Tent city residents take down their camp

On ABC local radio this morning while I was driving home I heard that the Martin Place residents were taking down their camp voluntarily and so when I got back home I quickly put on my jacket and headed into town. It was very warm as I walked in the sun across Pyrmont Bridge and I reflected that the sudden change in temperature made everything seem a little bit strange, even the sounds I could hear. I wondered to myself how animals cope with such changes in the natural environment.

In Martin Place there was a group of people protesting against fracking and collecting signatures on sheets of yellow paper from passers-by and I talked for a while with a woman there about the gas industry before heading up to the top of the thoroughfare to where the camp has been.

The tents were mainly still in place but there was also a large pile of camping materials and milk crates placed at the bottom of the steps. Up on the section of pavement where the fountain is you could see empty space where tents had been, and I saw Lanz Priestley getting read to talk with a reporter from the ABC. I asked a man with a camera slung around his neck where the residents were going and he told me it wasn't specific yet where they would move to. "There are a few options I've heard," he said before moving away to take photos elsewhere. I stayed around to hear Lanz talk with the reporter but unlike her I couldn't hear clearly what was being said, although I did hear her ask him where people were going to go now that the camp was being dismantled. "We're looking at opening a space between two weeks and a month," said Lanz at one point.

He said that people in Martin Place are visible - turning and pointing to the Reserve Bank next to the camp and to Parliament up the street - "that's why something is happening." "This problem can only be solved nationally," he continued. I went up to Lanz after the interview had finished as he was standing next to the street kitchen and asked him where the residents were going to go. He started to say something in the high-energy way that he has but he seemed to be overwhelmed by the question. His eyes veered away toward Macquarie Street and a woman standing next to us told me to leave him alone because he had been talking to the media all morning.

Later, I saw him walking up the thoroughfare accompanied by the two policemen who had been hanging around the camp. There was also a group of trade unionists talking to the media in the square near the kitchen, some of whom held flags. Lanz would walk off to one side of the square with a few of these men later on and talk with them by the bank building. I decided there was already enough material for a blogpost and headed off to find some food.

Tent city won't be in Martin Place tomorrow

Yesterday the state government passed a law through the New South Wales Parliament that will allow them to dismantle the homeless camp that has been in Martin Place for eight months. Today, when I went up there to have a stickybeak, there were two policemen walking slowly east in Martin Place getting the vibe of the camp. They stopped at the east end of the thoroughfare and stood talking with some people.

As I stood talking with two cameramen who had been taking footage of the camp, its residents, and passers-by, a man wearing a red-and-gold tracksuit who had yellow teeth came up to me and asked what was going to happen. I told him I didn't know. He went off toward where the police were standing and about ten minutes later returned to where I was. "They'll be gone tomorrow," he said to me. "Who told you that?" I asked. "The cops just told me," he said.

Not long after this exchange the two policemen made their way back through the camp heading west, and went down the steps to where the government officers were still serving people. I stayed for a bit longer and was interviewed by the guy from Streetwise Media who has been filming people in the area of the camp for the past week or so, then I left to get some food because it was lunchtime.

Beef kebab, Taylor Square

Today I went up to Taylor Square to the Five Star Kebab shop. Kebabs are a favourite of mine because they are tasty as well as nutritious, with lettuce, tomato and onion as standard in Australia. At most kebab shops you can also get tabouli and cheese added for an extra dollar. So at eleven dollars it also makes a cheap meal.

I asked the guy behind the counter if the Five Star Kebab places in Kings Cross and on Eddy Avenue near Central Station are part of the same company but he said that the owners are different in each case.

Tye the dog, Market Street

On the way into town today I saw that this dog and his owner were on the corner of Kent Street and Market Street, so I stopped and gave the man five dollars. I asked the dog's name and he told me, but then when I asked him to spell it for me I could sense that he was a bit surprised. He wasn't voluble like Buddy the dog's owner had been the other day when I had spoken to him in Pitt Street Mall, so I didn't ask any more questions apart from the dog's age. Tye is six years old. I had seen Tye and his owner on Monday on Market Street. When I left him today I told him to take care and he said, "You too mate, you have a lovely day."

