Glenelg beach shades and Norwood Oval upgrades bring the NIMBY brigade out in force

NIMBYs, the not-in-my-backyard brigade who think it is acceptable to move into an area and start complaining about things that were already there, need to be shown no love, writes David Penberthy.

Norwood Oval has been bringing people to the Parade for more than 100 years. Picture Simon Cross

MANY years ago I was dispatched to cover the unusual story of a high-profile brothel which lodged a complaint with the local council about the fact that an evangelical church intended to set up in the same street.

The brothel complained that the church would bring the wrong sort of people into the area.

The argument went that the men who used the brothel and the women who worked there didn’t want to have to rub shoulders with judgmental holy-rollers.

The brothel, which went by the decidedly un-arousing name Le Petite Aroma, had been happily going about its business for years on a quiet backstreet in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood, and saw no reason why it should risk being targeted by these blow-ins who might upset the natural order of things.

The brothel won.

It was a perfectly-landed pre-emptive strike by the brothel against future NIMBYs, the not-in-my-backyard brigade who think it is acceptable to move into an area and start complaining about things that were already there.

The late journalist Paddy McGuinness wrote a great column bemoaning the disappearance of so many inner-city hotels, which he attributed to the anti-noise whingers who “move into these areas for the village atmosphere and immediately set about to close the village pub”.

There should be a firm rule in the world of local government, whereby people have no right to complain about things which predate their presence in the area.

If you scratch the surface of these so-called community groups, they are often the very antithesis of community-minded. The root cause of their anger is usually property values and a baseless sense of ownership of public assets, rather than any demonstrable sense of wanting to share with others.

If I can break the habit of a lifetime, it is too easy to blame councils for entertaining these types of complaints. Sure, there are times when it is councils themselves, or busybody, single-issue councillors, which champion a NIMBY issue. But more often that not, councils are simply doing what is required of them by acting on complaints, however trifling those complaints may arguably be.

The lengthy delay in the upgrade of the Norwood Oval has been caused not by the council but the fact that the council had to respond to complaints from one man — just one — who believes an upgrade to oval facilities is a poor use of council money. That’s despite the many thousands of people who this great oval already brings to the Norwood area, and the many more who would attend if it were better serviced.

Norwood Oval has been bringing people to the Parade for more than 100 years. Picture Simon Cross

I would question if someone who is new to the area and vastly younger than the facility in question — in Norwood Oval’s case it has been there since 1901 — has much right to quibble about its upkeep or expansion.

There was a similar stand-off when Glenelg Oval sought and received lights so it could stage a handful of night games. One ratepayer — whose existence presumably did not predate that of the Oval, which opened in 1920 — said his main fear was that crowds of children would bang the hoardings to cheer goals. At the very least, he argued, council could intervene to demand that large sound-muffling cushions be installed on the advertising signs.

The Bay is the focus for some particularly mean-spirited NIMBY-ism right now with the re-emergence of this three-year-old stand-off about the installation of shade sails at two popular beachside reserves.

These parks have been there for as long as I can remember. But a small group of people, affluent enough to afford a beachfront property, has arced up about the fact that their precious views may be interrupted by a few triangles of shade cloth.

I am pretty sure most of these residents, possibly none of these residents, predate the parks, but their baseline position seems to be that kids being cooked to a crisp is preferable to an impeded vista. One has even argued that the parks should be moved.

Living as I now do in the inner south, you hear the odd gripe about the Showgrounds — established 1925 — and particularly the way in which their use has gone beyond the annual show to include frequent events such as monster trucks, camping and gardening shows, concerts and food festivals.

So what. Like the Chatswood brothel, the showgrounds got there first. Make this a rule and you would halve the number of complaints before council.

And if you don’t like music coming from pubs, shade sails, football crowds, showground traffic or fireworks upsetting your dogs, there’s always Innamincka.