State government spin machine cranks to overdrive on Newcastle inner-city high rise

The state government’s spin machine cranked into overdrive when the NSW Minister for Planning Pru Goward recently announced reductions to controversial proposed height limits for residential towers in the Newcastle CBD.

The Minister’s media release spruiked the state government’s “extensive community consultation” on the planning controls, and stated that the government’s move to reduce the proposed maximum building height was because “we always said these plans should and would be informed by the community”.

This is the same government that had allocated only two weeks for community consultation on the proposed new height controls, and ignored repeated community requests to extend the consultation period.

The Minister’s media release makes much of the fact that they received 266 submissions during the consultation period, but doesn’t mention that these were mostly due to the efforts of the same community groups whose requests it had ignored, and that the vast majority were opposed to the proposed increased height limits.

What little support there was for those proposed changes came from the usual suspects representing vested interests who stood to pocket the proceeds from any relaxation in development controls.

But there was the occasional surprise.

The Institute of Architects, apparently responding to a request from Newcastle Lord Mayor Jeff McCloy to support the proposed changes, instead focussed its attention on the government’s inadequate community consultation.

That other hotbed of local radicalism, the Newcastle Club, declared its opposition to any increased height limits east of Darby St.

The Minister’s media release doesn’t mention these, but it does quote the Member for Newcastle, Tim Owen, as saying that “he was pleased the Department had heeded the community’s concerns about the maximum building height in the East End”.

The current height limit for the site is 24 metres, and the state government’s original proposal was to increase it to 69.5metres (approximately 20 storeys), representing a 289 percent increase.

Near the end of the Minister’s two page release is the specific information that the proposed new height limit for the site of the tallest proposed tower will now be 58.9 metres (approximately 17 storeys).

So, beneath the government spin, developers will still be gaining a 245 percent increase on the current limit, despite overwhelming community opposition. 

Changes will still include removing specific provisions in the current controls designed to protect views to and from the Christ Church Cathedral.

The Newcastle Inner City Residents Alliance (NICRA), formed by residents who were concerned at the earlier proposed increased height limits, has rejected the Minister’s meagre concession.

Ms Goward’s latest announcement came on the eve of a major public Q&A style forum on the issue that drew a standing-room only crowd to City Hall on a cold, rainy Friday night who were clearly unimpressed by the Minister’s response.

NICRA, who organised the forum, said that they had invited proponents of the increased height limits to participate in the forum panel, but they had declined.

The formal instrument establishing the new height controls will have legal effect once they are gazetted (usually a rubber-stamp operation).

The development application for the CBD towers, which was lodged and placed on public exhibition before the new controls were in place, is still under consideration.

The state government has yet to respond to calls by NICRA and other local organisations to re-exhibit the development proposal once the relevant planning controls are in place.

We're now rapidly approaching that moment.

All disturbingly quiet on the Western Freight Bypass front

A major sleeping issue overdue to burst from the seams of state government secrecy is the looming fracas over a Western Freight Rail Bypass.

This infrastructure proposal for a freight rail line from a point south of Newcastle to the Kooragang industrial area has been around for a long time – a Newcastle council report back in 2012 identified it as “a longstanding project” for the state government.

The idea has lots going for it: it would make freight rail transport more efficient, free up capacity constraints on the current rail line for the possible expansion of passenger rail services, create opportunities for port industry diversification (including a possible future container terminal), cut waiting times at urban rail crossings (such as the infamous Adamstown gates), and reduce the exposure of many Newcastle residents to rail noise and dust pollution.

The concept is supported by groups as diverse as the Hunter Business Chamber and The Greens.

But don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard much about it.

Successive Labor and Coalition state governments have applied their standard practice of talking big but doing little about real public consultation on such projects – except with the anointed few admitted into the tent due to their ability to curry favour or wield influence with whichever party happens to be in power.

