Norman Brewer, Sydney

“On the hottest day last month, the [NSW] minister responsible for Redfern, Frank Sartor, walked into the offices of the Aboriginal Housing Company [AHC] and dropped a bombshell: he didn’t want any Aboriginal housing on the Block.”

This was how Tim Dick, the Sydney Morning Herald’s urban affairs reporter, began an article headlined “Hardly a black face on the Block — Sartor’s vision for Redfern”, carried in the paper’s March 5 edition.

Sartor has been commissioned by NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr to supervise the construction of an up-market commercial corridor through the inner-city suburb of Redfern.

Dick reported that the SMH had obtained a confidential briefing paper prepared by the AHC in which is directors claimed “Sartor [had] said that if he was forced to accept some Aboriginal housing, he would consider no more than 20 homes, as long as few of them were for affordable housing and the remaining land was used for other purposes”.

The briefing paper said either option would force the company “to abandon its charter” to provide affordable housing. The SMH quoted the briefing paper as saying: “The AHC has promised to deliver 62 houses on the Block for five years with the state government's blessing and assistance ...

“By not providing an adequate amount of houses on the Block, or something other than houses, the AHC loses the opportunity to create a beacon of hope for the next generation ...

“There is a very real possibility that the minister's opinion is being influenced by developers who have publicly stated they would like to see no Aborigines living on the Block before they invest in Redfern.”

According to the March 11 Australian Financial Review, a few days after his outburst to the AHC, Sartor told the Property Council of Australia that “the government would not hand over a cent to replace Aboriginal public housing once the Block is razed”.

The AFR also reported that at the same PCA meeting the council’s NSW executive director Ken Morrison said: “There is no way that Redfern is going to be that commercial mini-centre with Aboriginal housing and the Block still in place. We need to sort that out before any private investors will be interested.”

From Green Left Weekly, March 23, 2005.
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