Art Sydney 2005 this weekend

marlon dalton at the Art Sydney 2005 this weekend at Fox Studios.

Mind boggling, exciting, seen, scene, over-crowded, bargains, great art and garbage!! Opening night was fantastic.

Catalina IIOil on Belgian Linen2700mm X 1200mm

Tantamount Oil on Belgian Linen2700mm X 850mm

more pics marlon dalton www.hoodoogallery.com

Changing skyline...

I spotted these unusual extensions earlier this week whilst having a coffee at the Macquarie Street Mint Cafe. I recall my friend former Councillor Kathryn Greiner consulting me about this development application concerned about public safety and liability issues. I offered that you wouldn't get me near it but that it was a great idea for tourism. PS the restoration and adaptation of the Mint for the Historic Houses Trust is a masterpiece of adaptation well worth a visit and available for functions!

Picture and article today's Daily Telegraph



Use the viewing platform Skywalker
August 27, 2005
IT LOOKS like a platform for bungee jumping but this angular addition to Sydney Tower is actually the beginnings of the city's next high-flying tourist attraction.
Set to open in October, "Skywalk" is a viewing platform that will give visitors the chance to go beyond the glass 268m above the city.
Double deck steel pathways will link two suspended platforms jutting out on the north and south sides of the famous golden turret.
The hydraulic viewing platforms will overhang the building, getting people out over the streets and surrounding buildings below.
The venture, owned by Sydney Aquarium, will challenge the ever-popular and highly lucrative BridgeClimb on the Harbour Bridge.
Like BridgeClimb, Skywalkers will have to dress up in overalls and remain attached to safety rails during the 95-minute walk.
Unlike the grey outfits worn by BridgeClimbers, Skywalkers will blend into the tower's backdrop in garish golden jumpsuits.
It will cost $109 for adults and $85 for kids between 10 and 15.
The $5 million project has been a small feat of engineering, with workers having to take all materials up in lifts from street level.
The whole structure is being assembled on the top of the tower before being put in place.
Sydney Aquarium bought the idea for Skywalk from a New York investor who runs a similar attraction on top of the Empire State Building.
The company expects about 50,000 thrillseekers to take the tour in its first year of operation.
Meanwhile, the revolving restaurant in the tower will re-open on Monday, renamed 360 Bar and Dining Room, after a $1.5 million refurbishment.

Media Release - Shayne Mallard calls for Kings Cross revitalisation Plan

City of Sydney Liberal Councillor Shayne Mallard today called for the city council to invest resources in creating a revitalisation DCP (Development Control Plan) for the ageing red light district of Kings Cross.
“I support The Lord Mayor’s recent call for a ban on spruikers in Darlinghurst road Kings Cross, but it does not go far enough.” Mallard said. Councillor Mallard’s proposal is a plan to reward property owners and businesses in Kings Cross for investing in new sensitive developments on Darlinghurst road and cleaning up the unpopular strip.

“Council should take a leaf from the book by New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and harness the burgeoning inner city property market to encourage property renewal in Kings Cross and in so doing clean up the worst elements of the sex industry and club scene.” Mallard said.

Former New York mayor Rudolf Giuliani utilised his council’s powers to acquire the sleaziest of sex industry and club properties in Times Square, cancelled their existing use rights and redeveloped the properties for a profit on behalf of the people of New York. Today Times Square is a shinning beacon to inner city renewal.

“Council should explore a policy of one off development bonuses for property owners in exchange for the cancellation of their existing sex and alcohol usage rights. Council could then reconsider any future application for sex industry or club usage along the strip in a more manageable framework.” Mallard said. Councillor Shayne Mallard who is a local resident in the Kings Cross area has been critical of the city council for losing it’s focus on the renewal of Kings Cross.

“Former Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull had a vision to make Kings Cross ‘naughty but nice’ and the city invested more than $10 million in the wonderful street scape upgrade and a new neighbourhood service centre.” Councillor Mallard whilst very supportive of the investment said more has to be done in a sustained commitment to renew and improve the area.

“Council has a window of opportunity to work with property owners, businesses and local residents to master plan an urban renewal for Kings Cross that can still provide some adult entertainment whilst ending the unfortunate sleazy element that still permeates Kings Cross,” he concluded.

East Darling Harbour - more of the same?

Recently I blogged about the iconic site at East Darling Harbour (above and details here) and the article by respected writer and former City of Sydney Councillor Elizabeth Farrelly (read it again here). Some readers emailed me privately (very shy readers on this bog) and took me to task for being a bit harsh on Elizabeth. Well last weekend Farrelly revisited the issue by examining the 137 entrants for the East Darling Harbour design competition and putting the whole issue into the context of the 10 year old Labor government's track record. This time I have to say I am in strong agreement with her observations.

On Thursday night Liberal Opposition Leader, John Brogden committed if elected in 2007 to reverse and holt as much as possible the exodus of the working harbour including the end of White Bay for roll-on roll-off port activity. This was a welcome announcement to the 600 or so supporters of the working harbour coalition.