The rest of us are afforded brief glimpses into how this system works in the occasional ICAC hearing, usually stimulated by some brave whistle-blower or shrewd investigative journalist. But we know it’s just the tip of an iceberg.

Unsurprisingly, this system creates suspicion and distrust among those who find out about government decisions well after they’ve been effectively made, and who don’t fall for the cursory and tokenistic formal “public consultation” charade that government agencies go through so they can tick the “community consultation” box before announcing what they already knew was going to happen.

Think the Newcastle rail line, or the Fourth Coal Terminal (T4), or the UrbanGrowth/GPT CBD tower development, all currently going through their particular phases in the ritual.

The Western Freight Rail Bypass may be the next addition to that list. 

The sleeping controversy here isn’t so much the idea itself, which enjoys broad support among the groups that do know about it.

The fight will be over the particular route that the bypass should take.

Rumours are rife that the state government is now actively considering route options, though they’ve said nothing publicly.

One option apparently under consideration would have serious implications for two major community-based projects: the Green Corridor and the Richmond Vale Rail Trail.

The Green Corridor comprises the connected network of coastal, wetland, bushland and forest ecosystems that run from Stockton Bight southwest to the Watagans, taking in the Stockton Bight coastal dunes and Tomago sandbeds; the Fullerton Cove, Kooragang Island and Hexham wetlands; the Tank Paddock and Blue Gum Hills bushlands; and the Mount Sugarloaf, Watagans and Wollemi forests, most of which are part of our national park estate.

The project is based on the view that, in nature, these systems – often seen and treated as separate – are actually a single, highly integrated ecosystem, and that preserving these connections is crucial to their sustainability.

While its focus is mostly biodiversity protection, the Green Corridor also has significant economic benefits for important local industries such as fishing and tourism.

The Richmond Vale Rail Trail project comprises the 28km former rail corridor from Hexham to Pelaw Main, south of Kurri, for use as a cycling and walking trail, with associated recreational and tourist benefits.

The Green Corridor Coalition (an alliance of more than 50 environment and conservation groups) is calling on the state government to agree to criteria for the bypass route that would protect both these projects.

I’ll keep you posted – hopefully before yet another state government fait accompli that puts profits and vested interests before people and the environment.

Council secrecy creates "climate conducive to corruption"

An update from my February column, which reported the case of Marrickville councillor Max Phillips who was suspended by the head of the NSW Division of Local Government for refusing to apologise for telling his constituents about discussions between a big developer (Meriton) and his council over development concessions.

This case had major implications for councillors throughout NSW being able to carry out their proper duties as elected representatives accountable to their communities.

The good news is that Councillor Phillips' appeal against the decision was upheld by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which overturned his suspension and contested many of the grounds on which both the initial council decision to censure him and the subsequent disciplinary action by the state government bureaucracy were based.

Some of these findings may be used as general precedents in future cases where council administrations or political majorities who want to conceal information from the public attempt to censor or censure community-minded councillors who want to tell their constituents what is really going on.

The bad news is that many of the factors that guided the Tribunal's decision were particular to the circumstances of the Phillips case, and that the NSW local government system contains precious few specific protections for councillors who care more about representing their constituents and the public interest than they do about protecting the interests of council administrations and the commercial interests who do business with them.

The NSW Model Code of Conduct for councils – produced by the same state government department whose CEO made the now discredited decision to suspend Councillor Phillips – contains many provisions specifically limiting councillors from disclosing information to the public, but not a single provision that specifically protects their right to do so.

The Tribunal judgement was critical of the department's decision to simply assume that the council had been correct in its finding against Councillor Phillips, rather than examining whether the council's initial ruling was reasonable in the first place.

Unfortunately, that's the standard situation - state bureaucracies are usually much more inclined to approach things with the same mindset as their counterparts in council bureaucracies, and to see things their way.

Newcastle Council administration – hardly known for its commitment to openness and transparency – has attempted on several occasions to bind Newcastle councillors to stringent restrictions on speaking to the media and the community on any council matters.

