Kings Cross workshop leaves residents disgruntled
The Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP held a City of Sydney workshop last week to resolve the crime and anti-social behaviour in Kings Cross.
Ms Moore said on her website that a community effort will help rejuvenate the area. “To get Kings Cross working, we need a coordinated response – and to develop this, we need people who live, work and visit the area, council, government, police, businesses and landlords involved.”
Around 200 residents and businessmen attended the evening meeting.
A number of speakers covered issues relating to pub saturation, compliance and transport problems. Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch was applauded for his suggestions of how to improve Kings Cross. “We all know what has to be done. One: pubs need shorter hours. Two: We need better compliance. And three: we need changes to protect residential amenity and liveability,” he said.
A woman claimed there was not enough time to air concerns. “We’re sick of coming here and listening to you lot. You’re here to listen to us. We’ve been here for over one and a half hours and now you tell us we have 30 minutes to finish up, having just started,” she said.
Other residents are concerned about the low impact of the meetings. Former resident of Kings Cross, Linda Shackleton, claimed previous meetings were ineffectual and this does not seem to have changed. “They’re more about Council dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for their paperwork. Council is happy to hear opinions … but only if in line with their voting and roll out of initiatives that allow them to meet pre-existing targets for community and council initiatives. If your opinions aren’t, then you are generally treated with great contempt,” she said.
The meeting informed residents that this project will have its own website and a new hotline used to farm out complaints to various other agencies including the police and liquor services.
A spokesman from Living Sydney who attended the meeting denied the success of this residents meeting. “I did not hear one new or original idea,” he said. “To my mind, the workshop was an idea-gathering exercise for Clover’s forthcoming Lord Mayoral election campaign. We were never given any opportunity to speak. We were never given an opportunity to question the experts or Monica Baloney or Clover Moore or to ask general questions. It was dictation not consultation,” he said.
