Community Harmony or Budget Sanctuary?

In a recent Media Release from the Minister for Housing issued under the banner of State Priority Plan R4: Building Harmonious Communities, promotes a worthwhile cause – the building of Harmonious Communities.

Unfortunately this particular application of a NSW government Priority appears to have been developed by a bureaucracy to suit their own purposes at the expense of State government and local community desire, and the associated benefit.

The residents of the area in question, Waterloo, a suburb in inner Sydney, have been asking since May 2005 for a whole of government approach to the social impact on the broader community of excessive consumption of alcohol in the suburb.

The local government authority, the City of Sydney Council, heard the pleas for assistance from the community and did all possible within their powers to address the issue. The root cause of the problem relocated to the local park, commonly referred to as Waterloo Green, which is on Housing NSW property [ Title DP 553518 at Lands Department]

In September 2007, under the NSW government, an Action Plan was finally produced as the response to the locals repeated pleas for assistance. The purpose of the Action Plan was “To improve physical and social amenity on and around Waterloo Green”.

The actions identified under the Action Plan were to:

1. Improve public safety and amenity on and around Waterloo Green.

2. Reduce anti-social behaviour associated with excessive public drinking.

3. Provide more information about services, events and local interest groups.

4. Improve access to key human services.

5. Make more use of meeting and activities spaces.

6. Increase interaction between older residents and young people.

7. Monitor implementation.

This Plan identified several areas of action and allocated roles to various government departments, including Housing NSW, Police, Health, Redfern Waterloo Authority, Disability Aging and Home Care, Transport, Community Services, Sport and Recreation.

Monitoring of implementation and, hopefully, outcomes was delegated to the Redfern-Waterloo Human Services Plan Senior Officers Group. Unfortunately the Human Services Plan component of the Redfern Waterloo Authority is due to cease at the end of the current financial year.

Overall responsibility for Anti-Social behaviour on Waterloo Green was assigned to the landowner, Housing NSW, by the NSW Premier, through the Office of the Premier.

There was only one component of the Plan that had a specific timeframe – a trial of an Anti-Graffiti project that had been utilised in the Sutherland Shire area of Sydney by NSW Police. The time for the commencement [September 2007], running and then evaluation [December 2007] came and went with nothing having happened.

Then on the 12th of March 2008 the Minister for Housing announced an initiative to attack illegal graffiti in Waterloo. This announcement, delivered on the eighth floor of a sixteen storey high-rise residential building in Waterloo referred to a pilot program to combat illegal graffiti in and around the Marton building on Cope Street Redfern. The initiative as announced bears remarkable resemblance to the Anti-Graffiti project trial that never happened on the Waterloo Green.

The building was subjected to an intensive cleanup in the areas that the Minister would be accessing. The carpets in the foyer were shampooed twenty minutes prior to the announced time of Ministerial presence, the area around the building from which the Minister would be approaching was swept and cleaned. The only part of the building that was not cleaned and primped was the exterior, the part visible from the Waterloo Green.

As of 27th March 2008 the long standing graffiti on the outside of the building has not been removed, perhaps due to the fact that it has not had the prescribed sticker placed on it.

To all appearances the good intent of the Waterloo Green Action Plan has been converted into a low cost graffiti monitoring exercise centred on a single building by the bureaucracy. Who has responsibility for the implementation each phase of the initiative is not clear.

The delivery of the single timeframed action in the Waterloo Green Action Plan has not been achieved and there is now no timeframe, proposed or otherwise, for its implementation. A cynic could observe that it is much cheaper to play around one building than to keep clean the exteriors of four buildings and their surrounds.

It is a shame that the worthwhile concept of Building Harmonious Communities has been perverted by a bureaucracy for the sole purpose of avoiding delivery of a more expensive and comprehensive outcome from an Action Plan developed at the instigation of the NSW Government in response to Community desire.

Ross Smith - Waterloo