Martin Place tent city leader vows to stay in place, despite Clover Moore’s move on
UPDATE: Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has criticised the state government's “heavy-handed action” after Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared they will step in to deal with the Martin Place tent city.
NSW
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PREMIER Gladys Berejiklian has declared her government will now step in and act on the Martin Place tent city debacle.
Ms Berejiklian refused to outline her plan until she has discussed it with her colleagues. But she said she expected to make an announcement later today.
“Last night, I heard the mayor say that the tent city would be gone overnight,” she said.
“This morning, that hasn’t happened.”
Following Ms Berejiklian’s announcement, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore released a statement of her own.
“I’ve been deeply concerned by the threat of heavy-handed action by the state government and the risk of a repeat of the scenes in Melbourne where police dragged vulnerable homeless people off the streets,” Ms Moore said.
“I’ve spent the past four days in meetings with Police and the Minister and people from the tent camp in Martin Place and on the phone with the Premier and my staff have held high level talks with the department and police to thrash out a way forward.
“The law hasn’t changed in the past week — the City still has no power to move people on and we still strongly believe that without long term, supported and affordable housing, we’re going to see more homeless camps across the CBD.”
The developments came as the man described as the “mayor” of Martin Place’s tent city declared the homeless community won’t be moving anytime soon despite the brokering of a deal with Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore last night, which has since fallen apart.
Ms Moore said the “agreement ... was struck in good faith to avoid the scenes we saw in Melbourne, and it’s going to take good faith from all parties for it to deliver as a result”.
“As part of this agreement, Mr Priestley, agreed people at the camp would accept offers of housing from the state government, and would voluntarily move on from the site,” Ms Moore said today.
“The state government has already agreed to work intensively to provide housing for people at the camp, and to work with the City to provide the permanent safe space but they haven’t agreed to a temporary space yet.
“Last night, the City voted to provide one of our own facilities for use as the temporary space but now we urgently need the State Government to agree to help us provide the services a space like this will need.
“We believe if we work together we can get a temporary space up and running by the end of this week.”
Hours after the deal was brokered last night, Mr Priestley said details of the planned move were yet to be discussed and the 100 plus people calling the concourse home won’t be going anywhere any time soon.
“I have no address for it, I have no sense of where it is or anything. We haven’t seen the size of it, I’m sure it won’t be the ideal space initially,” he told reporters at 5am today.
Greens Newtown MP Jenny Leong today invited the so-called “mayor” of the tent city, Mr Priestley, into the Parliament to watch on as she blasted the state government for wanting the stand-off to come to an end.
“If the Premier today calls in the police to kick people out of Martin Place, I will be standing there with those people to say that they should not be moved on, they should be given permanent housing,” Ms Leong said today.
Mr Priestley sat alone in the public gallery throughout Ms Leong’s address.
The Greens MP also claimed tent city residents were being offered accommodation that was not acceptable, including “dodgy motels”.
“I say shame on the Police Commissioner,” she said. “I say shame on the Premier.”
Last night, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore was confident of breaking the impasse over the problem.
“He’s (Mr Priestley) agreed to this because accommodation has been offered to people and they realise that pressure is mounting and the crisis was really developing”.
But just a short time later, Mr Priestley told The Daily Telegraph he and the Lord Mayor had conflicting definitions of what that “safe space” should look like and that he was prepared to “spend months if necessary” hashing out a deal.
“I don’t think we will accept it without accommodation ... we want people to be able to sleep communally in a building — effectively a big hall with a lot of mattresses in it,” he said.
“It’ll be open in the sense that there won’t be closed off rooms.”
Mr Priestley, a New Zealand-born father of 12 who has become the public face of the tent city homeless crisis, said that if the state issues a “banning order to 30 or 40 people here, this will still come back”.
While Ms Moore spoke of an agreement to have the camp packed up, Mr Priestley said the tent city was simply “going to let the council take away some of our surplus stuff”.
“If they come back to us with a building people can move to, (that) they can sleep in and have a 24/7 safe space, then we will take the tents down,” he said.
Ms Moore last week said she would only use council’s power to confiscate property if a list of demands was met by the state government, which included the reopening of the Sirius building for homeless people.
She then declared that more discussion was needed when the state fell short of meeting those demands.
Mr Priestley has just had his 12th child. The most recent is with 20-year-old Nina Wilson, who is from Nowra.
A self-taught project manager originally from Wellington in New Zealand, he told The Daily Telegraph he is a permanent resident who refuses to collect taxpayer-funded benefits.
“I think it might be a little hypocritical to criticise what government does and stick my hand out,” he said.
He first set up camp in the financial heart of Sydney in 1991.
Mr Priestley sold his own home in the eastern suburbs 20 years ago so he could give his own children, the eldest 47 years old, deposits to buy houses.
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