Meanwhile the Patricks and P&O wharves at East Darling Harbour will be redeveloped. I expect some modernist gentrification similar to the neighbouring and popular King Street Wharf and Walsh Bay. But I do believe that the site is of such rarity and a historic one-off opportunity that design and architecture excellence should be supported. Farrelly refers to the 'politically correct imprecision' of the designs. All low rise and and largely non-offensive. If only Harry Seidler was not ill we might have seen some exciting towers in dialogue with his Blues Point project - never completed. From boomerangs and wind mills to more wharves, I was not excited enough to sign up to any one design.

SOM's blob totems got the juices going for just a minute especially the thought of flying in over the Harbour Bridge to see their Easter Island like monuments guarding our western shores. but I am reliably informed that blob architecture is already out dated. Maybe I am seeking the neo-blob movement.

I guess in the end I came back to the the Ed Lippmann collaboration for its energy and livability as well as the modernism appeal of the southern towers.

City off Sydney Council has been totally bypassed in this process. Not suprising when you know that the Lord Mayor has been campaigning against the whole concept from day one. At a recent Council meeting we adopted a very well researched submission arguing that the Council will be the ultimate inheritor of the development so we must be engaged in the assessment and development from stage 2. (Read the sumission Item 10.14 here). We await a government response.

I reproduce below with link and credit to the SMH Elizabeth Farrelly's fine article.

One site, 137 wild ideas
August 20, 2005

East Darling Harbour's future is obscured by a wealth of often conflicting proposals, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
If intelligence is, as some say, the capacity to embrace contradictory ideas at one time, contemporary Sydney is somewhere near the genius basket. Historians may even see it as our defining characteristic; the way we've embraced virtuality to the point of accepting a near-total disjunction between the look and the fact. The way government is no longer about what is done, but what is said; government, that is, by press release.
We have, for instance, a 10-year-old Government that we placidly accept as green-tinged for its shameless promotion of bike policies, clean-air policies and rail-enhancement policies - despite the fact that it habitually scraps the bikeways, rail projects, integrated ticketing and natural gas bus programs so entailed. Then, like boys in the sandpit, it builds motorways instead. A Government that vows to double Sydney's rail freight within six years just as it kills White Bay, Sydney Harbour's only dock with direct rail access. A Government that pays counsel thousands a day to wage war on major rail projects that, as Justice David Lloyd recently found in Patrick versus the planning minister, actually "promote [the Government's own] policy target". A Government that talks about its Metro Strategy and its Freight Strategy as if such things existed, when in fact there are no such documents. A Government that, in pursuit of such strategy, spends two years and millions of dollars on a super ministry of planning, infrastructure and everything - then axes the lot on a whim, reinstating old feudal habits. A Government that now, heaping outrage upon outrage, makes the very sacker of the rail and cycleways, Michael Costa, the new Minister for Infrastructure.
East Darling Harbour, with stage one of its urban design competition completed, is both the latest product of such remarkable intelligence and its latest victim.
We call it East Darling Harbour, of course, to make it sound fatuous and kind of distant, like some peripheral leisure precinct we needn't lose any sleep over. In fact, it's 22 hectares of prime downtown land going begging: the first such site for decades; the last, maybe, ever. The area is vast - almost four CUB sites, seven World Squares - but the issues, well, they make the site look minute. Yet here we are acting like they're all sorted, so now we can get on with the prettification. Nothing could be further from the truth.
East Darling Harbour is a reclaimed concrete apron, sandwiched between a gentrified Walsh Bay and a gentrified King Street Wharf, and occupied by Patrick and P&O's last Port Jackson container ports. Patrick and P&O are moving out, voluntarily and soon, to Port Botany. The port wants to expand to accommodate them, but even the Government's own inquiry into the matter, chaired for most of its life by the new Minister for Ports and Waterways, Eric Roozendaal, recommended no expansion until Botany's environmental problems are solved. These include airport air and noise pollution, a toxic groundwater plume spreading towards the bay from the north, the heavily polluted Penrhyn Estuary, the Kurnell refinery output and Bob Carr's desalination plant, pumping hot water into the fragile bay. Plus there's a seagrass problem - it's a crucial fish-breeding ground and no one's sure it can survive any of the above, much less all. That's before you even start expanding the port.
Then there's the whole working harbour debate. Half of Sydney is still passionately engaged with it, though the Government continues to talk working harbour (meaning ferries and cruise ships) while acting like it's all over and gone to Wollongong. Leaving the docks to gentrification-by-design.
One can only presume that most of the 137 architect teams who spent tens of thousands of dollars each to enter the competition - just for the model, and as much again in time - weren't across most of this, or they might have thought twice about tossing their pearls into the swill. Yet toss they did, and a short list of five we have. Are we any the wiser?
"The task that now lies before you," intoned then premier Bob Carr, "is to provide ideas and concepts that will underpin the transformation of this spectacular site."
Transform it into what? No one seemed all that clear, frankly. The brief called for 50 per cent parkland, 75 per cent of what is built to be commercial space and 100 per cent self-funding. Beyond that, it dissolved into a swamp of politically correct imprecision.
The jury, a 10-person pollies' special with a hefty preponderance of bureaucrats, wasn't much clearer. It sought view preservation for the noisy Millers Point types and something - but what? - that "captures the essence of Sydney".
To cover itself, the jury chose as finalists exemplars of five different design strategies: a modernist mega-wedge (from PTW, Australia, which was covering the bases with no fewer than five separate submissions); a moment of wild'n'wacky figuralism (from American stars Thom Mayne and George Hargreaves with Project Architecture); a carefully knitted fine-grain old glove (from locals Hill Thalis, Paul Berkemeier and Jane Irwin); an old-style "bold vision" from Lend Lease Design Group showing one half solidly built over, the other half Canberra-esque parkland; and a rich one-of-everything mix from a team that includes the grand vizier of British urbanism, Lord Richard Rogers, the US's wild girl of landscape, Martha Schwartz, our own Ed Lippmann and Lend Lease Development (as opposed to Design).
This last is easily the most charming of the five. Like many others, it concentrates the high-rise at the southern, Wynyard end of the site. Unlike most, though, this scheme renounces the vast and friendless lawn feature for the chock-full city precinct: food market, food school, cricket school, fishing pontoon, harbour pool, aquaculture facility, eucalyptus forest, wine centre, wetlands and city port. Plus a new city beach, modelled on Nielsen Park, and a whole system of canals and harbours carved from landfill. Fanciful perhaps, but it'd sure be fun for the flaneur.
Apart from the five finalists, who receive $50,000 now and a further $100,000 for stage II, an apparently random selection of 28 is also exhibited, while the remaining 100-odd also-rans languish in A3 files. This mysterious three-tier arrangement has sent a wave of angst through the refuses - not least because it means some appealing ideas will never see light of day: Lippmann Associates' other scheme, for instance, with three tall eco-pods at one end and a new rail station under Observatory Hill; and Tony Caro's elegant seven finger wharves solution.
The exhibited also-rans also offer some provocations, including the American Crawford Architects' proposed part-flooding to provide wetlands, mangroves and wind-harvesting, and SOM's bizarre blobs-on-sticks. Blobs, made possible by cyber design, are architecture's latest thing and SOM is one of America's shiniest corporate firms, but its fistful of smooth-skinned, snot-green blob-totems are the weirdest thing in the show. Not loveable, mind, just weird.
But that's the good thing about cyber-Sydney. None of it really matters. It's not like they're going to build the winning scheme - are you kidding? - just spend another few hundred thou on a masterplan, which is easier than a metro strategy and, anyway, along with the entire state infrastructure, will self-destruct within the next 20 seconds ...

