Waterloo not the poor country cousin

One was a Comment [‘Channel Seven a boon to local business’] by Roy Wakelin-King, CEO of the Redfern Waterloo Authority, and the other was an article [‘ATP signs sponsorship deal with Souths’], which contained quotes from the same Roy Wakelin-King in his role as Managing Director of the Australian Technology Park. In both articles Mr Wakelin-King followed the practice of his predecessors in assigning Waterloo the lower ranking when referring to the two separate suburbs of Waterloo and Redfern in the same sentence. Redfern has been given a new Community Health Centre and a new Community Centre, whilst Waterloo has lost access to a hospital, use of a school, and is scheduled for arbitrary redevelopment by a fleet of bulldozers – a practice utilised by the NSW Government in the 1970s and immortalised in the documentary, Waterloo. If the Redfern Waterloo Authority is genuinely interested in delivering positive outcomes for the people of Waterloo, a first step would be to stop its imbedded practice of derogatory categorisation of Waterloo.

For the change to be effective it would need to start at the top of the Redfern Waterloo Authority. Or has the Government already decided to use the bulldozer alternative for Waterloo and turn the suburb into a gentrified redevelopment site. The precedent was set in the 1970s.

Ross Smith - Waterloo