Council will be dealing with a planning report to endorsement the draft Regulation of Sex Services Development Control Plan 2005, and place the DCP on public exhibition (for a period of 28 days). We are also asked to adopt the draft DCP as an interim policy for the entire local government area (LGA).
Sex service premises are defined as premises providing or arranging prostitution including brothels, premises arranging sexual encounters including sex on premises and swingers clubs, other types of sex service premises including strip clubs and premises which sell restricted material such as adult book shops.
Currently there are three different policies applying to regulation of the sex industry in COS. This DCP will bring them into line and remove any conflicting planning policies. It should be noted that Council is deferring consideration of home based occupation sex workers as it will be incorporated into the City Plan due for consideration late in 2006. The DCP does not change or alter the regulation of home occupation sex service premises. However I am suprised that a DCP for the sex industry can so neatly side step the vexed issue of prostitution operating from resiential properties.
The DCP will assist in development assessment and defending any decisions in the Land and Environment Court. It provides more certainty for applicants and residents. The adoption of a development control plan to regulate the development of sex service premises has been identified as a component of the City Plan review programme. The identified timeframe for this project is for public exhibition during October 2005 with adoption of the DCP to be recommended by December 2005.
I support the review and development of a new comprehensive DCP for the sex industry. I know that residents and business owners are concerned about the impact of excessive concentrations of sex industry activities has on different areas of the COS LGA including Kings Cross, Darlinghurst and Newtown (King Street). I do not support any suggestions to remove the 75 metre anti clustering rules currently in place. Particularly for Kings Cross where the excessive concentration built up over several decades has created an unattractive land use monopoly.
More discussions on Kings Cross and Strippers blogged earlier.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Draft Regulation of Sex Services Development Control Plan
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16 comments:
Shayne, it is interesting to see your belief in market forces and free enterprise vanish in the face of your elitist wowserism. Face it, there is a seedy side to human nature and Kings Cross just happens to be the one tiny chink in suburban Sydney where it shows, along with a lot of other interesting stuff. If you don't like it, why don't you move to Double Bay? Leave the rest of us adults to make our own choices.
Recently I had to walk behind two tourists in Maclaey St as they sidestepped a reeling junkie with a torn shirt and blood down the side of his face. Not unusual unfortunately. That kind of seedy does no one any favours, and the Cross is desperately in need of a lift. It's not about turning it into Double Bay: it's about treating the place and the majority who live there with some respect. The poster above needs to travel beyond Sydney and see what cities elsewhere in Australia and overseas are achieving with similar districts.
I am not sure that opposing regulation of prostitution and/or dirty dancing has much to do with heroin use.
"The poster above needs to travel beyond Sydney and see what cities elsewhere in Australia and overseas are achieving with similar districts" - this is a pretty juvenile response - not only is it cultural cringe, it is patronising and assumes poster 1 has not been overseas.
Anyway, just because the EUrocrats are doing something does not mean we should - in fact, it often is a sign we should do the opposite.
The first poster had it right - coming to the nuisance is no defence at law (Miller v Jackson) but it is a defence politically.
If the police would arrest the heroin users and give them the choice of prosecution or compulsory rehab, we would not have this problem (I am a resident, if poster number 2 wants to argue ad hominem). Instead, the authorities turn a blind eye and encourage blatant criminality in the injecting room, and then the junkies roll out into the street creating a public nuisance.
I can assure poster 2 that most backpackers from Europe are more alarmed by the sight of armed police squads with sniffer dogs than the odd junkie having a crisis. Poster 3 is right - I travel overseas regularly and enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere of Soho or Amsterdam. Plenty of junkies there, too. No sniffer dogs though as these more civilised countries don't want to waste so much money on catching smalltime pot users, which is what sniffer dogs do. Mr Mallard should wake up that his middle-class 'Tidy Town' approach to Kings Cross is pure cultural cringe. Here's a quote from his mate, Donald Rumsfeld:
"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and
commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and
do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here."
He was speaking about the invasion of Iraq, but the principle applies here too!
Dear Poster 2: Trying to enforce a personal preference for suburban wowserism on the one place in Sydney that is different is not 'respect'.
It is interesting that you see yourself in the majority and that you think you deserve 'respect' from these poor sods on the street. I doubt you are in the majority as, strangely enough, there are a lot of people who live here because they like it, warts and all. One might say they are more intelligent than the NIMBYS who want to change the world according to their own likeness. You might like to pretend the world exists according to your own preferences but the things you see in Kings Cross are a healthy reminder that it doesn't. Sweep stuff under the carpet and it will surely breed carpet lice!
I don't suppose you are a Christian -- check Jesus' attitude to the poor and dispossessed.
I note no-one has questioned Poster 1's point about the Liberal belief in small government and personal freedom.
Thanks for all the debate. I'm certainly NOT wanting to turn Kings Cross into Double Bay. In all my commentary I have argued that we can pull back some of the more difficult sleezey actvities in the Cross to rediscover what is referred to without detail as 'naughty but nice' (Sartor, Turnbull, Moore). The discussion at Council on this issue revealed that the strip clubs are tied together with brothel operations (a business model opposed by Striptease Australia). This is one of the more sleezier elements in the Cross. Venues that barely survive frequented as a right of passage by gangs of young footy lads tanked up and ready to brawl. I have no problem with quality strip clubs in the Cross and separate brothels. This will encourage strip clubs to become 'clubs' again and the strippers to focus on their unique business rather than dealing with the lads and all the associated problems that they and the rest of Kings Cross live with.
Times are changing and Kings Cross is changing as it always has over the years. There are plenty of other 'chinks in suburban Sydney' including brothels in nearly every suburb, home based sex workers and the internet.
Only two of the strip clubs include brothels to my knowledge. And so what? Seems a good example of vertical integration to me. There are no other non-suburban 'chinks' in Sydney, Mr Mallard. The existence of a striptease hotel or a brothel here and there does not equate to the Cross, which is more than the sum of its parts.
Like it or not, some people like the Cross . It is the one refuge from suburbia left, and the marginalised people, spruikers and other visible signs of difference are just part of it.
And the illicit drug trade will continue as long as prohibition makes the space for it, just like bootlegging in the days of Al Capone. Kings Cross is simply the visible evidence of the contradictions inherent in prohibition.If you support prohibition, at least have the grace to live with its consequences
There are no known examples of backpackers being deported for possession of marijuana.
The sooner the police arrest these druggies and get them off the streets, the better.
jake
Michael Gormly [alias Poster 1] peddles the same hoary old myth: make it illegal and it just moves around the corner.
The point is: nobody in council has suggested making the sex industry illegal.
They just want it properly managed. What's wrong with that?
And by that they mean probably this:
No adverse impacts for other businesses, ie. no girls on the street
No adverse impacts for visitors, ie. no spruikers
No adverse impacts for residents, ie. noise control and no brothels, sex clubs adjacent to residents units or bedrooms or loungerooms. Seems reasonable to me.
Amanda.
There at least 6 sex clubs, ie Porky's, Love Machine, P/aybirds, Stripperama, Pleasure Chest (now getting a place of Public entertainment Licence)etc.
Way too mnay for a primarily residential area.
And Councillor Mallard's stupid idea, supported by the KX Business Partnership is for council to buy these buildings.
Sure, $70m later, when coucnil si broke, and the clubs have rented elswhere down the road, where does that leave us?
Worse off!
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