https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...-demolition-consultation-20190207-p50w7n.html
Sydney mayors criticise 'farcical' stadium demolition consultation
Megan Gorrey
February 7, 2019 — 6.00pm
The mayors of three Sydney councils have seized on a "farcical" community consultation process to launch a fresh attack on plans to raze Allianz Stadium, weeks before hard demolition works begin.
City of Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore, Waverley mayor John Wakefield and Randwick mayor Kathy Nielson claim the government breached its own guidelines for the project's community consultative committee, which is set to meet on Thursday night.
The mayors wrote to Planning Minister Anthony Roberts, demanding the crucial meeting be delayed until their "serious concerns" with the community meeting process have been addressed.
But a spokesman for Mr Roberts said on Thursday afternoon that the committee had been set up "fully in accordance with the [Planning Department's] guidelines" and the meeting would go ahead.
The mayors' complaints coincide with
a looming legal challenge against the demolition, which threatens to cause a political headache for the Berejiklian government before the election.
The committee is made up of local representatives and is one of the final conditions of consent that needs to be satisfied for work to start on the structural demolition of the stadium in late February.
Cr Wakefield said committee members had not been provided with important environmental and management plans for the project early on, or been given enough detail about noise control strategies for a concrete crusher that will be used in the demolition.
"The consultative committee ... was formed with only two weeks' notice, no documents, no materials supplied and with a bar on our technological experts and advisers being in attendance," Mr Wakefield said.
"We believe it has been improperly formed with insufficient notification and with conditions that hamstring us, as representatives of the community, to participate properly in the process."
Cr Moore said the government was "not respecting their own conditions and guidelines" for the meeting and "the whole thing is quite disgraceful and farcical".
Cr Moore said the demolition should be delayed until after next month's election.
Cr Neilson said: "All the residents of NSW need to be sure that all the processes are being agreed to and followed absolutely correctly and appropriately and at the moment we don't have that."
Mr Roberts' spokesman said the department was "confident that all relevant conditions had been met". The concrete crusher would not be used in the first stage of the demolition, so the plans for its use "are not yet required", the spokesman said.
The mayors also said there was a conflict of interest in the government's pick for the committee's chair, Margaret Harvie, whose company had worked for the project's developer Lendlease.
"The guideline does not provide a mechanism to assess and manage conflicts of interest," their letter said.
"For this reason, and because conflict is clear, we do not think it is appropriate for the incumbent to remain the chairperson. The position, in our view, is untenable."
Mr Roberts' spokesman said Ms Harvie's
"significant experience and expertise in community engagement" made her "an eminently suitable independent chair", and there was no conflict of interest.
The NSW Land and Environment Court's this week agreed to expedite the case brought by community group Local Democracy Matters in its bid to halt the stadium knock-down.
Waverley Council is considering joining the legal action, while the City of Sydney and Randwick councils have ruled it out.