Martin Place homeless camp remains intact

A report this morning that the Martin Place tent city would be dismantled "as early as Tuesday morning" turned out to be premature. At lunchtime the camp was still all there, although the media, I was told when I went up there this morning, had been around since 2am. At 11.30 there were still TV trucks from Channel Nine, Channel Seven and the ABC parked nearby and I saw a reporter getting ready to shoot a segment just as I headed back down the hill to get some lunch.

There were also a half-dozen or so NSW government employees wearing badged jackets moving between the tents and the kitchen, and talking to people next to tables and chairs that had been set up on the pavement nearby.

Lanz Priestley, who is a spokesperson for camp residents, said that people from the Department of Family and Community Services come to Martin Place on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that there are people in the camp who are not eligible for housing support. He said that the department had placed 70 people in permanent accommodation over a period of eight months.

He added that the camp in Martin Place was just the most visible aspect of the homelessness problem in Sydney, and one that gets the most attention. "It's a much bigger problem," he said.

"Everyone expected the trucks," said city councillor Angela Vithoulkas, who is seen standing in the photo below, on the left, with Priestley on the right.

"You look like you're in remarkably good spirits," Vithoulkas told Priestley, who said he was "optimistic". Vithoulkas said that the agreement that the lord mayor, Clover Moore, had made with the NSW government the day before was "very ambiguous". "We don't know what the agreement was," she said. "For two hours we asked questions last night and there were no answers."

No-one at the camp this morning knew where the lord mayor intended to move residents to. "Unless people want to use it it won't get used," warned Priestley. "The city has a lot of property," said Vithoulkas, adding that she wanted to invite him to visit the council to talk with councillors.

"I'm going to make your council visit happen and very soon," Vithoulkas told him.

Documentary maker, Martin Place

The guy on the right in this picture is making a documentary about the tent city in Martin Place. I met him last Friday when I was up there nosing around and we had talked then about the rights of people capturing images under Australian law. His name is Blake. I told him that making videos of people in a public place is perfectly legal, because he had mentioned something about getting release forms signed.

Today, he shook my hand and gave me a quick "G'day mate" before turning back to the important conversation he was having with the two other young men who can be seen in the photo. He was running a camera up and down a track that was set on the pavement, and talking with his new friends. I didn't see Lanz Priestley in the camp so I wandered off, heading down the hill to find some lunch.

Bear the dog, Pitt Street Mall

On Thursday I mentioned meeting Bear the dog in Pitt Street Mall and today he was there again with his owner, a young woman. I gave her some coins and a five-dollar note and asked if I could take the dog's picture. She said it was ok so I did. I asked her to tell me again the reason for the dog's name, because she had told me before but I hadn't heard her clearly, and she said, "He was very fluffy when he was a puppy. He's grown into his fur now."

I asked her about getting food because Buddy the dog's owner had told me on Saturday that it was easy to do in Sydney if you are living on the street. Yes, she said, a food truck comes to Martin Place at 8.30pm of an evening and to Central Station at 10pm. I asked about Wynyard but she wasn't sure, and thought that Buddy's owner might have been thinking of Martin Place because both locations are down the north end of town. She said that she hadn't eaten yet today, although it was past 11am.

I told her about my meetings with Tanner and his owner around town, and she said that you have to brush out the fur of young dogs for their health.

On the way back along Market Street as I was heading home I saw a man who had been begging on the corner of Kent Street and Market Street earlier walking with his dog down past the QVB. He was holding a disposable coffee cup and some other things in his hands. As I walked past him I heard someone say, "Hey mate, you've dropped ten bucks." I turned to see a ten-dollar note on the pavement, and the man with the dog turning back to collect it. The older man who had called out to him had been heading into the building.

