If you didn’t know that the state government had tabled its
response to the NSW parliamentary Inquiry into planning in Newcastle and the
broader Hunter Region, you’re certainly not alone.
In accordance with legal requirements, the Premier, Mike
Baird, provided his government’s response to the two previously issued Inquiry
reports on 18 June.
The ensuing silence has been deafening.
You may recall that, after a comprehensive consultation
process late last year and earlier this year involving written submissions and
hearings, two NSW Legislative Council Inquiry reports recommended – among other
things – that the state government abandon its plans to cut the Newcastle rail
line and the planning controls it imposed on Newcastle to accommodate its joint
public/private high rise development in the east of Newcastle’s CBD.
The content of last month’s government response to these reports
was clearly aimed at saying as little as possible and lodging it with a minimum
of fanfare, hoping that no one would take any real notice and that it would
quickly disappear.
It achieved a significant public relations victory when
subdued coverage of its response was buried in local media reports, and faded quickly
from the local news agenda.
This lack of serious media attention on the government’s
response to such a significant parliamentary inquiry is a disturbing reflection
on the current state of local media coverage of Newcastle matters.
In response to the more than 180
substantive pages of the two parliamentary Inquiry reports, the government’s
response – stripped of its peripheral elements - weighed in at a mere two and a
half pages.
In fact, the bulk of the Baird government’s
response document was an attached copy of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
between Urban Growth (the state government’s property development arm) and
Newcastle City Council, which – as discussed in my previous column – will
ensure that further information and discussion of the state government’s
development plans for Newcastle is kept behind closed doors and away from media
and community scrutiny.
By any reasonable measure, the
government’s response to the parliamentary Inquiry was a desultory and
contemptuously dismissive effort.
It demonstrates that the state
government has learnt nothing from the two parliamentary Inquiry reports, or
from the results of the spate of local elections and by-elections late last
year and earlier this year, or from detrimental court findings on the legality
of its development proposals for the future of the Newcastle rail corridor and
King Edward Park.
In the face of all this, the Baird
government has opted for business as usual.
The government response indicates:
- No preparedness to release key
documents requested by the community and the parliamentary Inquiry Committee.
- No willingness to reconsider
planning controls imposed by the state government on Newcastle to accommodate
its proposed high rise development in Newcastle East.
- No intended changes to the
process for assessing and determining proposed developments in Newcastle, or to
governance arrangements between the state government’s planning and development
arms.
The response simply ignored all the other matters addressed
by the Inquiry (e.g., King Edward Park, the Newcastle Art Gallery development
and the Whitebridge residential development).
The only changes to the pre-Inquiry status quo canvassed in
the response were minor improvements to the system of managing conflicts of
interests by employees of the Hunter Development Corporation, and the reference
to the Newcastle Council/Urban Growth MOU.
Around the same time this response was tabled, The Greens
released figures obtained from the government indicating that patronage of the new
bus service between Hamilton and Newcastle Stations had dropped by around half
of the previous rail service it was meant to replace.
The state government disputed the extent of the patronage decline,
but again refused to substantiate this with any information.
The next insight into the ongoing saga of secrecy and
mismanagement in Newcastle planning and development may well occur at a court
hearing later this month to consider the state government’s appeal against the previous
NSW Supreme Court finding that dismissed the government’s attempt to side-step the
law requiring parliamentary approval to close a railway line.
The original court hearing (in December last year) uncovered
a previously secret state government stratagem to transfer ownership of the
Newcastle rail corridor land between government agencies.
Given the constantly shifting government rhetoric about its
intentions for the rail corridor and the continued secrecy of the planning
process surrounding it, the forthcoming court hearing may again provide a
crucial channel of information about exactly what is being contemplated for our
city behind closed doors by the state government.
