Case Study 3 – Consultation with the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC)

When announcing the establishment of the RWA Premier Carr said, ‘We need a coordinated government approach to this area. ‘We will work with the local community to achieve this, and build on the work already done.’’[1]

Prior to the RWA announcement the Premier’s Department had been working with the AHC on a proposed housing development for 62 homes on The Block called the ‘Pemulwuy project’[2]. The project was based on an award winning[3] social plan[4] and, with the assistance of the RWPP, there had been many meetings working through crime prevention through design and other issues of concern to the AHC and the RWPP. The government even provided the resources of the Merrima Aboriginal Design Group within the NSW Government Architects Office to work on the designs for the project.[5]

As the land owner of The Block, the AHC expected that, in the words of Minister Sartor to NCOSS and other organisations: ‘The RWA will, also consult closely with the Aboriginal community and the Aboriginal Hosing Company when considering plans for The Block and Aboriginal housing. The government recognises the importance of The Block and it will remain a place of significance to the Aboriginal community.’[6]

In early December 2004, the RWPP had spelt out the government’s position on The Block:

No decisions have been made about the future of The Block. The Aboriginal Housing Company and the Minister for Redfern-Waterloo are working together to establish a sustainable vision for the area.

There is a continuing dialogue between the Minister’s office and members of the Aboriginal Housing Company. Whatever happens on The Block, a broad community consultation strategy will occur.

The site is of great significance to Aboriginal people in NSW and across Australia. The home of urban Aboriginal land rights in Australia, Redfern reflects the history of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal race relations in Australia.

The NSW Parliament Social Issues Standing Committee Inquiry into Issues Relating to Redfern-Waterloo acknowledged that the redevelopment of The Block is of utmost importance.

There is no intention by the State Government to compulsorily acquire The Block.[7]

However the first time Minister Sartor personally met with the AHC Board on February 8 2005 he made it clear that he would not support the Pemulwuy project. Instead the Minister said he was only prepared to replace the 19 homes still existing around The Block and that the government would find housing for the balance of the 62 homes elsewhere in Redfern-Waterloo[8].

The Minister wanted to establish a taskforce with the AHC, which would also include representatives from state, federal and local governments, to establish ‘a new positive vision for The Block and its environs’[9]. While the Minister promised it would have an Aboriginal majority it was not to consider the possibility of the Pemulwuy project nor The Block being used for Aboriginal housing. Apart from the AHC representatives, the other members would be government representatives or of the Minister’s choosing. Under this proposal the minister retained the power to unilaterally overrule any suggestions proposed.[10]

The offer was made on a ‘take it or leave it’[11] basis and the AHC board decided to leave it and to continue to work to bring the Pemulwuy project to realisation. The AHC would not be involved with the proposed taskforce if it couldn’t consider the possibility of the Pemulwuy project as a part of the new vision for The Block. The AHC then proceeded to establish its own Pemulwuy Vision Taskforce, chaired by ALP elder statesman Tom Uren to look further at both the Pemulwuy Project and at the broader vision for the area around The Block[12].

It was not until 29 August 2005 that the Minister admitted publicly that the RWA and the AHC had reached an impasse. In a Sydney Morning Herald article he said ‘Everything's negotiable except for concentration of high-dependency housing there’[13]. The article went on to note that ‘Unless one side caves in during the next few months, the issue will be brought to a head by the Redfern-Waterloo Plan and the land use zonings it proposes.’ The point not made explicitly by the article is that Minister Sartor as the Minister responsible for both Planning and the RWA is the one that will make those zonings.

On the Friday prior to this story the RWA wrote to the AHC requesting a copy of their detailed plans for The Block in order to ‘update [their] understanding of the AHC’s proposals as a means of moving matters forward’[14]. This was seen by the AHC as a hopeful sign. The RWA was prepared to look at a plan which contained details of the Pemulwuy project with its mix of housing options for different incomes, including home purchase. Hopefully this would end the high dependency image painted by the Minister.

Hope died a few days later when, on 1 September 2005, an open letter from Frank Sartor to Mick Mundine AHC CEO appeared on the front page of the RWA’s first newsletter.[15] The letter, which had not been seen by the AHC prior to its publication, re-stated the Minister’s position of 8 February and tried to hold the AHC responsible for the RWA and the AHC failing to sit down ‘to come up with a shared vision for The Block’.

The AHC is painted as being unreasonable because they will not give up their commitment to build Aboriginal housing on The Block so they can join the Minister’s proposed taskforce to come up with ‘a shared vision for The Block’. Somehow the Minister’s insistence on the precondition that the Pemulwuy project can not be part of the discussion was supposed to be reasonable!

Recent revelations of Crown Solicitor’s advice to the NSW government [16] regarding the government’s options for control of any development on The Block revealed that a similar Taskforce was proposed in 2004 by the government as a mechanism to take control of The Block away from the AHC. Given this recent experience it is not surprising that the AHC has been wary of rushing to join the Minister’s new taskforce.

Clearly the RWA have not yet delivered on their promises of ‘working with the local community’[17] or ‘consulting closely with the … Aboriginal Housing Company’[18] or ‘working together’[19] to use some of the nice consultation language used by the government when describing how the RWA was going to work with the Redfern-Waterloo communities.

The Pemulwuy project has been developed over years of consultation. It is based on an award winning social plan, it has been through the rigors of being tested for crime prevention through design, it has been developed with input from the Premier’s Department’s RWPP and the Merrima Design Unit and yet the Minister dismisses it out of hand and will not even consider it as a possibility. Despite wide support for the project from within both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community the RWA is not working with the community and building on work already done.