Jehovah's Witnesses, Fish Market

Two men stand near racks of religious literature on Bank Street, Pyrmont, outside the Fish Market while two women wait to cross at the lights. Jehovah's Witnesses are very visible on the streets of Sydney, usually at places where there is heavy foot traffic. I have seen them also in Union Square, Pyrmont; at the end of the pedestrian bridge on Market Street in the city; and on Dixon Street between Goulburn Street and Hay Street, Haymarket. They stand near their literature dressed in neat casual clothing waiting for people to show some interest, although I've never seen any of them talking to anyone. They're like those fish with lures attached to their heads. The racks here had tags on them. One of the tags read "Annandale Cart 6".

Nike advertisement, railway bridge, Newtown

Two weeks ago I took a photo of the Nike ads on this wall next to the railway line in Newtown, when they had been completely painted over with white paint. Now, the ads have been restored to their original pristine condition, but graffiti artists continue to use them for their tags. In Newtown, it seems, it remains a battle of wills between the owners of the spaces where ads appear and the companies advertising their products, on the one hand, and the graffiti artists on the other.

Rough sleeper, King Street

I passed by this poor devil at around 11.30am on my way down King Street, Newtown, and he was still there under his blanket when I came back toward home an hour later. He was sleeping on the pavement outside a fashion retail outlet; next door to the left there is a whole foods shop. On the way back there were a lot more people on the footpath, of course, but it didn't seem to phase him, he just stayed put.

Mixed meat plate, Cairo

This is my usual lunch at this Egyptian restaurant located on Enmore Road, Enmore. For a change today I asked what the different items on the plate were. At the top of the image you can see a small dish of garlic dip sitting on what they told me was "soft bread", or a disc of pita bread. Under that is a small dish of tahini. Then to the right of these, going clockwise, you have pickles, mahsa'aha (deep fried capsicum and eggplant mixed with sauce), salad, chicken, and lamb kofte. With the meal I ordered a can of Grifter beer, which is from a brewery just down the road here in Marrickville.

Playing with drones, Victoria Park

A man and three children play with two drones in the popular weekend spot, while another man relaxes in the sun. The man minding the children controlled a small drone, which is visible in the air near the head of the small girl standing to his right, while one of the boys had a larger drone, one which looked to be about 50cm in diameter. This is the first time I have seen people using drones in this park. Or any park, for that matter. Drones are still a novelty in Australia, although the University of Adelaide announced recently that it would start teaching classes in drone use.

Birthday party, Pitt Street Mall

When I came down from Martin Place to Pitt Street Mall today on my way home there were groups of people all dressed in red. There must have been a hundred people with red clothing, hats, angels' wings, capes, and leotards. They sped up the mall toward the north and stopped at King Street where the traffic signal was red, then turned back into the mall again, hurrying on. 

The sounds of horns and whistles accompanied their frantic movement. At one stage they stood immobile for a while watching a busker perform, before moving off again to attend to some other minor event. They reminded me of the revelers in Michaelangelo Antonioni's 1966 London classic Blowup. As I walked south in the mall there was a man and a woman dressed in red walking beside me. Why was everyone in red, I asked. "Birthday party," said the woman, before speeding off with the crowd, which turned north again.

Farmer's market, Taylor Square

The woman who sold me my doner kebab for lunch today told me the farmer's market at Taylor Square runs every Saturday year-round. The sign on the street advertises the operating hours as between 8am and 1pm. The kebab shop woman said they sell fruit and veges, and I saw a marquee with a sign advertising sourdough bread, and there's also a cafe with a table out the front where people were sitting.

