Susan Price, Sydney
The death of 17-year-old TJ Hickey on February 15, and the subsequent explosion of community anger in Redfern — sparked by police provocation on top of decades of police violence and racism — has been seized upon by NSW politicians and media, to entrench racist stereotyping of a violent, drug and welfare-dependent Aboriginal community that has no place in inner-city Sydney.
NSW Liberal leader John Brogden was quick to call on the state's Labor government to bulldoze the block. NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr responded by explaining that it's already happening — 70 of 90 houses have already been demolished, and the last three on Eveleigh Street will go within weeks.
One of the blueprints for the redevelopment of Redfern is already on the table, drawn up by the Aboriginal Housing Company and promoted by the likes of right-wing shock jock Alan Jones. Spruiking on behalf of this initiative "by Aborigines, for Aborigines", Jones told listeners about the merits of the "commercial component, an Aboriginal employment centre, an Aboriginal enterprise centre, shops, a restaurant, a theatre, and a bias of about 30-50% towards Aboriginal employment".
At the heart of this redevelopment plan is the relocation of existing Redfern tenants.
This is not a solution to social crisis but simply a land grab by developers.
The Aboriginal Housing Corporation is the owner and landlord of those houses that remain on the Redfern Block. Angered by 25 years of neglect and lack of community consultation, some residents formed the Aboriginal Housing Coalition in 1997.
Their aim was to involve Redfern Block residents in solving problems regarding housing and homelessness, and to put pressure on the corporation to provide a decent standard of housing. The Aboriginal Housing Coalition is now putting forward an alternative proposal for 77 new houses to be built.
Listed by the Australian Heritage Commission, the Redfern Block has a long history as a centre of black empowerment, culture and grass-roots organising — a fact which haunts the NSW government.
Attempts to relocate kooris out of Redfern have continued in one form or another since 1968, when the South Sydney Council and the NSW state government, through the Department of Housing, began a resettlement project moving kooris from the inner city to Green Valley, Mt Druitt and Campbelltown.
Community outreach and detox programmes for drug users and HIV prevention programs were set back in 1999, when Labor's then-health minister Andrew Refshauge suspended the Redfern needle exchange program.
In 1997, raids on Redfern for "drug-related crime" were used to justify setting up a shop-front police station in the area. Community programs were replaced with a punitive approach to drug and alcohol abuse, and 24-hour police harassment of residents began.
The Aboriginal Legal Centre was forced to close its doors in the same year. The ALS was at the forefront of a campaign back in 1992 to defeat Sydney's bid for the 2000 Olympic Games, and was formed during the wave of civil-rights activism that also gave birth to the Aboriginal Medical Service and Aboriginal Housing Company.
The attacks on Redfern are occurring in the context of a big push for more inner-city private redevelopment. Housing prices have been escalating in the inner-city for more than a decade.
The creeping privatisation of public housing has been contributing to the fragmentation of long-standing communities.
Carr's plans for the Redfern Block are about just that, breaking up a community that has long been seen as an obstacle by inner-city developers and as a "problem" that won't go away by the ALP government. The forced amalgamation of South Sydney Council with the City of Sydney council will provide another weapon against residents of the block, with plans to expand the CBD to include Redfern.
Carr's racist scapegoating of Aboriginal people (and Arab youth in Sydney's south west) seeks to drive a wedge between white working people and Indigenous people and migrants. To answer this racist divisiveness, we need community solidarity.
In 2000, 750,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to support reconciliation with Indigenous people. Australians for Reconciliation groups were set up in cities and towns across the country, reflecting this desire for justice.
Sentiments like these are powerful, but there is a need to organise in solidarity with the Redfern Block residents, against the racism of Bob Carr and the NSW police and against the political influence of private developers and for the defence and expansion of public housing.
In the 1970s, the lack of affordable housing in Redfern drove many Kooris to squat in empty houses, and in response police arrested and charged squatters with trespassing. The local church hall became a home for increasing numbers of homeless, until it was shut down by the South Sydney Council. It was with the help of the NSW Builders Labourers Federation and the plumbers union that houses were brought up to a liveable standard, resulting in 45 Indigenous people residing in three houses in the Redfern Block.
When development threatened to displace the residents, the BLF placed a ban on all development in the area and any other work that the construction company was doing.
It is this kind of union and community solidarity that is needed to defend the Redfern Block today, 30 years later. A real answer has to involve Indigenous self-determination.
Centuries of racism can only be overcome when its victims reclaim real power over their lives. This means community self-organisation — supported by funding and resources — to find solutions to safety, drug and alcohol abuse, housing, jobs and welfare.
The Socialist Alliance pledges its support and solidarity with the Redfern Block. We call for the immediate suspension of the police involved in TJ's death and for a fully independent inquiry into the fatality.
[Susan Price is the Socialist Alliance's candidate for Sydney Lord Mayor.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004.
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