He went on to say: “Our vision is for a NSW … where everyone has the opportunity to rent or buy a decent home at a price they can afford, in a sustainable community and in a place where they want to live and work.”
On Wednesday March 19, 2014, the position advocated by the Hon. Greg Pearce was publicly abandoned at a press conference convened by the government. In the interim there had been a change of government.
Whilst the press conference was being held at a location outside Millers Point, faceless individuals, who did not even bother knocking on front doors, were pushing computer-generated letters headed “Moving to a New Home” under doors in Millers Point and The Rocks.
These letters were the means by which the residents of Millers Point and The Rocks were told that the properties in which they, and in many cases their great grandparents, had built and maintained their homes, were to be sold, and their community was to be destroyed. This happened during an unfinished government-operated “consultation” with the residents and within a week after the single day of public hearings of the current Legislative Council Select Committee on Social, Public and Affordable Housing Inquiry into social, public and affordable housing.
The public announcement of the sale of the properties was made against a background of the incumbent government’s decisions for the area now known as Barangaroo, which abuts Millers Point and The Rocks. There is a strong case to be made that the government’s primary intent was to cash in on the increased land values generated by its approval of the Barangaroo development.
The government’s economic argument in favour of its lightning-bolt decision to sell its residential properties in Millers Point and The Rocks is based on patently fallacious claims centred around paper-entity subsidies which do not exist in reality. The government’s economic argument does not take into account the adverse future impact on the state’s economy arising from the generated additional demand on the Health, Community Services and Education budgets arising from the fall-out from the “sale”.
The denial of public supply of the government-commissioned Social Impact Statement prior to announcement of the sale decision, which considered these future increased demands, only adds to concerns that the decision was a short-term grab for cash with no consideration for those directly affected, future social ramifications, or additional demands on the state budget.
In the light of the Millers Point and The Rocks sale announcement the Hon. Greg Pearce’s words of Tuesday November 23, 2010 – “Our vision is for a NSW … where everyone has the opportunity to rent or buy a decent home at a price they can afford, in a sustainable community and in a place where they want to live and work … ” – have a hollow ring. The issue is raised as to whether the same hollow ring will resound for Redfern, Waterloo, Erskineville, Mascot, Maroubra, Eastlakes, Kingsford, indeed anywhere that there is government-owned residential property.