Bourke Street, Surry Hills

The other day I walked up Devonshire Street from Central Station and turned left into Bourke Street then continued north to Oxford Street. I was so struck by the tranquillity of Bourke Street south of Fitzroy Street that today I went back to have another look, after having a doner kebab at Taylor Square for lunch. The cyclists whizzed by on the cycleway that occupies a quarter of the carriageway on Bourke Street, which runs both north and south for traffic, but it is so quiet here compared to Crown Street one street to the west and of course South Dowling Street a couple of streets to the east. 

As I walked on the street an elderly man came to his gate and unlatched it preparatory to exiting the property onto the footpath. I wished him good morning. "Good morning," he said in accented English. I guessed he was of Italian or Greek extraction. The traffic that back in the day used to flow on Bourke Street outside the man's home has been removed and the noise of people talking at tables and on a bench outside the Artificer cafe on the corner of Phelps Street was audible from the pavement. The establishment advertises itself on its window as a "specialty coffee bar and roastery".

Further up on the footpath there was a group of about five people, one of whom was Christine Forster, the Liberal councillor for the City of Sydney and sister of federal MP Tony Abbott, the former prime minister. "So when did they can him? That's unfortunate," a woman in the group said loudly as I walked past. Forster turned her face to the right toward me as she stood there; she wore gold reflective aviator sunglasses.

Buddy the dog, Pitt Street Mall

The man sitting with Buddy told me the dog is seven months old. "I got him in January," he said. He complained about the owner of Narla the cat who, he said, had threatened him because he had taken her spot on the pavement. But he said she had been given $100 by a passer-by and had gone to Kings Cross to buy methamphetamine. "That's why I don't talk to the homeless," he said.

He said the woman's boyfriend worked the pavement nearby, and that she had come from Melbourne to Sydney to beg. He said it was easy to live on the streets in Sydney, and pointed north to Wynyard, east to the park and south to Central Station to indicate where food could be found of an evening. "There's 27,000 homeless in Sydney," he said. I mentioned that the tent city in Martin Place was quiet today and he was dismissive, telling me he had gone up there to pitch a tent recently but the other residents had made him feel so unwelcome that he had gone to stay overnight, instead, in a hotel.

His son was "upstairs", he said, indicating the building behind him, where the Myer department store is located, with his thumb. "I've got a 16-year-old boy to support," he said. "I've been here since five o'clock this morning and this is what I've got," he said, nodding toward the small basket next to him on the ground that was full of coins. I shook his hand when we had finished talking and he wished me a good day as I left to walk home.

Referendum Council offers up some big new ideas

This heading serves to take words out of the prime minister's mouth but I think it's fair to say he's right. The Referendum Council that has been consulting on what to do about Aboriginal Australia's legal standing in this country released a report recently but it has received scant attention in the media. So far there's a decent ABC story and also one by Sky News, but that's about it. The council's report follows the release of the Uluru Statement, a document that purports to encapsulate the aspirations of Aboriginal people. The council it should be noted from the outset is made up of a number of prominent Aborigines as well as people from the dominant Anglo-Celtic strand of the Australian demos plus people who represent multicultural Australia.

The council's report specifically highlights the contributions that these three elements of Australian society have made in the formation of modern Australia. The recommendations of the final report handed down to the leaders of the two major parties talk about the "Australian story" as a palimpsest of signification and importance stretching back over the millennia to the point of arrival of modern humans on the continent, and it is at pains to emphasise the important roles that all three strands of the culture have played in writing that story. At the last census only 2.5 percent of Australians identified as Aboriginal.

But clearly something needs to be done to enable Aboriginal people to reach their full potential. Even the hard-line columnists at the Australian are looking for practical solutions that can serve to narrow the gap between Aboriginal Australia and the broader community. And it will be people like them who will be the most vocal in the public sphere when it comes to discussing the council's recommendations, and what to do about them. From the prime minister's words it is clear that Canberra will be looking to the community for guidance as to how to proceed. So it is up to all parts of society to educate themselves about the council and what it has put forward for consideration.

