Yuppified Australian suburbia is all for welcoming refugees – as long as they live 30km away | David Penberthy

Nothing reveals Greens or Teal double standards faster than trying to solve a problem where they live, writes David Penberthy.

At the turn of the century with John Howard in power and public debate running hot over asylum seekers, the left-wing Leichhardt Council in Sydney’s inner west draped a banner over Norton St showing which side it was on.

“LEICHHARDT COUNCIL WELCOMES REFUGEES”, the banner declared.

It was more of a theoretical than practical welcome. The reality was that, by that time, the once working-class area of Leichhardt had largely undergone its full yuppification.

Rather than being the genuine Little Italy it once was, a home not just to recent Italian arrivals but others from post-war western Europe, Leichhardt had become the preserve of middle-class professionals and young aspirational homebuyers who had moved there from interstate.

I was a resident there for a long time, one of those middle-class interstate arrivals.

In so far as Leichhardt Council “welcomed” refugees, it seemed to welcome them in a couple of hours a week in their capacity as cleaners, whereby Conchita from El Salvador could pop in and do the vacuuming and dust your Scandinavian furniture before making the 30km trip back to her home with all the other refugees in Fairfield, Canley Vale or Bonnyrigg.

Bob Carr was premier of NSW and around the same time his Labor government came up with what I regarded as a clever and necessary plan to upgrade the Callan Park mental hospital on the Balmain Peninsula.

The old Rozelle Hospital at Callan Park.

The old Rozelle Hospital at Callan Park.

The hospital occupies majestic green space on the harbour but most of its buildings are a Dickensian horror, meaning people with serious mental illnesses must be cared for in appalling conditions.

Carr came up with a plan to build a brand new mental hospital by selling some of the land for private housing while keeping almost all of the park as green space with public access.

The many politically active people in Balmain, Rozelle and surrounds were aghast and soon enough the Save Callan Park campaign was underway.

The argument went that the inner west was crowded enough and could not tolerate any extra influx of people; in addition, in a growing city such as Sydney, any existing green space had to be retained in its entirety to stop the further loss of parks for the people.

Carr lost his nerve, fearful of a Greens victory in what was then the seat of Port Jackson, and the plan never went ahead.

It was billed by the politically active locals as a victory for people’s power.

Former NSW Premier and Foreign Minister of Australia Bob Carr. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

It was in reality a demonstration of the kind of bourgeois conceit which distorts housing policy and immigration policy in Australia.

It was a win for the yuppies who thought the park belonged to them and who believed their suburb was “full”, even though it was, and is, vastly less full than so many suburbs which are packed with new homes and new residents.

This people’s “win” was in reality a loss for those outer suburbs which do all the heavy lifting when it comes to accommodating new housing and without the luxury of vast tracts of green space with million-dollar water views.

It was also a particularly unpleasant loss for people with schizophrenia being cared for in weatherboard demountables, destined to stay there in perpetuity because a local lawyer couple wanted somewhere nice to walk their beagles after a hard day’s litigating.

Australia’s capacity for being completely full of it has been on full display this week with the hilarious spectacle of pro-immigration Teal MPs complaining about a plan to put too many houses in their leafy suburbs.

It’s merely the latest display of hypocrisy from politics on questions involving immigration and housing.

The Greens are among the worst offenders on this score.

They might be calling for reduced immigration on environmental grounds but they want more housing built as a matter of urgency.

At the same time local councils across Australia, especially in affluent areas or in a regional “tree-change” areas, are dominated by Greens councillors who oppose urban infill housing in la-di-da suburbs and urban sprawl in quaint regional hamlets.

The absurdity is that you have voters throwing their weight behind the Greens federally demanding affordable housing for all, and at the same time joining People of Kew Against Ghastly Erections upon hearing that a few old bluestone homes are going to be replaced with a five-storey apartment complex in Melbourne’s inner east.

It literally does not compute.

The Liberal Party has shown that at the local level they can be just as self-centred when it comes to these questions.

I didn’t know the Victorian Liberals actually stood for anything, but they sprang to life this week at the news that apartment buildings of up to 20 storeys high could be built in some of Australia’s richest suburbs including Brighton and Toorak to increase the availability of homes.

This is the most energised the Victorian Libs have been on an issue for a while and it proves a maxim of politics – always back a horse called self interest because it will win every time.

These people have nothing against migrants and obviously recognise the urgent need to create new homes for everybody, it’s just that we don’t want any of it happening near them.

The Victorian Labor government has been accused of class war politics by earmarking some of Australia’s most expensive suburbs as the proposed venue for these 20-storey apartment towers.

I am sure there’s a bit of that to it, where Labor has thought: “Stuff it, let’s just pile some people in there, it’s not like they’re ever going to vote for us anyway.”

But whatever Labor’s intent, the reality is that these suburbs have long avoided the human and housing congestion which passes for normal life in less affluent parts of Australia.

They’re now getting a taste of what everyone else has had to deal with and, true to form, they’re using words such as “amenity” to make a genteel argument.

If they were more honest they would borrow that pithy line from the Cronulla Riots, namely “f**k off, we’re full.”

Originally published as Yuppified Australian suburbia is all for welcoming refugees – as long as they live 30km away | David Penberthy