BY PIP HINMAN
SYDNEY — A concerted campaign for several months by residents and Erskineville Housing Estate tenants forced the NSW state government on November 19 to reject a housing department redevelopment proposal which would have adversely affected many elderly residents.
Built between 1938 and 1956, the two-storey estate was a model for Housing Commission developments throughout the state. It had 146 units, a child-care centre and a lawn bowls club. It had been listed by the National Trust, and is often described as a garden estate because of the surrounding abundance of trees and gardens.
The Department of Housing wanted to replace the estate with 600 units located in an eight-storey high-rise tower. The project was to be partly privately financed. Only 146 of the 600 units were earmarked to remain in public hands.
Michael Thomson, Socialist Alliance upper house candidate, told Green Left Weekly, "This is a win for the people of Erskineville. They took the fight into the streets and built a lot of local support to stop the sell-off of their homes. This follows wins we've all had over Callan Park and the government's back-down over closing some of our schools and the merging of hospitals. And in Batemans Bay recently, thousands marched and stopped the charcoal plant being built at Mogo."
Sylvia Hale, from the Marrickville Greens told GLW that after Labor's backdowns from closing some public schools and selling off Callan Park, she wasn't too surprised by this latest backflip. "What's significant is the strong community opposition to the proposal. Most of the residents have been in Erko for between 30 and 40 years, and so these reasonably elderly people would have had to find alternative accommodation. While there was some public housing to be set aside, there was no guarantee that these residents would have had access."
Hale said she wouldn't be surprised if the state government had decided to back down on this issue in order to protect the pre-selected ALP candidate for Heffron, Kristina Keneally. Keneally was installed by the ALP administrative committee, instead of through a rank-and-file preselection ballot. Many believe that such a ballot would have been won by alternative candidate Deirdre Grusovin.
From Green Left Weekly, November 27, 2002.
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