Unions manipulate Councillors in political campaign

Councils are being dragged into the Federal government's Industrial Relations reforms and rate payers are going to be the political and financial victims. At Monday night's Council meeting the Lord Mayor dropped onto our desks with 24 minutes notice a complex Lord Mayoral Minute attacking the Howard government's IR reforms (read the LM Minute here).

I found it a contradiction that the Lord Mayor was attacking the government for proposing to centralise the IR system and made the point that she and other independents regularly call for the abolition of the state governments in their vision for a two tiered system of government. 'Centralising power to eradicate duplication and inefficiencies' I seemed to recall. I suggested that the Council stop hiding behind huff and puff indignation and call a spade a spade! The Lord Mayor and City of Sydney does not like the Howard government's politics. I even suggested we add a new standing item to our Council meeting agenda to read: The City of Sydney codemns the Howard government for ............. Because in the past few months the Council has condemned the Howard government for introducing Voluntary Student Unionism and approving the Airport redevelopment. The Lord Mayor regulary attacks the Federal government for 'not engaging in the the planning for the city' yet fails to acknowledge freight rail and port reforms driven by the only government in this country focused on building a stronger economy.

Now we have the latest political campaign manipulating rate payer's scarce money to fight a union driven campaign on behalf of the left. The silliness of last Monday will be surpassed by the irresponsibility of Newcastle Council prohibiting companies from tendering for Council goods and services if they have Australian work place agreements in their work place. As the media release below points out AWA's are legal and the legality of this prohibition is very questionable and should be subject to court challenges. Residents and ratepayers should be very concerned about this irresponsible action from Labor, Greens and left wing Independents.

Media Release from Hunter Business Chamber
23 August 2005
Newcastle Council blackbans businesses

The proposed ban by Newcastle City Council on businesses that employ people on Australia Workplace Agreements is a classic case of party politics overwhelming logic, Hunter Business Chamber CEO, Glenn Thornton, said today. “We understand that councillors may have strong opinions on the proposed industrial relations changes, but banning companies from tendering for council work is simply ridiculous. “Workplace agreements are presently part of the legal industrial relations structure of Australia and Council might well find itself in very difficult situations if it implements this ban. It is our belief that Newcastle Council should be seeking advice on this proposed ban in relation to possible breaches of the Trade Practices Act, the Local Government Act and the Workplace Relations Act (Freedom of Association).” Mr Thornton said the business sector is struggling to understand the relevance of this Council decision to its core responsibilities of providing services to ratepayers. The Chamber would argue that tenders should be assessed on merit rather than whether or not AWA’s exist within a company. “It doesn’t take much imagination to see that council ratepayers could be paying more for services because of this ban. After all, more than 80 per cent of businesses employ fewer than 20 people and, in most of them, people either work on workplace agreements or contracts; these companies will no longer be able to tender for council contracts if this ban is implemented. And what of existing contractors, will they now be checked for employment structure suitabilities?” Mr Thornton said Hunter Business Chamber was surprised and disappointed that Councillors would even consider adopting the ban. Chamber members employ tens of thousands of people in the Hunter – some under union agreements and others under workplace agreements. As most business people know, the Chamber has taken a very public stance that it is opposed to any misuse of the industrial relations system by either rogue employers or employees. The Business Chamber calls on Newcastle City Councillors to review firstly, the true charter of Council and secondly, this proposed ban as soon as possible.

