NSW 2023 Elections – Greater Sydney Parklands Trust Report Card.
For eighteen months from early 2021, the Alliance for Public Parklands (APP) pushed the State government to be transparent about its plans to create a corporation to run our five great public parklands – Callan Park, Centennial Park (including Moore Park and Queens Park), Parramatta Park and Fernhill Estate (scooped up within Western Sydney Parklands) – overriding existing Acts and governance systems.
Due to APP's persistent lobbying, we slowed down the government's rushed plan to allow for greater genuine discussion of this threat to the wider public's interest in these parklands. An Upper House inquiry highlighted the deep concerns of community and local government representatives from all over Greater Sydney.
As a result, amendments were made to the Draft legislation, which APP believed would create greater accountability and erect some hurdles to wholesale privatisation and commercialisation of the parklands.
Since the Greater Sydney Parklands Trust Act came into effect on 1 July 2022, APP has been keeping a close eye on developments, and we are seeing some worrying signs.
The Greater Sydney Parklands Trust now resides within the Transport NSW portfolio, indicating that the government views these parklands as valuable real estate assets ripe for the plucking. This is contrary to the then Minister Rob Stokes' claims that the purpose of the GSPT was to make our parklands strong enough to counter the bullying of the larger players – big business and elite sports (including the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust) – and from our perspective Transport NSW as well.
The Community Trustee Boards (CTBs) we pressed hard for have since been established for each of the five parklands in the Estate, commencing operations in 2023. We predict (as we have previously) that these CTBs will be 'toothless tigers', with appointments to the boards signed off personally by the Minister.
Members of the CTBs for each park can be found here >
The first CTB Meeting was held in February 2023, and the meeting agenda can be found here >
Updates from our Alliance for Public Parklands representatives.
CALLAN PARK
A huge 32.5+ metre telecommunications tower will be erected RIGHT next to – and intruding on view lines TO and FROM Callan Park. It is being proposed to be located on an electrical substation on Manning Street, Rozelle. The Inner West Council refused the Development Application, which is now going to the Land & Environment Court. Astonishingly, neither the GSPT (which owns the land directly abutting the tower) nor NSW Health (which owns Kirkbride and the land which forms its curtilage all around) will be opposing the tower – despite concerns about the visual impact of the tower on Callan Park and residents' concerns about living near a telecommunications tower.
The importance of view lines into and from Callan Park has been formally recognized in all heritage documentation relating to this significant landscape, particularly by the Rozelle Hospital Conservation Management Plan 2002, the Callan Park, Rozelle Conservation Management Plan 2011, the Kirkbride Block and Convalescent Cottages, Callan Park, Conservation Management Plan 2020 and most recently the GSPT's Landscape Structure Plan 2021.
We expect the GSPT and NSW Health to be the site's custodians. And yet, when the view lines in and out of the site are threatened, they do not object.
CENTENNIAL PARK
Numerous attempts to contact Centennial Park management since the GSPT came into effect – regarding issues that require immediate attention – have been met with the response "we are working remotely".
Having the park's management based in Western Sydney is not effective.
A major concern for APP is the increasing alienation of 'public spaces' to elite sports. Aggressive neighbours surround Centennial Parklands – SCGT and other elite sporting groups – demanding that their parking rights remain, despite the light rail access provided to discourage visitors from driving to the venue – and the Entertainment Quarter (EQ). They all want part of it.
At Moore Park East and the EQ:
The Hall of Industries is leased long-term to the Sydney Swans AFL Club.
Two major areas of Moore Park East are controlled by the Swans and the NRL.
Open parkland and many sporting fields have already been lost to the Tibby Cotter Bridge – a $30 million white elephant.
Now we are faced with the EQ's long lease of its Showring to the Swans and Eastern Suburbs Rugby League Club. We reject the premise that when not used by the elite sports, the land is 'open to the public'. This is not an acceptable use of public land to benefit the broader community at the expense of 'rich' sport. (Big sport which has already benefited from the multi-million dollar rebuild of the stadium, to the disgust of many in the community).
Despite the Upper House Inquiry into the Greater Sydney Parklands Legislation, which shone a hard light on the EQ deal, the consortium of powerful business people is still pushing for a 99-year lease. There is no pushback from any of the major political parties regarding this gross alienation of public parklands.
PARRAMATTA PARK
The UNESCO World Heritage listed Parramatta Park has received attention during the NSW State election campaign, with the incumbent government promising to add two pedestrian bridges across the river to increase accessibility to the new Parramatta (Commbank) Stadium. This is the stadium which in 2018 encroached further on precious parklands. No park user studies or community engagement processes have taken place to justify the $56 million dollar infrastructure expenditure, similar to the Tibby Cotter bridge debacle.