The current council has also continued the previous council's practice of cutting the number of formal council meetings, which must be open to the public and the media, and instead conducting much of the discussion on major matters under the veil of secret “workshops”, which are not publicly notified, and are closed to the public and the media.

According to council information, between 16 October 2012 and 18 February this year the current council held 17 ordinary and 11 extraordinary council meetings, compared to 27 closed workshops over the same period.

These closed workshops discussed more than 50 topics, ranging from the Newcastle Art Gallery, city centre revitalisation, community facilities, council pools, media policy and Blackbutt Reserve, to the NSW Government White Paper on Local Government Reform.

Nothing in any of that that the community should know about, of course.

Though decision-making in these workshops is technically prohibited, some councillors privately admit that they are rife with “nod-and-wink” decision-making.

With so many examples of lack of transparency and accountability in public policy decision-making at the forefront of public discussion at the moment, this is yet another example of (in the words of ICAC) a “climate conducive to corruption”.

Council rate increase proposal must leap wide credibility gap

As this column is being written, Newcastle Council is considering major rate increases that would increase the average annual Newcastle residential rate by $400 by 2020.

However, no changes are proposed to the council's rating structure, whereby the council's total rate income is divided 50-50 between an ad valorem (or land value) component, and a flat charge (or base rate) applied uniformly to every residential property.

This means that the burden of paying for the proposed increases will fall more heavily on the usually poorer owners of lower-valued land, compared to what they would pay under a rating structure with a higher relative land value component.

I've written before in this column about the socially inequitable impact of this rating structure. The higher the base rate component, the greater the burden on owners of relatively lower-valued land (note, it's your relative land value compared to other residential properties in the same council area that matters here, rather than its actual value).

Each general rate increase also increases this social inequity. 

Previous councils have produced comparative tables showing the relative rate burden that would apply to a range of residential property values under different rating structure options (e.g., with a 40/60, 30/70 or 20/80 per cent base rate/ad valorem split), but no such information has been provided with the current documentation.

Despite claiming that it is trying to achieve a balance between “the extent to which those who receive the benefits of council’s services also pay for those services”, and “the extent to which those who pay for council’s services have the ability to pay for those services”, the council administration is proposing to keep the highest legally allowable base rate of 50%.

This isn't the only credibility problem the current council faces in advocating a general rate increase. 

Again, I've written before about such credibility problems when the administration was proposing to seek approval from the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) for a Special Rate Variation last year, and later when it reneged on its commitment to the Newcastle Art Gallery. 

The special rate proposal never made it to IPART, because it was rejected 6 votes to 7 by the elected council, in a rare instance of a defection from the usual dominant McCloy/Liberal council bloc.

However, the new proposed rate increase will also require IPART approval, and the council faces similar credibility issues: many of the expenditure commitments it made when the IPART approved its 2012 Special Rate Variation were not fulfilled, and much of the discussion surrounding the proposed rate increases has been (and continues to be) conducted in meetings closed to the public.

Little appears to have changed since last year, with the administration proposing that the elected council agree to the proposed rate increases even before they are exhibited for the mandatory minimum 28 day period.

This is a pity, because, as I've argued before, there is a strong case for increasing council rate revenue, and the council should be working with the community to win its confidence on such proposals.

According to the current documents, the council budget (comprising its Draft 2014/15 Operational Plan and its Draft 2013-2017 Long Term Delivery Plan) will be on public exhibition from 7 May to 4 June 2014.

Restored Regal crowns inspiring community campaign

With rampaging neoliberalism in all spheres of government cutting a swathe through the basic services on which local communities depend, examples of successful grassroots community campaigns are despairingly difficult to find.

For the most part, those of us who are committed to grassroots community values take solace in slowing down the rate of destruction until the political pendulum swings toward a time when people are put before profits, and the public interest before vested interests.