Life's easier when it's green

Denmark.dk reports on a study proving what we all knew - that people with access to 'green space' are far less stressed in their lives. At the City of Sydney I strongly support more public open space, quality gardens in new developments (with deep soil planting sites for trees and not just planter boxes) and preservation of healthy mature trees. I am also a big fan of Council's network of community gardens and think that Council can do more to extend these and link them together.

Life's easier when it's green
People with access to gardens or other green areas are less stressed







Morten Juhl/ Scanpix

People with access to gerdens or other green areas are less stressed

'Sniff two flowers and call me in the morning', could be the doctor's advice the next time a patient calls complaining of stress.
A new study from Forest and Landscape Denmark, a research institute at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, finds that people feel less stressed when they have access to green areas. Garden owners proved to be the least stressed of all.
For 93 percent of those participating in the study, green areas had a positive effect on their state of mind. Many also felt that their health improved by being outside.
'Most people agree that green areas have a positive influence on people's attitudes and that they are good places to calm down. Just having a view of something green relieves stress,' said Thomas B. Hansen, an urban planning expert who authored the study together with cultural geographer and physiotherapist Karsten B. Hansen.
Their study was based on the responses of 2000 Danes between the ages of 18 and 80.
Though forests, lakes and rivers, and the ocean were attractive areas for many people, they seldom visited such areas unless they lived close by them. Local green refuges such as a garden or a common courtyard within 400 metres of where one lived had more of an impact on day-to-day existence.
Although the study also found that many people enjoy recreating in green areas, they found that garden life - gardening, grilling, sunbathing - was the most valuable form of outdoor activity. For many, just being outside in a green area was enough.
'It is green areas in of themselves that are important. It can be big and fancy and beautiful, but it doesn't need to be that,' said Hansen. 'The most important thing is that there is an established greenspace so people can have the opportunity to be outside.'
/ritzau/

Midnight close for new Restaurant in Newtown

P&D Item 4 169 King Street Newtown -
A new restaurant for King Street has a recommendation to change their operating hours from 3am back to midnight and limits use of first floor as restaurant only and not a bar following 20 objections from local residents. I will continue to stress the need that Newtown must maintains its culture of diversity and fine grained interest and not copycat the Oxford path of large pubs and nightclubs dominating the strip. A smart boutique bar restaurant such as this will help maintain King Streets reputation as an interesting and vibrant place to visit.

Neglected Green Square looking forward to Aquatic Facility

The Aquatics & Leisure Facility Development Strategy is set to be adopted and implemented by Council. Swimming pools have come a long way from the 1950’s when many an MP made their way to Parliament via the local swimming pool pork barrel. Today in 2005 aquatic strategies should mean more than tile lined chlorine fragrant pools. Plans and policies should ensure ‘aquatics facilities’ are much more including heated year round pools, hydrotherapy pools, gyms and community areas and other facilities. The Strategy has resolved that it’s direction be to the unpooled south - ‘southern area aquatic facility’ focusing in the former South Sydney Council buildings along Joynton Avenue in the Green Square area. This is a huge block of land in an area desperate for quality community infrastructure and an area which is in serious need of revitalisation. Green square needs more than a fancy new pool to build a greater sense of community and I will continue to urge Council to invest more in the fast growing area.

Former Water Police Site rezoning

Council is proposing to rezone the former Water Police Site recently acquired after a prolonged community campaign as ‘operational land.’ This has stirred up some local community concern that a future Council may dispose of the site and nofulfillil Council’s commitment to create an extension to the Pyrmont Point harbour front parkland. I am fully committed to the creation of the parkland and ascandidateate for the City Council I signed up to save Pyrmont Point from overdevelopment.

The Site was transferred to the City in July and since then the process to create a master plan for the site has commenced including an ‘extensive public consultation process’. The Council recommendation that the site be zoned ‘operational’ land is standard procedure and will reduce delays in the consultation and development of a new parkland. The site’s sale covenant from the State Government prohibits any significant non recreational development on the site. I will be arguing atht Council should include a sunset clause in this rezoning requiring the rezoning to come back to Council with 12 months for reassessment and if appropriate rezoning to community lands.

Paradise, Purgatory or Hell Hole?

