Nicole Hilder, Wollongong
Land prices in the Illawarra region have quadrupled in the past five years, fuelled by a land shortage and an influx of Sydney "sea-change" buyers, according to the December 9 Illawarra Mercury. There has been a rush by speculative landowners and developers to rezone and develop before the Wollongong City Council's local environment plan (LEP) comes into effect.
The LEP is being updated through the council's Wollongong Futures project, which supposedly "aims to establish a shared vision based on the principles of sustainability and inclusiveness to take Wollongong into the future".
"Developers are using the vacuum of uncertainty to push through their applications", Wollongong councillor Andrew Anthony told Green Left Weekly. "By the time this long-overdue LEP is finished, major developments all over the Illawarra in areas worth protecting will have already been approved and development commenced."
At the December 6 meeting of the council's environment and planning committee, ALP councillors pushed through a motion supporting the rezoning of the Cooksons Plibrico site at Sandon Point. The area affected includes a sacred Aboriginal women's site, the last remnants of the heritage-listed Turpentine forest and endangered wetland ecosystems. The committee also passed a motion in favour of the application by the Anglican Retirement Trust to build up to 400 aged-care units at Sandon Point.
The area has been subject to more than five years of legal action and the longest running 24-hour environmental protest picket line in Australia. There was an extensive commission of inquiry, which backed the view that the development was inappropriate for the site, given its important visual, environmental and cultural values.
The inquiry sent its findings to NSW planning minister Craig Knowles in October 2003.
Save Sandon Point activist Jill Walker said that, since the recommendations were released, Knowles and the Labor-dominated Wollongong City Council have worked to undermine them. She said Knowles has "stalled so long on [his] decision in order to allow large areas to be destroyed by Stockland [the corporation developing Sandon Point], then to compensate the community with little remaining pieces of 'protected' but destroyed heritage land... Council and Knowles are conspiring to cheat and defraud the community of their rightful recommendations of the" inquiry.
Anthony said that he "fears Knowles will use [the Cookson Plibrico council vote] to present the Stockland development as a fait accompli and an excuse not to implement" the inquiry's recommendations.
According to Anthony, recent secret council meetings with Lend Lease discussed demolishing Crown Street Mall (including the stage where rallies are held) and opening it up to traffic.
Wollongong is becoming an urban dumping ground as numerous box-like commercial developments are encouraged or approved by council.
According to Anthony, "laws and policies aren't set up to favour the environment, they're set up for developers and council takes advantage of this. It's common for councils to chuck minimum funding to a court case to ensure they lose it. The Stockland development is a classic case of this.
"However, nobody approved of the redevelopment of the Headlands Hotel [at Austinmer]. It was passed because developers already dragged the council to court over our previous rejection of their development application. We thought that this recent offer was the best we'd get. The developers had threatened to take it back to the Land and Environment Court again, who'll approve it if we don't anyway."
He pointed out the irony that "the Wollongong Futures process is supposed to facilitate greater community consultation but it's being used so that council and developers can push ahead with the developments the community don't want. Whatever the new LEP document eventually looks like, Wollongong's planning problems won't be solved without addressing the lack of accountability and democracy in the council and state government."
From Green Left Weekly, December 15, 2004.
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