Suzette Meade, APP spokesperson and Secretary of North Parramatta Residents Action Group, has been publicly calling for a land bridge since 2017 to reinstate a connection between the 20ha south side of Parramatta Park, which is separated from 60ha of the main park with hard rail and roads.
"Most people don't even know that Mays Hill is part of the Parramatta Parklands, and with the replacement public pool opening there this winter, people will want to access the pool from the park. Without the bridge, people will run across the road, dodging dangerous traffic.
"The government should prioritize adding the 20ha heritage precinct in North Parramatta (across the river) into the parklands estate to increase the park size. This would bring it back to its original size when set aside by Governor Macquarie for the betterment of the people of Parramatta. The park has lost 14.5 hectares from its original size to hard rail, main roads, football stadiums, football clubs, RSL, high schools and car parks.
There is added pressure from the ever-present Business Sydney under the steerage of David Borger. They are lobbying for a permanent music sound bowl to be built in Parramatta Park to 'revive the live music scene' with backing from a music sound bowl supplier pushing hard for this and two other locations across Sydney. The site in Parramatta Park, known as "The Crescent", is a nationally significant First Nations site as well as the site of the first colonial orchard that saved the British colony from starvation. The proposed site is directly beside the UNESCO world heritage listed Old Government House. This is the first time this idea has been pitched. In the 1980s, Parramatta Council tried to build a permanent structure in this natural amphitheatre but were defeated by a strong campaign from the local community and the National Trust of Australia (NSW).
Suzette Meade lashed out in the media, calling for a decentralisation of assets in the growing Parramatta electorate and urging the government to keep development out of Parramatta Park. She called for urban planners to consider a music bowl in the government's new Camellia Rosehill precinct which is the same distance from Parramatta train station as Parramatta Park. Plans for that area include 10,000 new homes, including an 18-hour entertainment precinct. It would make far more sense to include a music bowl here. That way neither the project nor the heritage would be compromised as it is under the current proposal.
WESTERN SYDNEY PARKLANDS
Blacktown & District Environment Group Inc remains concerned at how the Western Sydney Parklands Trust turned land into commercial, industrial and infrastructure development that the government had previously declared would be "open space never to be developed" and further that "the 'only growth' that would occur would be that of trees"*.
The past form which the Board of Western Sydney Parklands Trust brings into the Greater Sydney Parklands Trust, an entity with an even greater land portfolio, invokes apprehension that a "Coney Island" mentality will bear heavily upon the management of our Greater Sydney Parklands.
Monitoring of a road intrusion into the curtilage of State Heritage Listed "The Rooty Hill". The road intrusion comes by way of Transport NSW proposing the widening of part of Rooty Hill Road South to accommodate truck movements in and out of a site that WSP sold off for commercial development. The impact of subsequent development on that land will reduce State Heritage Listed Cumberland Plain Woodland (on neighbouring land).
Incursions caused by neighbouring developments are impacting our precious parklands.
Action taken by the Western Sydney Parklands Trust before the formation of the GSPT contradicts their own Plan of Management, and these worrying actions look set to continue. There is now a KFC, Taco Bell and two MacDonalds outlets in the 'never to be developed' parklands.
The latest observation is that WSP tree plantings used to 'create' Cumberland Plain Woodland (including. 'double dipping' by biobanking) ignore the advice of the experts, noted Ornithologist Allan Keast and Botanist Teresa James, who both point to Grey Box as the dominant species.
Modifying the natural environment for aesthetic reasons shows the landscaping mentality (and lack of understanding of biodiversity and habitat) that is a hallmark of the GSPT as they convert the last Cumberland Plains remnants to usable 'parkland'.
* APP has recently written to the GSPT asking how it intends to apply the clauses in the GSPT Act regarding "no net loss" (NNL clauses).
FERNHILL ESTATE
The NSW government recently announced a $65 million investment spread over five years to transform Fernhill Estate into a public park.
FFMV's concerns are:
How the disabled, the elderly and families with children will move through Fernhill Estate
How the rural landscape will be maintained as a tranquil rural parkland
Fanciful concepts that lack pragmatism
Future use of the illegal racetrack has not been addressed
FFMV is advocating to:
Preserve Fernhill's cultural landscape and biodiversity
Provide practical plans to maintain Fernhill Estate's rural character
Create a world-class sustainable parkland
APP remains vigilant.
We need support from public park users and the broader community to ensure that our precious open spaces – that provide respite and recreation opportunities for people and families who are living in increasingly urbanised and developed places – and habitat for our ever-decreasing animal and bird life – are not razed and built over to provide 'activated spaces' that generate revenue for government and accommodate big business and organised sport.
