Councillor Chris Harris

Lord Mayor Clover Moore has voted to side with developers over the community in the ongoing case of the Barangaroo development.  At a Council meeting last Monday I introduced a motion calling for the City to provide $10 000 to the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) should it proceed with legal action in conjunction with the Barangaroo Action Group if new development plans are approved by the Planning Minister.  As a result of Clover’s vote the EDO may now not be able to proceed with this action. 

The EDO approached the City to contribute to possible action so that it was clear that the EDO was acting in the broader public interest and not just in the interests of a particular group of residents. The Lord Mayor’s actions have prevented the City from genuinely aligning itself with the broader community by  ’getting down in the trenches’ with residents to oppose the massive overdevelopment on Barangaroo. Her actions have also jeopardised the ability of the EDO to act for local residents.

The application before the Minister for Planning is to excavate a giant pit that will house at least four floors of car parking to be used for commercial parking for the foreseeable future. These plans risk spreading contamination into the harbour and onto Council land.  They also fly in the face of claims that the development will be environmentally sensitive by providing commercial parking for over 800 cars and leaving no room for trigeneration systems which would have provided low carbon energy to the development.  Council planning staff say the plans are so riddled with problems that they would never be approved were the decision up to Council. You can read the City’s damning assessment here.

Prior to the meeting I sought legal advice on whether or not the Lord Mayor, as a member of the Barangaroo Delivery Authority Board, would have a conflict of interest in voting on this matter.  The advice indicated clearly that she would have a conflict and should therefore absent herself from the voting.  The advice is attached here.

Despite this advice, which I circulated to all Councilors prior to the meeting, the Lord Mayor did not declare any sort of conflict in the matter.  She chose to remain in the Council chambers while my motion was debated and then to participate in the vote on whether or not it should be adopted. 

The vote came down to a 5-5 split, with fellow Greens Councilor Irene Doutney, Liberal Shayne Mallard and two members of the Clover Moore Party (John McInerney and Marcelle Hoff) voting with me in support.  Labor Councilor Meredith Burgmann, supporting the state government party line, voted with Clover Moore and the remaining three members of her team to oppose the motion.  Moore then used her casting vote as Lord Mayor to vote a second time and defeat the motion. 

Had Moore absented herself, in line with the legal advice, the motion would have passed.  The Council would be standing up for what it has repeatedly stated it believes in and would not be relying on volunteers from the community, such as the Barangaroo Action Group and The Friends of Barangaroo, to fight its battles. 

I have since filed a complaint with the NSW Ombudsman and the Department of Local Government asking them to confirm the legal advice that Clover Moore had a conflict of interest in this matter.

The text of my motion to Council can be found here. The SMH story on the council meeting is here.

The technology now exists to allow us to massively cut our greenhouse gas emissions, as I hope has become apparent from my many previous posts on this topic.  Renewable and low emissions energy technology has advanced so much in the last few years that the barriers against their widespread uptake, and against the replacement of dirty and inefficient coal fired power, are no longer technological but political.

One only need look at the pathetic attempts by both the Labor and Liberal parties over recent months to pass off a 5% reduction in emissions as meaningful action on climate change to know that the political will is nowhere to be seen in the major parties.

It has therefore fallen upon individuals to take responsibility for this most pressing of issues and next week I will attempt to use my role as a councillor to make it easier for indivduals to markedly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

I will be moving a motion that Council call for expressions of interest from providers of low emissions power production systems, such as solar or trigeneration technology.  Council will assess the technologies on offer from the providers and promote those deemed most appropriate to the City’s rate base and possibly offer a rate rebate (at the provider’s expense) to residents who install the chosen systems.

It’s a win win situation.  Residents get cheaper access to low emissions technologies which have been assessed as being reliable by the City.  The provider gets significant promotion of their product for free, which will likely more than offset their losses from providing a rebate.  The City gets to reduce emissions produced within the Local Government Area which will help it reach it’s 2030 environmental performance targets and ultimately we all win through inhabiting a slightly cleaner, greener planet.

