T’S no egalitarian tribute to Sydney that its most precious triangle of north-facing harbourfront real estate, at the foot of the Harbour Bridge, is a run-down hovel.

It’s just a reminder of this city’s bad old days of greed, thuggery - and graft, for those in the know.

So when you hear Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Paul McAleer from the Maritime Union of Australia complain about the NSW government’s decision to sell off half a billion dollars worth of public housing in Millers Point, keep in mind the troubled history of this little patch of paradise.

Millers Point, from the northern end of Lower Fort St, through Argyle Place to Merriman St in the west, and down to the southern end of High St, is a decaying monument to the standover tactics of the wharfies and the defunct, deregistered, disgraced Builders Labourers Federation.

These belligerent unions helped keep Millers Point in the hands of their friends and family for generations, people who paid peppercorn rents, first to the Sydney Harbour Trust, then the Maritime Services Board from 1910, and finally, from 1970, to the Housing Commission (now Housing NSW).

The lucky few who managed to score a terrace house or apartment just passed those priceless tenancies down to their children.

. . . . .
Millers Point today remains an aristocracy of hereditary housos, like Mr H, 39, who lives alone in a four bedroom house in Argyle Place, whose tenancy was passed on to him by his mother 12 years ago. He pays $271 a month when the market rent is $4000 a month.

Until the deceptively dainty Community Service Minister Pru Goward came along, no government had been game to touch this enclave of taxpayer-funded privilege, even while public housing waiting lists blew out and maintenance costs for the historic buildings soared.

She wants to capitalise on a buoyant real estate market and sell 293 public housing residences in Millers Point over the next two years.

On top of the $500 million windfall, the taxpayer will save $7 million in annual maintenance costs.

Goward promises to put every penny into public housing. For every sale, she says she can build four new houses for the 57,000 people waiting for public housing. She is offering Millers Point residents priority for new public housing nearby in the inner-city.

But Moore and fellow agitators slam the project as “social cleansing” and are determined to stop it, out of nostalgia for some mythical workers’ paradise in which the best property in town goes to the working poor.

mantra wrote on Mar 28^th, 2014 at 9:40am:




so true .. and progress we all make way for progress...if we didnt we would all be living in houses with the loo and laundry down the back...

it is a bit sad.. but it is inevitable..imagine if we were all still driving on goat tracks.

bogarde73 wrote on Mar 28^th, 2014 at 10:05am:


Please

Don't fall into the mindless bullsh!t of labels, your last sentence is nothing but cliches I expect better.

As to the issue itself

I have no problem, a fool & his money are easily separated & if the state ACTUALLY uses the sale proceeds to build more housing to cover more people in need then how can anyone protest.

As for the residents they were hoping title would eventually come their way, & if it ever did these "ties that bind" would disappear & for Sale signs would go up quicker than you can say Hungry Mile

bogarde73 wrote on Mar 28^th, 2014 at 10:52am:


LOL

No socialist collectives or progressive thinkers here to give us a rant on the inhuman NSW Lib govt?
Nobody prepared to stand up for the hereditary inhabitants of the Rocks & Millers Pt?