Sydney’s west is like ‘North Korea’ say angry locals who claim Gladys has divided the city
Frustrated western Sydney residents say they’re in a police state while “rich Bondi” has it easy – and they claim Gladys Berejiklian is the problem.
EXCLUSIVE
Western Sydney locals say they’re in a “North Korea” style police state and have likened lockdown to living “under the Taliban” while rich people in Bondi have it easy.
One resident said they felt like they were in a “zoo” in which people from the western suburbs were locked “in cages” for those in other parts of the city to gawp at.
A person in one of the so-called “local government areas (LGAs) of concern” said NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian had divided Sydney into effectively two states between those who live freely in coastal suburbs and those “imprisoned” in Sydney’s west.
As the NSW Premier held a “heated” meeting with mayors from twelve LGAs this week, residents of the Canterbury-Bankstown council area vented their anger to news.com.au about the s****y deal” they’ve been dealt.
And they’re furious that it was a Bondi resident – an airport limo driver who was considered “patient zero” for the Delta outbreak – who spread the highly infectious variant to the western suburbs. Yet those in Bondi bask in the spring sunshine.
‘There’s Bondi, then there’s us’
The affected LGAs deemed areas of concern have endured stricter lockdown restrictions than the rest of Greater Sydney, including stringent Covid testing rules of workers and up to last week 9pm – 5am curfew.
Canterbury-Bankstown LGA has recorded the most Covid-19 cases in NSW in the past four weeks, with more than 5000 infections. Although it is also NSW’s largest LGA with a population of 370,000 people.
Joe, 29, who was minding a friend’s vape shop in Bankstown this week while unemployed after losing his job as a chef, told news.com.au he and others “feel like second-class citizens”.
“There’s Bondi first and then there’s us out here, second class because we don’t have any sea next to us,” he said.
“We’re paying the price out here for what happened and the resentment will remain long after this is over.
“What was hidden – the favouritism to the rich suburbs is now 100 per cent out there,” Joe said,
“If they treated people all over Sydney the same way it wouldn’t be happening like this, people here would understand.
“But instead it’s like a zoo and out here we are the animals, people in Bondi are the humans and they can see us in our cages.
“When we’re locked in at night you can hear helicopters and police outside.
“It’s Kandahar with the Taliban on control except everybody speaks English.
“People are going crazy, people are going to riot.”
Just up the road near the Bankstown Sports Club vaccination centre, Maria and her elderly mother were walking dejectedly around the deserted streets.
Originally from Macedonia, 52-year-old Maria said she was “very, very angry” after seeing images of people in Sydney’s eastern suburbs enjoying the sunshine“with all their freedoms”.
“I feel like I am living in a different country where people in those suburbs have different rules and we are discriminated against here,” she told news.com.au.
One rule for us, one rule for them
“It’s another country with different rules here where you are forced to be vaccinated if you don’t want to lose your job.
“It makes everybody angry (the government) discriminates and the people in those suburbs don’t have to be vaccinated and won’t lose their jobs.
“While us, we have to take the consequences of their infection and Gladys (Berejiklian) making the wrong decision, not shutting them down,” said Maria referring to the fact the city’s east was not locked down when cases begin to emerge in June.
“It’s one rule for that part of Sydney and one rule for us. It’s always been that way, but now it’s just obvious.”
Construction worker Francis, 39, said the people in western Sydney were getting a “s****y deal”.
“It’s not fair at all,” he said. “Yesterday I was working in Bondi on a construction site and we were all wearing masks except for the men who are from around there. But they weren’t.
“We have to do the test, the vaccination to go and work on the job site, but the labour in Bondi they don’t have to do the vaccination.
“It’s a divided city. It’s not fair the way are treating us in the west as different. It’s racism.”
John, a semi-retired 60-year-old, who is originally from Poland but has been living in Australia more than 40 years said “I can’t stand this country any more.
“As soon as I can travel, I’m out of here … to the South Pacific.
“No Gestapo is going to jab me in the arm, no way,” said John.
“I was in Poland in the regimen so I know, this is like communism.
“I have friends who live in Bondi and they have more freedom. They don’t have police and a curfew and are allowed on to the beach.”
Nick, who came to Australia from Greece decades ago, described the division between Sydney’s west and the coastal suburbs as “a disaster”.
“In Bondi, they have all the freedom and then they show us on TV what they have and we don’t.
“They’ve turned us into guinea pigs and now there is this discrimination between the rich and the poor.
“This is like living with the Nazis that you have to be vaccinated. There’s no freedom and no choice.”
‘Australia was the best, now it's finished’
Said Yatin, a car mechanic originally from Beirut, said when he came to Australia 41 years ago it was a country for people seeking freedom.
“A long time ago Australia was the best, now Australia is finished,” the 60-year-old said.
Gina, 32, told news.com.au the whole “suburb seems depressed” because “politicians had made a decision to single out” Bankstown.
“I’m hoping to get a job. My dad is stressed out because he has a job and every day he has to get tested to go to work outside the LGA. It’s very stressful.”
Mohamed, 50, and his friend Adam, 49, told news.com.au the “politicians” had destroyed business in Bankstown.
Sitting in a car outside Mohamed’s tobacconist and mobile phone shop, he said the lockdown meant no customers and no income.
“We get unfairly targeted because we are in the western suburbs,” he said.
“They keep (talking up) the virus in the media to make people go and get the vaccine.
“They have to make it a big issue to do that and us out here we lose money because there’s no-one going out to the shops.”
Joe, the former chef, is pessimistic about when he might be able to get another job and when people in his suburb can pick up their lives again.
“I don’t expect anything to be open until the 24th of December,” he told news.com.au
“Here we’ve been going through eleven weeks and with the curfew if you are a man and you go outside after 9pm you get arrested and fined $5000,” said Joe.
“If you’re on the North Shore or in Bondi there’s nothing to stop you going out.
“It was one guy in Bondi who gave it to the rest of Sydney because (the Government) didn’t close it down.
“Mentally it’s affecting me.”
At Premier Berejiklian's meeting this week about the LGAs of concern, mayors echoed the concerns of residents.
Canterbury-Bankstown Mayor Khal Asfour said the talk became “heated” when the topic turned to discrimination, as mayors described how their communities felt stigmatised and treated differently to other Sydneysiders.
“We raised … concerns about the different discrimination that we’re feeling in the areas of concern, where the meeting got a little bit heated,” he said.
He said local residents were “sick and tired” of helicopters flying overhead and the additional police presence on the streets.
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