Pyrmont residents and Council staff have proposed that the unnamed reserve at Bulwara road in Pyrmont be given the name ‘Paradise Park’ as opposed to ‘Purgatory Park’ and ‘Hell Hole Park’, in an attempt to better connect the area with it’s history as three former sandstone quarries with these unusual and evocative names. The quarries provided the unique golden Sydney sandstone for such buildings as the GPO in Martin Place, Australian Museum and Sydney University.

I agree that the name chosen is very relevant to the place and its history, however I feel it is still necessary to put in place a plaque in the park to explain why the park is called Paradise (as opposed to Hell Hole!) and perhaps help new residents and visitors to appreciate the sites and the role they played in creating the unique sandstone character of Sydney.

Slow response to support artists

My call for Council to support young and emerging artists by utilising our vacant properties as cheap art studios and galleries elicited a positive response from the Sydney Morning Herald and Clover Moore yesterday. However I can not understand why it will take another 4 months at least for staff to respond to my request with a draft policy. Meanwhile young and inovative artists leave the inner city for the western suburbs.


From Today's SMH
Artists in line for cheap rents
By Sunanda CreaghAugust 19, 2005

Poor artists could be renting vacant council property on the cheap within a year, if a City of Sydney councillor's vision is realised. The council is investigating the possibility of free electricity and subsidised exhibition space for inner-city artists.
At a recent meeting, the Liberal councillor Shayne Mallard moved to expand a review of the council's subsidised accommodation policy, to look at whether artists could use empty council properties on month-to-month leases.
"Something that worries me is the exodus of young new and emerging artists, as well as established artists, because of the increasing value of inner-city property," he said yesterday.
Mallard suggested properties such as the former Sutton's Holden showroom on William Street, which has been empty for 18 months, could be made available at a reduced rent.
He said the council could create a register of artists who could use empty properties under the condition they vacated the premises if a permanent tenant was found.
"I am talking about getting value for properties that are sitting around empty," he said.
The Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, who voted for the amendment, said the council was reviewing all properties suitable for subsidised accommodation and considering requests from other community groups. "As part of this review properties that may be suitable for temporary artists' spaces will be investigated," she said.
"In addition to council officers reviewing subsidised accommodation, Councillor Marcelle Hoff and I have been, with various institutions and individuals interested in the arts, investigating potential permanent accommodation of artists' spaces within the city's local government area."
The council is expected to receive the report early next year.

More support needed for new artists

Today's Sydney Morning Herald has a very interesting article on the exodus from the city of exhibition spaces for new and emerging artists. In Visual Arts Sunanda Creagh explores the closure of the Artist-run-Initiative Space 3 at Chippendale. Apparently the victim of creeping land prices and speculation as market forces march inevitably westward from Paddington, clearing Surry Hills, East Sydney and now Chippendale before it. Council can not and should not try to hold back the tide (just as we barely make a dent with an aggressive affordable housing policy) but Council can play an important proactive role in providing subsidised space for new artists to create and exhibit within the city.
At a recent Council meeting I amended the subsidised accommodation policy to include a new plank allowing suitable medium to long term vacant Council owned commercial space to be leased at a peppercorn rent on a month by month basis. This would target suitable emerging artists. I had in mind the huge empty spaces Council owns along William Street (eg the old Suttons Holden space) and the empty floors on 94 Oxford Street. The Lord Mayor accepted my innovative suggestion and I await a response from staff who I suspect are not as enthusiastic.
Part of Council's role in creating and maintaining a sustainable City of Sydney is to support the arts community. It's a sad fate for this city if we don't make efforts to prevent the exodus of artists from the inner city. Artist of all ilk provide colour, movement, understanding, reflection and interpretation to our day to day existence. Artists give meaning to our lives and often awaken slumbering issues within our society. I will be raising this matter again at Council and look forward to Council sponsored exhibition space opening sometime in the not too distant future.