But Newcastle hosts at least one stunningly successful project that will inspire anyone looking for signs of hope in the power of community action.

The beautifully restored and recently re-opened Regal Theatre in Birmingham Gardens stands as a beacon in the general gloom of local politics.

The cinema was formerly (and lovingly) operated for many decades by Bruce Avard, and was locally famous for offerings that were refreshingly different from the homogeneous fare of the big chain multiplex cinemas.

The Regal building itself (converted from a former community hall) became something of a period piece, with a homespun retro atmosphere that complemented Bruce's own warm, personalised style.

And then there were Bruce's almost equally famous home-made choc-tops, maintained at the Regal long after they had been usurped by mass-produced corporate-branded fast food in the big chain cinemas.

Before the Regal was closed in late 2006 as a result of action by Newcastle Council, it had established a large, regular and loyal patronage from across the lower Hunter.

The role of the Regal in Newcastle's cultural life was highly regarded in the local community, and was formally recognised in heritage and cinema history registers.

Soon after it closed, a community group – the Friends of the Regal (co-founded by the late former Newcastle Lord Mayor, Greg Heys) - formed to reopen it.

Local hearts and minds were with them, but it was still a long, hard slog for those involved.

At a council meeting where the proposal to transfer ownership to a community-based trust was debated, I can recall one (now former) Independent Newcastle councillor predicting that it would never succeed.

Securing funding was a key issue, and the campaign received a major boost when prominent figures from Australia's national film industry threw their support behind the project, including the producers of Happy Feet, who provided high quality modern digital projection technology on community-friendly terms.

The “refurbished, rejuvenated and restored” cinema (to quote the Regal website) was re-opened last month with a program that signalled that it is once again poised to play a significant role in our city's cultural life. While some features of the building have been necessarily modernised, it has retained its former community character, with community-friendly prices to match (standard price is $7.00 a ticket). 

 

At the moment, the cinema is being run by a small group of dedicated volunteers. The plan is to transfer the running of the theatre to an appropriate private operator later in the year, with the community retaining ownership through the non-profit, community-based Regal Cinema Building Trust.

The Regal tradition established by Bruce Avard of a short introductory talk just before the curtains open for the movie has been continued - now accompanied by a celebrity dog. 

And to (literally) top it off, they've even brought back the home-made choc tops - based (I'm told) on Bruce's own secret recipe.

Congratulations to all concerned for an inspiring community effort!

The Regal Cinema contact number is 4950 7630; website: http://regalcinema.com.au/

Councillor suspended for telling constituents the truth: could this happen in Newcastle?

Whatever we might think of our local parliamentarians or councillors, most of us believe that we vote them in to do their best to represent us in parliaments or local councils, and to tell us what's going on in important matters via the media and other forms of communication.

So how would you feel if one of your local councillors was suspended by a senior NSW bureaucrat because he refused to say he was sorry for telling you about a multi-million dollar offer made to the council in return for development concessions?

This is precisely what has happened to constituents represented by Greens councillor Max Phillips in inner-Sydney Marrickville – and it could just as easily happen in Newcastle.

Late last year, developer Meriton, approached Marrickville Council about entering into a voluntary planning agreement with the council for its controversial Lewisham Towers apartment development.

The discussion involved representatives of the developer, council staff and councillors. Clr Phillips thought that his constituents should know about these discussions, so he told them.

But Marrickville's Labor and Liberal councillors said that they considered the information confidential, and that Clr Phillips had therefore breached the council's Code of Conduct by disclosing it.

They subsequently joined (in a split council vote) to formally censure Clr Phillips, demanding that he apologise to Meriton and the council for his action.

Clr Phillips refused to do this, saying that he couldn't genuinely apologise because he didn't believe that his action was wrong and that an apology would therefore be dishonest, which would breach the Code of Conduct. 

So the council referred the case to the NSW Division of Local Government.

On 14 January this year, Ross Woodward, the Chief Executive of the NSW Division of Local Government, suspended Clr Phillips for two months.

