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Unauthorised dwelling capital of the world! Could Main Arm’s title as the Unauthorised Dwelling Capital of the World be under threat? It’s hard to believe, I know. However, it appears that while Main Arm bore the brunt of Byron Council’s ill-fated crackdown on unapproved homes last year, such dwellings have been spawning like medicinal mushrooms in Byron’s Arts and Industry Estate (AIE) for years. And it also seems that, much like Main Arm, attempts to bring these miscreants back into the regulatory fold have been far from successful. Well, that’s the suggestion from Council aspirant, and the president of Community Alliance Byron Shire, Matthew O’Reilly. During the pubic access section of last Thursday’s council planning meeting, Cr O’Reilly (oops, sorry, ‘Mr O’Reilly’) declared that moves to regularise unauthorised dwellings in the AIE had been a ‘failure’. You see, when the Shire’s 2014 Development Control Plan (DCP) was introduced, it included a provision allowing essential managers and caretakers who worked in the estate to have their dwellings there. This was an attempt by Mayor Simon Richardson, and others on Council, to encourage those naughty folk living illegally above their kombucha factories to get approval. All they had to do was submit a DA for their slightly fermented dwellings and, assuming the plans were compliant, everything was tickety-boo. But six years and thousands of Lycra-clad yoga classes later, it seems barely anyone has applied to join Cr Richardson in the land of the legal. ‘I’ve gone through the development applications for the Arts and Industry Estate since 2014 and there have been very, very few, if any, development applications to regularise unauthorised dwellings there,’ Mr O’Reilly said. ‘From what I can see, the only DAs for caretakers’ residences and managers’ dwellings have been for new industrial facilities.’ Meanwhile, the estate has become not only a source of delightfully nourishing cold-pressed juices, but also a residential estate. ‘At the last census, the numbers were between three and four hundred people living permanently in the estate in Byron,’ Mr O’Reilly said. ‘We’re due to have another census this year and it’s very likely those numbers will have drastically increased. ‘We’re not just talking about single-bedroom dwellings, we’re also talking about two- and three-bedroom dwellings. ‘A consequence of this is that the Arts and Industry Estate has become a suburb as large as many other suburbs within the Shire, but without the requisite infrastructure and facilities such as footpaths, schools, parks and so on. Mr O’Reilly concluded the lesson by setting Council staff some homework: ‘Could Council staff advise how many ancillary [essential] caretaker and managers’ dwellings have been approved in industrial and business zones since the commencement of the Byron 2014 LEP, and whether development contributions for dwellings were paid for those approvals?’ he asked. Unsurprisingly, staff did not have the answer immediately to hand, but promised to submit their assignment via email. Guest editorial by Paul Bibby
Where announcements masquerade as action
T
he great secret about government in Australia is this: no-one wants to know about government in Australia. Our wide brown land contains multitudes, as diverse as our many, many regionally specific words for swimming costumes. But whether we wear bathers, togs, cozzies or wet-times stretchy pants, we are united in one thing above all else: a passionate desire to not think about what the government is up to, under any circumstances. And that makes things great for this government, because it means it can carry on doing, whatever things it fancies doing without any of that annoying ‘transparency’ or ‘accountability’ stuff that would otherwise make it awkward to, for example, appoint failed political candidates to incredibly lucrative gigs with the Fair Work Commission. Isn’t that right, Sophie Mirabella? Unfortunately, when the unwilling Australian public is forced to pay attention to the government, it historically doesn’t end well. And with the vaccine rollout falling 3.4 million doses short of its four million dose target, Scott Morrison has ensured that his government has Australia’s full attention. If this were a single large screw-up by an otherwise solid government, the rollout would probably not be the political crisis it’s shaping up as being. But it’s not a one-off, and that’s why everyone’s now talking about the next election being at risk for a government that seemed on track to walk to an easy win as recently as three months ago. It’s merely the latest in a series of rolling disasters, all characterised by the Morrison government’s reliance on announcements masquerading as action, a seeming lack of interest in successfully managing problems as they occur, and an emphasis on angrily insisting that it’s anyone else’s fault when the crisis inevitably becomes public. It’s a strategy that has worked with bushfires (it’s arsonists!) and the collapse of the Centrelink site (it’s hackers!) and the Ruby Princess debacle (it’s a state responsibility!). And that’s before we
The Byron Shire Echo Volume 35 #44 April 14, 2021 Established 1986 • 24,000 copies every week The Echo acknowledges the people of the Bundjalung nation as the traditional custodians of this land and extends respect to elders past, present and future. Disclaimer: The Echo is committed to providing a voice for our whole community. The views of advertisers, letter writers, and opinion writers are not necessarily those of the owners or staff of this publication.
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Andrew P Street mention the reports of abuse against women within the government which Morrison is attempting to sidestep while refusing to do anything as radical as, say, investigate MPs accused of stalking or sexual violence. And that accumulation of scandals has been teetering on the precipice, just waiting for the weight of one major catastrophe to tip it into an avalanche of voter fury. And… say, can you hear that distant roaring sound? Up until very recently, the government had been able to tout their success at keeping Australia’s COVID-19 impact at a level below much of the rest of the world. But now, with a vaccine rollout that rivals nobody but Botswana, it’s starting to look less like the product of good federal management and more like swift border control and population testing by the state governments, and a handy amount of pure luck. We’ve seen this reflected in the thumping returns of governments in Queensland and WA, likely to be repeated shortly in Tasmania, whereas the feds have spent the last year demanding states open their borders (including an aborted High Court challenge to the WA government) and failing to protect residents in Commonwealth-run aged-care facilities. This means that the bungled vaccine rollout isn’t a typical Morrison political embarrassment that’s of interest to Twitter but with little wider impact on the community – like, say Energy minister Angus Taylor using a fake document to smear Sydney Mayor Clover Moore and never providing a sensible explanation. The government’s failure means we
risk more public health and economic crises, as the longer Australians go unvaccinated against a fast-mutating virus, the more lockdowns, travel restrictions, event cancellations, lingering illnesses and potential deaths we have to endure. The recent three-day pre-Easter lockdown has been estimated as having cost Brisbane literally billions in lost revenue: a huge loss to the local economy and a massive political snafu for a federal government desperate to improve their electoral prospects in the state. And now the government has abandoned even setting a vaccine target, along with any thought of holding an election this year. Obviously, the plan from here is to wait it out and hope the public gets bored and dozes off again. But the longer a rollout takes, the longer Australians are separated from overseas friends and family members, and the greater risk every city and state faces of further snap lockdowns and border closures – all of which will now be laid at the federal government’s door. And hey, maybe everything will go great from here on. Maybe all those doses Morrison claims to have secured will actually appear, the bureaucratic confusion for GPs and patients will diminish, and it’ll be smooth sailing to our nation’s glorious post-COVID future. But the longer that Morrison fails to provide a competent government, the more likely it is that the public will replace it with one they can more safely ignore. Q Andrew P Street is a journalist, columnist, author, editor and broadcaster. For more information, visit www.patreon.com/andrewpstreet.
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With a vaccine rollout that rivals nobody but Botswana, it’s starting to look less like the product of good federal management…
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