The main take-away for me is the mooted representative body that would give Aborigines a voice in the Parliament. There is also what is being called a makarrata commission to have "the function of supervising agreement-making and facilitating a process of local and regional truth telling". And lastly there is a desire for some sort of symbolic "declaration of recognition" to be enacted in state and federal parliaments. So there are three requests that the council has handed down to the party heads.

This is all a lot different from what Australians had previously been expecting, which was merely some sort of recognition as to the unique position vis-a-vis the Commonwealth held by Aboriginal people. Many also thought that the Constitution would be amended to remove some racist elements inherited from earlier times. So the PM's words will make more sense to the majority of Australians than you might wish. It's also worth nothing that one of the council members - ex-Liberal minister Amanda Vanstone - says "she does not support an Indigenous voice being inserted into the constitution without further consultation", according to Sky News.

By resetting the parameters of the debate about Recognition the council has given the country a new challenge. And the first thing to do is to inform people about what it all means. Hence this blogpost. No doubt there will be many other people writing about the council's report in the coming weeks and months. I asked someone on Twitter who teaches at Melbourne Law School when they intend to have the referendum and she said "soonish".

So what does the representative body - the Voice to Parliament - mean, in broad terms? As the PM noted in the press conference held when the report was released, it is short on detail, and the way that such a body would operate, who would elect it, what sort of laws it would be able to influence, how it would influence the making of laws in Parliament: all these things remain to be decided by someone. Presumably the boffins in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (which is where the council sits in the hierarchy in Canberra). Personally, I can't see a referendum framed in terms amenable to the council's recommendations being successful. There has to be a lot more debate in the public sphere before the ideas they embody can trickle down throughout the community so that everyone is on the same page. It seems the gap between Aboriginal Australia and the mainstream is as broad as it has ever been.

The tent city, Martin Place

A resident of Martin Place looks on as Diane Evers, a Western Australian Greens MLC, talked today with Lanz Priestley, spokesperson for the tent city. Priestley was critical of the state government. "As fast as she houses them more people come," he said, referring to the Minister for Social Housing, Pru Goward. Evers' husband Tony, who was also there today, told me that in his state they have had a lot of people leaving the state since the end of the mining investment boom, resulting in lower rents there.

Light rail construction site, Devonshire Street, Surry Hills

This morning I took a walk following the route of the light rail that is being built between Circular Quay and Kensington. Its route will take trains past Central Station and along Chalmers Street, then up Devonshire Street into Surry Hills. This street has the right gradient for the trains; Foveaux Street further north would have been too steep for them to climb. There is a lot of public housing along Devonshire Street and the area needs a bit of tidying up. I approached a man and a woman wearing fluoro gear standing next to the construction site and asked how they planned to take the trains across South Dowling Street. "Traffic lights," the man said. "Wonderful," he added although I had not expressed any surprise at his previous statement. I left them and continued east to where the construction site has punched through the block of buildings on Bourke Street. The train line is due to be completed in two years' time.

Narla the cat, Pitt Street Mall

Yesterday I stopped to talk to a young woman sitting on the pavement outside Myer on Pitt Street Mall and she told me the name of her cat but I didn't hear her clearly over the noise of passing foot traffic, so today I stopped when I saw she was there again, and found out it was Narla. "Like the Lion King," the young woman said. I put the coins that remained in my pocket onto the rug she had spread on the pavement for that purpose, and asked if I could take a photo. "Of course you can!" she said. I told her that I had just seen a Channel Nine camera crew and suited journalist up at the Martin Place tent city, evidence that the TV station would put a spot on their nightly news broadcast about the homeless people camping there. "Oh cool!" she said. I had already given most of my change to a young woman sitting on the pavement further down toward King Street who had a dog with her dressed in a military-camouflage jacket with faux-fur trim. The young owner told me the dog was a staffie-border collie-chihuahua cross when I asked if it was a border collie. The dog's name was Bear.