Mr Woodward's formal order (which is available online) states that Clr Phillips had breached the Code of Conduct by refusing to comply with the council resolution to apologise. 

Mr Woodward said his decision to suspend Clr Phillips for two months was guided by a decision of the NSW Pecuniary Interest and Disciplinary Tribunal in another case (in 2012) concerning another councillor who had also refused to apologise when required to by a council decision.

In that case, the Tribunal determination (also available online) concluded that “Abject refusal to comply with a resolution of council irrespective of whether a Councillor feels she is right or wrong is a serious breach of the code of conduct… The importance of complying with a resolution, no matter how objectionable cannot be overemphasised.”

Clr Phillips is apparently intending to appeal the decision against him. Anyone who is interested in following up any of the details of his case will find plenty of relevant information and other links on the Marrickville and Petersham Greens website.

However, these cases have serious implications for local democracy throughout NSW, because the relevant provisions apply to all NSW councillors.

I've written in the past about the ongoing secrecy and abuse of confidentiality in the current NewcastleCouncil, and the continuing pressure from the council administration to lock elected councillors into putting their loyalty to the council organisation above their duty to the public interest and the community who elected them.

How long will it be until one of our elected councillors, performing the role we expect of them in telling us what's going on, falls foul of similar machinations?

Council has credibility gap on IPART submission

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I often have a very different perspective on matters to do with Newcastle Council from the current General Manager, Ken Gouldthorp, whose stridently neo-liberal managerialist approach grates on my sense of what a community-oriented council should be.

It didn't surprise me, for example, when Mr Gouldthorp recently intervened (unsuccessfully, in this particular case) to advocate against the elected council adopting a Community Engagement Policy.

However, it seems that I'm on a "unity ticket" with Mr Gouldthorp on the issue of rate-capping and the need to increase council's rate income.

Mr Gouldthorp was recently quoted in the local media railing against the decision earlier this month by the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) to restrict NSW councils to a maximum 2.3% increase in their general rate income.

Saying that the rate-cap "beggared belief" he foreshadowed that the council would have to apply for a special rate variation to exceed the cap, and that this would probably need to be more than the 3.4% granted by IPART last year.

I've reflected before (most recently in my June column) on rate-capping as a "terrible policy", and "one of the main reasons why councils around NSW (including Newcastle City Council) are in such dire financial circumstances."

In that column, I also criticised the lack of any real commitment (by Newcastle Council or the state government) to conditions set by IPART on the special rate variation it granted to Newcastle Council last year, ostensibly for nine projects, many of which have been abandoned.

I don't resile from those criticisms - in fact, I think the council has created a rod for its own back in trying to win community support for the future special rate variations that Mr Gouldthorp has recently signalled as almost inevitable.

Applications to IPART for special rate variations have to identify the particular things that the council proposes to spend the money on, and IPART usually decides that any above-cap variation it grants has to be spent accordingly.

This is exactly what happened with Newcastle Council's successful application last year, but the nine projects it sought funding for disappeared as quickly as green bottles hanging on a wall.

As the council builds its case for a further special rate variation in the next financial year, that track record may well come back to haunt them.

That would be a pity, because I have no doubt that there's a genuine case to be made for the extra income.

Since its introduction in 1977, rate-capping has severely compromised the ability of NSW councils to deliver the services that local communities need.

No other sphere of government is subject to these kinds of restrictions, and the practice is limited to NSW, where council rate revenue lags well behind other states.

The cumulative and ongoing financial impact of rate-capping on Newcastle Council amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars of foregone revenue that might have been applied to our deteriorating infrastructure (roads, footpaths, public buildings, parks, etc) and disappearing council services.

I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about this, as the council gears up its pitch to the community - IPART also requires councils to actively engage with their community on any special rate application.

Mr Gouldthorp might need to reach for that Community Engagement Policy after all.