This motion will be going to Council on the 26th of July and I hope the other Councillors will be able to act where state and federal governments have failed and support this important endeavour. 

Update:  My motion was enthusiastically seconded by Lord Mayor Clover Moore and supported unanimously by the Council.

The draft planning proposal for Harold Park was presented to Council’s Planning, Development and Transport Committee On Monday 19th July.  The plan can be found here.  I have mixed feelings on the plan and when it comes back to Council next week I will support it being exhibited for community comment but will not give it an endorsement until the public have had the oppurtunity to make their feelings known and unless some of my concerns are addressed.  Below is a media release which summarises my views on the planning proposal. 

For more details on the redevelopment of Harold Park, please see this earlier post on the issue.

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Harold Park planning proposal a mixed bag 

City of Sydney Greens Councillor Chris Harris says he has mixed feelings about the newly released planning proposal for the Harold Park site in Glebe, to be considered by Council on Monday the 19th July.  “It’s great to see it committing to the site being 35% open space” he said.  “This is something that myself and Greens Mayor of Leichardt Council Jamie Parker have been demanding for some time now. I applaud the proposal for 50 affordable housing units that will form part of the Voluntary Planning Agreement and I am pleased that any bonus FSR allowance is tied to a 25% performance above the weak BASIX requirements set down by the state government. I also support the heritage listing of the Tramsheds”

However Clr Harris said he was disappointed that the maximum height of the buildings was still eight stories and that the number of apartments proposed was 1200.  “An eight storey development will not be in keeping with the predominant low rise housing stock in Glebe and Annandale. There will be issues of overshadowing and visual impact on the cherished heritage streets above the cliff tops in Glebe. I would prefer to see a height limit of around six stories.”

“I’m also concerned about the effects of 1000 plus parking spaces for residents and the possibility of hundreds more for retail & commercial development in the Tramsheds. If this plan were to be approved there would be around 1500 cars “living” in an area that currently has only a handful.  The traffic report acknowledges that key intersections are already at capacity and I find it inconceivable that these extra cars will not have an impact on an already over capacity road network. This should be a low car precinct so that it attracts people who want to live close to the city and who don’t want to own a car. Catering for endless increases in car use is not a sustainable strategy”

Clr Harris said that the City and the State Government would have to work very closely with Metotransit, the operators of the Sydney light rail service, to make sure this currently under-utilised mode of transport is accessible and attractive to the people who will live here. “The tramline right nearby creates an opportunity to reduce car use and give people a viable option for transport. Unmet private car needs can be taken up with car share and I note that the Development Control Plan requires developers to provide car share spaces.”
 
“Another concern is the open possibility of a major retailer putting a supermarket in the Tramsheds. This will lead to pressure for more car access and car parking on the site. I believe this needs to be clarified before council signs off on the planning scheme

“The proposal has some good initiatives but it is still weighted far too heavily in favour of the Trotting Club and its single minded desire to maximise the development potential and therefore the sale price of the site. The Club acquired the Tramsheds in a dodgy deal with its mates in the state government and we need to see that unwarranted benefit unwound via a bigger dividend to the community. That dividend could be delivered by reducing car use on the site and reducing the density of the residential development.”
  

Opponents of renewable energy love to trot out the tired old line that it can’t provide baseload power.  This statement has been incorrect for many years and as technology continues to develop (despite the pathetic investment made in this area by both state and Federal governments) the ability of renewables to meet all our power needs continues to grow.

One of the most exciting areas of development is in the field of solar thermal electricity generation, which I have previously discussed here.  Very briefly, solar thermal power captures energy from the sun to produce heat to boil water which turns a turbine, in the same way as a conventional power station uses the heat from burning coal to turn a turbine.  The big advantage of solar thermal power over other forms of renewable energy generation, such as wind and solar photovoltaic (which generates electricity directly from sunlight via a chemical process) is that the energy produced can be easily stored.  Heat generated from sunlight can be contained in insulated storage units for several days, to be released to produce electricity when it is needed, including at night and on cloudy days.

