In “Developer agenda slurs democratic resistance to subdivision,” Sheila Newman pens a stinging rebuttal to Awais Piracha and George Greiss’s pernicious accusations. They claim residents of the affluent east and north of Greater Sydney are NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and that their resistance has led to urban sprawl in areas of Western Sydney with a well-documented lack of services, infrastructure and jobs.
Of course its developer lobbyists like Piracha and Greiss who are responsible for mass immigration. So now they’re playing the wealthier suburbs off the poorer ones. Here are some choice excerpts:
This article from The Conversation is an amazing study in using convoluted illogic to stigmatise a class of people. It supposes that people who resist subdivision may be racist because to house new immigrants, whom it qualifies as mostly non-white, would require the older wealthier ‘whiter’ suburbs to subdivide.
Sheila Newman
Having crammed the western suburbs of Sydney to the hilt with new arrivals to create a heat-island of unaffordable properties, they now have their sights on traditionally Liberal seats:
Piracha and Greiss conclude, with a kind of sinister positivism: “There is a need for further research on the relationship between ethnic segregation and our decisions on what to build and where. We need to better understand NIMBYs’ motivations for opposing all development in their areas and the systemic racism resulting from this resistance.”
Sheila Newman
Rigged: How networks of powerful mates rip off everyday Australians
by Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters
Australian democracy and economy have been corrupted for the benefit of people in an industry that has managed to get control of the origins of wealth that lie in land, through dominating planning, and to engineer the flow of finance for these into their own pockets. Unfortunately, the establishment media with its property dot coms is a major beneficiary of this land speculation system as are modern Australian political parties, and the industry has managed to dominate our parliaments which write the laws that benefit the industry and diminish our fundamental rights.
Sheila Newman
Sheila Newman insightfully concludes…
Tragically, chasing the dollar via overpopulation and overdevelopment is a zero-sum game. The growth-lobby developer-financiers are the worst of gamblers. For the excitement of putting money on big projects for unpredictable payoffs, they will beggar not just their families, but their countries.
Sheila Newman
Now that Liberal seats are being targetted [sic], could this be the end game of development on steroids? Might the Liberal Party return to its middle-class origins and defend home-ownership? Will it gamble with losing its industry campaign donations in order to represent a growing majority of voters who are going unheeded?
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