Urban squeeze makes space the final frontier
August 18, 2005


Bad news ... Artist and exhibition space director Mark Drew rues the closure of yet another inner-city avenue for exposure.Photo: Lisa Wiltse
Emerging artists are struggling to find cheap, inner-city venues where they can show their work, writes Sunanda Creagh.
It's almost too big to be noticed. From the outside it looks like an old hotel, with balconies around the top, peeling white walls and gorgeous arched doorways. On the corner of a busy Chippendale intersection, 151 Regent Street is the sort of place you walk past a thousand times before you even realise it's there.
The building has, at various times, been a bank, a hat factory and an artist's studio, but for the past five years it has been known as Space 3 - a free space where artists, not the gallery owners, ran the show.
More than 600 events were held in this time, ranging from art exhibitions and sound installations to experimental music concerts and artist talks.
The voice of one of the gallery's co-founders, Rully Zakaria, echoes round the enormous rooms as he remembers the heyday of Space 3.
"The improvised music scene started off here, in a way, and we had shows once or twice a week. I was holding drawing classes as well, and there were yoga classes," Zakaria says. "It became an active space, not just a gallery. It wasn't just a set of walls."
Though plenty of artist-run spaces had been around longer, Space 3 soon earned a reputation as a hub of creative activity, bringing together varied communities of inner-city artists and inspiring others to start their own artist-run initiatives.
But real estate realities loom large in the inner city. In early July, the Space 3 artists received a termination notice; they had a month to leave. The building has been listed for sale and is expected to fetch up to $1.4 million.
Melletios Kyriakidis, another of the founders of Space 3, says: "I think the landlord is just trying to sell it at the right time and this is the right time, apparently."
Kyriakidis notes that Chippendale is becoming a more polished place. "It's a classic case - move the artists in, the area gets gentrified, apartments get built up, the artists move out.
"It happened in Surry Hills 10 years ago, it happened to Paddington. It's global."
Exhibitions scheduled for the rest of the year have been moved to emergency locations, such as China Heights, an artist-run space in Surry Hills.
Mark Drew, the co-director of China Heights, says the closure of Space 3 has resonated throughout the community of artists running their own galleries. "We were all pretty shocked because they are a bit of an institution and a bit of a model for what we have done here as well," he says.
For artist Zanny Begg, the Space 3 story is all too familiar. Begg was a co-founder of the Wedding Circle, an artist-run space just down the road from Space 3, in Meagher Street.
Begg and several others ran an experimental, free-to-exhibit gallery for almost 10 months before the City of Sydney Council ordered them to close. The official problem was the holding of "illegal assemblies".
Begg accepts that, but suspects noise complaints might be behind it - well-heeled, trendy types in new apartments aren't as accepting of exhibition openings extending late into the night as the old neighbourhood may have been.
"Chippendale is one of those places that's going to dramatically change in the short term. It's got that kind of dilapidated warehouse, empty feeling but it's also very, very inner city and there are a lot of trendy yuppie apartments there," she says.
For most Sydneysiders, Space 3 and the Wedding Circle won't be missed. But they are not the only casualties as warehouse spaces traditionally used by artists for exhibitions and studios are rapidly being converted into small units and apartments with rentals out of reach for the average artist.
But some artists say spaces like these - not-for-profit galleries where one can exhibit cheaply or for free - are vital to the health of the Sydney art scene and have a flow-on effect for the wider arts community. Read more here.

VP Day cellebrations

I was honoured to participate in a number of VP Day events over the past three days. Victory in the Pacific Day was commemorated yesterday and celebrates the Japanese unconditional surrender.






For Australians the day is particularly poignant as it commemorates the end to the direct threat to Australia's homeland, the end of fighting for thousands of men overseas in the Pacific and most emotionally the liberation of thousands more of Australian prisoners of war held by the Japanese. It represents the return to normality for the country.





On a very chilly Saturday morning I participated in the review of the VP day parade for veterans marching through the city along George Street. I agree with those disappointed with the thin crowds that the parade should have been approved for the actual day - being Monday and held at lunch time to coincide with the Cenotaph service. The Governor General (pictured with Mallard) took the salute and afterwards we were privileged to enjoy morning tea with some of the diggers. A small aside and highlight for the morning was a digger slipping a nip of rum into his orange juice at Town Hall - warding off that biting chill!



I was honoured to represent the Lord Mayor and City of Sydney at the Martin Place Cenotaph yesterday as we commemorated the end of war in the Pacific. The City laid a wreath alongside the new Premier and John Ryan MLC representing the NSW Opposition. As we prayed and sang hymns I gave thought to my own family and grandfather who served in the 11th Field Ambulance in New Guinea and the City of Sydney Council staff who served and many who did not return from WW2. A large memorial to their service is located in the portico at the Town Hall entry reminding me of their sacrifice each day.


I also recalled the efforts of those at home including the wives of the men away fighting and those in the essential services including local government. Finally my mind turned to those unforgettable images from Martin Place 60 years ago as tickertape and dancing swept the city in joyous celebrations.

It would only be a few months before troop ships would return with the City's loved ones. A special day and one to remember especially as the ranks of veterans from WW2 thin dramatically 'as those that are left grow old.'

Signs galore to stop the hoons

Item 10 for the Planning Development and Transport Committee tomorrow night is a proposal to close George Street in the Rocks (between Alfred Street and Hickson Road) from 10pm Friday to 4am Saturday and same into Sunday morning. Council and the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (the government body governing the Rocks) have come up with the no brainer to break the cruise circuit for so called car 'hoons'. It has been a fascinating and in my view uncomfortable unfolding of stereotyping of a certain community element who get their social engagement from cruising the streets of Sydney in hoted up Subarus. Street closures are not the answer here. All this trial street closure will do is move the 'hoons' to a new route. No doubt back into Kings Cross. "Hoons' - as long as they are law abiding have rights in this ciy as well. We should be working to provide facilities and services that ill meet their legal needs rather than jump to the outlaw options.

One thing is certain - they will not be using Palmer or Crown Streets to cross the Harbour after the outrageous action of the RTA to close the access from them to cross the harbour. Motorists from as far away as Paddington, Surry Hills, Rushcutters Bay and Darlinghurst will be forced to either crawl through the one well publicised 'rat run' or pay the $1.63 toll in the new tunnel. The RTA should leave the Palmer Street route open - even if they narrow it and phase the lights to discourage heavy intra-suburban traffic.

