Better Council Inc claimed to be about local policies, but its aim was to remove Greens from local government in several inner city locations because of their support for Palestine. Wendy Bacon reports.
Wendy Bacon
Wendy Bacon reports on a draft bill that proposes a new form of urban governance that could give NSW business property owners a special say over how public spaces are used.
The NSW Premier said he is pleased Deanna “Violet” CoCo was jailed for her non-violent protest. Wendy Bacon writes that he is out of step with human rights and climate change groups.
When the federal government needed advice on the terms of a $2 billion loan to the NSW government for its WestConnex tollway, it outsourced the advice to the private sector. With the increasing privatisation of public service, there was nothing unusual about that.
What was surprising is that the companies it chose were already heavily involved in working on WestConnex for the NSW government.
The NSW government wanted the $2 billion concessional loan for Westconnex Stage 2 and a massive interchange next to Sydney Park in St Peters.
Early one morning last month, the Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC) Lucy Turnbull — a lifelong resident of the city’s most privileged suburbs along the south-eastern edge of the harbour — quietly slipped across to Sydney’s inner west where she was taken on tour by a WestConnex manager of the M4 East tollway tunnel corridor. There she presumably saw for the first time the gigantic construction sites in Haberfield where scores of heritage homes, businesses, gardens, parks and trees stood until a few weeks ago.