sydney Motorway Corporation have refused to hand over the Westconnex traffic model to the IWC – just as they refused to give it to transport planning experts preparing submissions during the NSW Planning’s Environmental Impact Statement process.

With a Federal Audit of Westconnex funding due early in 2017, reports that CIMIC, a major partner in consortia holding $8 billion worth of Westconnex contracts, is under financial pressure and many approval conditions still unmet, Stop Westconnex groups say that rather than giving up, they will step up direct action.

On Wednesday morning, WestCONnex Action Group protesters joined by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon arrived in St Peters to protest against the road opening works. They were greeted by a group of six police and even more traffic controllers. When residents demanded to see the RMS permit for the works and a tree removal plan, a Westconnex ‘community engagement officer’ who would only give her name as ‘Chloe” referred them to the WestCONnex community line and refused to discuss the issues involved with the works. Residents tried the line but were unable to reach WestCONnex. Just two streets away parents and children were protesting against SMC’s decision that St Peters School does not need a school safety zone because it might interfere with traffic flows. More shades of Utopia.

Wendy Bacon is a member of the WestCONnex Action Group which is organising a meeting “ WestCONnex – Driving to Destruction” in the Sydney Park Pavilion at 1.30 pm on August 14. The focus will be on climate change, biodiversity and traffic issues and organising for peaceful direct action to Save Sydney Park.