But back to the Rocks closure. Take a look at the new signs City Council is proposing to install to facilitate a transit way for only two nights a week! As if there is not enough signs already on the streets of this city. I will be moving for a comprehensive review of signs at these locations (looking for rationalisation) and failing a sensible reduction that no new sign posts be installed for the new signs (ie use existing posts). 21 new signs - I can't believe it! In one of the nations top heritage precints as well. In many ways I wonder how far this country has wandered from it authoritarian prison guards and whips convict past sown only metres from this site?

More Nats sliding under the waves

Crikey.com.au newsletter has a telling assessment of the future for the Queensland Nats.


What Barnaby Joyce is worried about
Charles Richardson writes:
To understand why Barnaby Joyce is making such a nuisance of himself within the Coalition, it's important to appreciate his electoral position. The National Party has senators from three states, but in New South Wales and Victoria they are elected on joint tickets with the Liberals, so their fate rests on the performance of the Coalition as awhole. In Queensland, however, the Coalition partners run separate tickets, so National Party fortunes depend on their own efforts. Before 1980, the National Party (and before it the Country Party) ran on a joint ticket in Queensland as well; they always got one of the three winnable positions, while the Liberals took the other two. But in that year they insisted on running a separate ticket, headed by Flo Bjelke-Petersen, wife of premier Joh. Sure enough, they outvoted the Liberals, and in 1983, with Joh at the height of his powers, they crushed them. Since then, however, it has been downhill all the way for the Queensland Nationals. In 1983 they beat the Liberal Party 2 to 1; ten years later, those positions were reversed, and by 2004 the Liberals were outvoting them 6 to 1. The following table shows the figures (available at the U.W.A. Politics database, here).Election CP/NP share of Coalition vote:
1980 53.7%
1983 66.0%
1984 62.4%
1987 61.5%
1990 31.7%
1993 31.6%
1996 29.8%
1998 25.1%
2001 20.8%
2004 14.7%

Joyce only just scraped in last year with One Nation preferences; if this precipitous trend continues he's got Buckley's chance of re-election in 2010. That helps to explain why he's doing everything he can to get himself a high profile in Queensland – regardless of what his colleagues in Canberra think.






You have to love that picture in the Sydney Morning Herald of my friend Senator Bill Heffernan 'communicating' with Barnaby Joyce. Described by one Liberal similar to the old bulls pulling the new young bulls into line.

Big cameras without phones

We just purchased a Nikon D50 for great digital photography ... but you wonder why (note the mobile phone camera over the shoulder of the pro's)?

Diary Date - The Case Against a National ID Card

Liberal party Members and Visitors are welcome. Come and join us for a pasta banquet in Sydney's original 'little Italy' at Stanley Street East Sydney.

Liberal Party NSW
MONTHLY TRI-BRANCH DINNER
POTTS POINT ELIZABETH BAY BRANCH
EAST SYDNEY BRANCH
DARLINGHURST SURRY HILLS BRANCH
Date: Tuesday 9th August 2005
Time: 6.30 for 7.00 pm Dinner
Venue: Giotto Art Café Restaurant
78 Stanley Street East Sydney

Mr Chris Puplick AO
Former NSW Privacy Commissioner
'The case against a national ID card'

Read about the National ID card debate below.

Chris Puplick: Trouble on the cardsJuly 18, 2005

The Australian Newspaper.

IT was inevitable that the London bombings should revive discussion of a national identity card. The Prime Minister has called for a debate about the issue, something the Attorney-General had ruled out just recently.The last time there was a genuine and informed national debate on this subject was 20 years ago. In 1985, the Hawke government introduced legislation to establish a national identity card system, called the Australia Card. The purposes were allegedly multifold: to enhance security, to crack down on welfare fraud, to better monitor immigration cases, to eliminate tax evasion and generally to "improve" the efficiency of government services.
At the time, John Howard's opposition forced the establishment of a joint parliamentary committee, of which I was a member, to examine the proposal. Our report in May 1986 recommended against the card. The Senate's continued rejection of the legislation was the alleged trigger for the 1987 federal election won by Labor. Proposals to then force through the card via a joint sitting of the parliament collapsed when a fatal technical flaw was discovered in the legislation.
Throughout this period, Howard and the Opposition were resolute in rejecting this measure. Every claim made for the benefits of the card was shown to be false, including those related to national security.
Nothing in the past two decades has changed in that regard. The benefits of national ID cards are grossly overstated and their potential negative impacts on our freedom and way of life remain unacceptable.

