There seems to be a whole new way of looking at life and death here in Victoria Street. If you’re burned to death in Pymble, Redfern or Panania you’re an accident victim. If you’re burned to death in Victoria Street you are a derelict. – Juanita Neilsen (murdered by the developers).
There is too much money around Montague Street West End. When these towers overlooking Davies Park are built, it’s skytower rooftop garden will afford an uninterrupted view of the new Casino at the new Queens Wharf development in Brisbane CBD.
Nearly a million dollars will earn you the right to live in a pokey cement box with your miniature poodle. But you will be near everything as the old, infirm, workers and poor get pushed further out.
All in the interests of getting one thousand (1,000) residents to spend $16 million per year in local retail businesses, most of that will go on food. The kids will get an education at West End Primary and Brisbane State High and will rub shoulders with the next generation of privilege. Meanwhile kids in the back blocks will struggle even to write English or do their sums by the time they are in third grade. Economists call it the development of underdevelopment, a schema worked out by none other than the infamous Chicago School. Bureaucrats love it.
So where is the resistance to corporate insanity? In the 1970s New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was at the forefront of struggles like this. Former Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon describes the struggle thus:
In the working-class Sydney suburb of Kings Cross, the BLF joined with residents to save people’s homes from a high-rise development on Victoria Street. In the course of that bitter fight, opponents of the green bans physically intimidated many residents. Many leaders received death threats. Finally, on July 4, 1975, a local journalist called Juanita Nielsen was murdered.
Juanita Nielsen Was Murdered for Standing Up to Sydney’s Developers in https://jacobinmag.com
With the LNP in charge of council and the ALP in power in state government, no state in Australia is more open to developers and corruption that comes with them, the Maaates. Is this developer another Abe Saffron who had Juanita Neilsen killed.
Rhiannon wrote:
She (Juanita Neilsen) was not necessarily the kind of person many would associate with radical journalism or campaigns to protect low-cost housing. Often described as “a wealthy heiress,” Juanita was part of the retail family that owned Mark Foy’s department store, in the center of Sydney.
Killing Juanita – a true story of murder and corruption by Peter Rees
However, Juanita quit her job at Mark Foy’s in 1968 in order to lead resistance to a plan cooked up by senior Foy family members to sell the department store. She moved a no-confidence motion against the board. When it failed, Juanita left the family retail business.
We truly are a stupid people.
—————
Ian Curr
Editor,
Workers BushTelegraph
E: workersbushtelegraph@gmail.com
M: 0407 687 016
Jonathan Sri, the local councillor writes in his end-of-year newsletter:
West End residents might also have heard about the development application lodged for two 26-storey towers on Montague Rd next to Davies Park. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in the new year and will consider organising a public meeting regarding this issue, but for now, you can check out the plans and make a submission via this link.