Solar thermal electricity generation has already shown what it can do in large projects like the massive Andasol power plant in Spain.  Currently two thirds complete this plant already produces 100 MW of power for the local electricity grid and when completed in 2011 will save 450 000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere per year.  Such projects make an enormous contribution to improving sustainability but require a significant investment from governments – an investment which state and Federal governments in Australia are sadly unprepared to make.

Is there some way that individuals or local councils can take advantage of this exciting new technology in the absence of government leadership?  

Very soon there will be.

Work by an Australian company, to be officially announced in coming weeks, will make solar thermal power generation accessible to individuals with small scale generators capable of being installed on homes.  Equipped with insulated water tanks able to store heat - and therefore electricity generating potential - for up to three days, these systems will be able to produce more than twice the average household’s electricity needs.  Any electricity produced beyond what is used can be sold back to the grid.

Such technologies show that the tired old arguments of those opposed to renewable energy because of their own vested interests no longer hold any water.  I will be working to encourage the City of Sydney to install solar thermal power systems, along with a number of other sustainable energy technologies, in council owned buildings so that their potential can be demonstrated and independently assessed.  Ultimately I would like to see the City partner with the producers of whichever systems are shown to be most effective at reducing emissions in order to facilitate a roll-out of these to as many homes in the city as possible.  I look forward to working with staff over the coming months to make this happen and contribute to helping prevent dangerous climate change in a way that our governments are failing to do.
 

Sydney Harbour runs a tight race with Uluru to take the title of Australia’s most iconic and recognisable feature and likely has as bigger role in bringing tourism revenue to our country.  However, while Uluru is protected by a National Park, World Heritage Declaration and joint management with the traditional owners of the land Sydney Harbour gets used as a dumping ground by industry and surrounding suburbs and has it’s shoreline carved up by greedy developers aided by a complicit state government. 

It hardly seems fair.

My Greens colleagues in state and federal parliment have fought long and hard to protect our waterways, Sydney Harbour included.  I have always supported this fight but the contributions I have been able to make in my role as a Councillor have been modest as Councils have little direct influence over marine environments.  They control land only down the to the low watermark and in central Sydney many areas of the foreshore are controlled by state Government bodies, such as the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority and the Barangaroo Delivery Authority.

So when I came across some innovative research being carried out by a group of Australian scientists with the potential to dramatically improve the health of our local waters, in an area over which Council has direct control, I was most excited.

The research, being carried out by the Centre for Ecological Impacts of Coastal Cities (EICC) at the University of Sydney, involves attaching concrete flowerpots to seawalls in the intertidal zone to serve as artifical habitats for marine life.  Around 50% of the shoreline of the harbour is now seawalls, which replaced the natural sloping rocky shores that would have originally been home to a myriad of fish, crustaceans, molluscs and algae.  The seawalls don’t provide a suitable habitat for these organisms, which form an integral part of the marine ecosystem, and the negative effects on biodiversity that this causes are more significant than the effects of poor water quality - given how bad water quality is in the harbour this shows how serious the issue is.

The flowerpots serve as artificial rockpools and the results of trials carried out on the north side of the harbour have been stunning.  Within 6-12 months of being set up the number of species in the vicinity of the flowerpots tripled and biodiversity increased seven-fold.  The next stage in the research is to test what effect different types of concrete have on the results and a motion I moved at the last Council meeting, which was passed unanimously, will see the City of Sydney look at ways to partner with the EICC to conduct these trials.

I expect the benefits of this project to be not just environmental but also social.  It will give kids of the inner City the opportunity to partake in the quintessential childhood experience of searching for life in rockpools and give nature lovers of all ages so much more to appreciate on the harbour foreshore.  It is a solid step towards helping people to reconnect with our magnificent waterway.

I hope that a productive partnership between the City and the EICC can result and that this will be the first of many steps undertaken by Council over the coming months to improve the health of Australia’s most well known and well loved waterway. 

For more information on the artificial habitat research being undertaken by the EICC see the following videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mJPS9dX9uU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuDmTVHKi40&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4QVPfL4HEs&feature=related