Conventional wisdowm says "everything has changed" since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Bali bombing in October 2002 and the London outrages this month, the argument goes, show that the terror threat has changed the world. But has it really?
The US, after all, has had its own home-grown terrorists (Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City in April 1995: 168 dead); tourists have been murdered (Luxor, November 1997: 62 dead), planes have been blown up (Lockerbie, December 1988: 270 dead); political terrorists have killed innocent people in the UK (Omagh, August 1998: 29 dead); embassies have been attacked (US in Kenya and Tanzania, August 1998: 224 dead).
The very word "assassin" is a corruption of the name of a radical Islamic sect originating as far back as the 12th century whose members were sent out to enforce fatwas to kill the alleged enemies of Islam; although in our time the real pioneers of this policy have been the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers.
Domestically, we have had terrorist activities going back to at least 1970, when the authorities thwarted a planned attack on the Serbian Orthodox Church in Canberra but failed to stop the bombing of the Yugoslav consulate in Melbourne. In 1972, Black September letter bombs addressed to Israeli diplomats were intercepted. In 1977, the Indian defence attache and his wife were kidnapped and wounded.
In 1978, a bomb exploded outside the Sydney CHOGM meeting, killing innocent bystanders. In 1980, the Turkish consul-general was assassinated. In 1983 a bomb was found and defused at the Lucas Heights atomic reactor. In 1985 shots were fired into the Vietnamese embassy. An assassination attempt was made on the leader of the Opposition in 1966 and a state MP was murdered in 1994.
Has Queensland Premier Peter Beattie and other advocates of an ID card really forgotten all this? What has really changed in Australia that suddenly justifies rolling over for Big Brother and undermining the protection of our civil liberties?
There are several new reasons that were not fully apparent 20 years ago, and these issues make me even more fearful of national ID systems.
To be effective, cards would need biometric identification, and anyone familiar with the privacy issues arising from the genetic revolution would have cause for concern. Identity fraud has in recent years become a major area of criminal activity - a national ID card system will only help it flourish. The data-matching power of computers has grown exponentially, raising questions of profiling of individuals without their knowledge or consent. Hacking puts our "secure" records at risk, even jury lists get into wrong hands.
Should 20 million Australians have their liberties trashed so that we might - I repeat might - detect the two or three mad jihadists in our midst? Will files now be created on the basis that people belong to a certain religion, attend particular places of worship or hold specific political opinions?
When the Queen visited the London bomb victims, she said: "Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life." A national ID card system would change our way of life. I hope the Queen is proven right and that Beattie and his mob are wrong.
Chris Puplick, a former Liberal senator who served on the joint select committee on the Australia Card, was privacy commissioner of NSW from 1999 to 2003.

Eryldene Camellias revisited

I did promise gardens! Those who know me also know too well that my great love in life is gardening. In a parallel career I have studied horticulture and garden design and owned a garden shop and landscaping business based in Darlinghurst during a white collar career interregnum in the late 1990's. I learnt my love for gardens at the elbow of my late grandmother Gladys Peterson (nee Farrar). Around 1980 we caught a train from Penrith to Gordon and walked to Eryldene to see the world reknown camellias of the late Professor E. G. Waterhouse.

I went back today after all these years to leave feeling the gardens were a little tired looking and the specimens stressed and lacking vigour. It could be the drought and old age or it could be from being loved to death by too many visitors traipsing around the place. None-the-less the architecture of Hardy Wilson and EG's love of China and his camellias stands the ravages of time.


And I bought myself a new cymbidium orchid from Swanes.
Highlights of winter - camellias, orchids and the powerful shapes of leafless trees. Back to politics and work tomorrow!

A bike trip a day keeps the doctor away

I am a well known enthusiastic advocate for increasing cycling in Sydney and a member of the City of Sydney Bicycle Strategy Steering Committee as we implement a whole of city cycling strategy working with Council, other government agencies and cycling groups.
Challenging the popular attitude to cycling and cyclists in Sydney is our biggest task. This article from Denmark where 33% of trips into Copenhagen each day are by bicycle demonstrates the health and economic benefits from cycling in the community.

Picture here of me cycling in Copenhagen. Note the provision of separate cycle lanes that do not compete with huge buses (as in Sydney) and pedestrians. Three very distinct yet complementary road users all sharing. Cyclists are required to stop when buses stop for passengers just as cars do for trams in Melbourne. Peer pressure and penalties have enforced this rule. Note - helmets are not required in Denmark. Shayne

Denmark.DK reports:
Traffic and health officials agree: Biking provides a good source of transportation and helps to keep health-care costs down

Copenhagen residents have captured the yellow jersey and lead the pack with regard to cycling kilometres. If the rest of the country followed suit, billions of kroner could be saved in health-care costs. Just a few kilometres a day makes a difference, according to traffic consultant Thomas Krag. If residents in other towns and cities followed the lead of Copenhageners, who cycle 2.5 kilometres per day on average, the country would save about DKK 1.8 billion (EUR 240 million).
'If we say that it takes 12 years of campaigns and improvements for cyclists to get that far, society will have saved DKK 23 billion (EUR 3 billion) in 50 years,' said Krag, who presents his results at a conference at Aalborg University later this month.
Odense has also demonstrated that it pays to cycle. The city invested DKK 20 million (EUR 2.6 million) to get residents to bike more, but ended saving DKK 33 million (EUR 4.42 billion) in health-care costs. Mortality rates fell as did hospitalisation costs and sick days, according to Anker Boye, the mayor of Odense.
He encouraged other cities across the country to get on the bike path.
/ritzau/

Art for free China

Michael Reid Gallery exhibition worth visiting in person or on line.
















GUO JIAN
The Day Before I went Away, 2002
oil on canvas 145 x 198 cm