The 'green bans' in the 1970s saved many of Australia's historic buildings and our cities are richer for them. But a famous economist didn't like them.
That historic precinct is the pride of Sydneysiders today. It's one of the things that makes the city special. Walk its streets, and visit its old pubs built from local stone, and you'll travel back in time to Sydney's colonial beginnings.
As the voiceover in the video acknowledges: "The Rocks area is as old as Sydney itself. Part of the city's earliest history."get demolished? In recent years, we've heard a lot of talk about the NIMBY movement and the YIMBY movement in our national debate about our housing affordability problems.They wanted to replace it with a "civic square" and underground parking station.Politicians and developers in the 1960s wanted to bulldoze the suburb to exploit its prime waterfront real estate. In 1975, when the radical free market American economist Milton Friedman came to Australia for a speaking tour , he made this observation about a local social movement he'd heard about:"I have come across a new one in this country called 'green bans' which seems to me an excellent example of the kind of harm which is done by arbitrary private power."Veteran unionist Jack Mundey, who was best known for orchestrating the green bans across Sydney in the 1970s, dies aged 90. He was credited with stopping several developments at The Rocks.Developers and building companies had dollar signs in their eyes after new planning laws stripped the rights of tenants and gave developers more power. The enormous height of buildings introduced new dangerous work practices, and many workers were being killed. And residents were becoming so frustrated with governments rushing ahead with bulldozers to demolish historic urban and green areas of the city, without listening to the concerns of locals, that they sought help from the NSW Builders Labourers Federation .But the BLF's leadership, led by people like Jack Mundey, Joe Owens, and Bob Pringle, were starting to talk about a "new concept of unionism," arguing that workers had the right to insist that their labour couldn't be used in harmful ways. "Buildings that were part of our heritage were being knocked down, there was no legislation, there were no acts of parliament to stop buildings being destroyed. "At the beginning of the boom there was a tendency to say 'This is good, bigger is better, biggest is best, we are going to become another Chicago, New York, we are going to reach for the sky.' "But others of the more thinking segment said, 'Well come on, is this good? Look what's happening. These fine buildings are being knocked down and people are not being consulted'."In 1971, in a small wealthy suburb called Hunters Hill, on a peninsula of land that juts into Sydney Harbour on the lower north shore, a group of local women had been campaigning to protect a tiny patch of bushland on the peninsula, called Kelly's Bush. A developer, AV Jennings, had bought the land in the late 1960s and planned to build luxury units and apartments on the site.The women had fought for years to save the bushland, raising concerns with the local council, the mayor, their local State MP, and the NSW government led by the Liberal PremierOut of desperation, they turned to the BLF for help. And it changed the course of Sydney's history. The BLF stopped the development from going ahead, and it led to more local resident groups popping up around the city and asking the BLF to help them protect other green spaces and historic buildings. "We were inundated with requests for the green bans and our success was always that, even though we were being accused by Askin and the developers of flexing our muscles and being power-drunk and imposing green bans, we always set a pattern that the residents had to come to us, or the people opposing construction of a new development had to come to us, or people opposing demolition of buildings had to come to us. "We would then go and talk to either mass meetings, or executive meetings of the Builders' Labourers, and then a ban would be imposed. That was the pattern we followed and that won us credibility "The bans were very different in some ways because some of the bans were against any development taking place, other bans were for residents and architects and others to have a say in modifying buildings that taking place, others were just a blanket ban because of the heritage regulation and a call that governments should be introducing legislation so as to allow ordinary people to have a say in what should happen."The green bans eventually helped to change officials' attitudes towards historic buildings and green urban spaces, leading to a change in legislation and planning rules.After his abduction, Arthur left the fight to save his Kings Cross street. Juanita Nielsen's murder brought him back. And it wasn't easy. Some developers resorted to extreme violence to crush some green bans, with police support. A green ban imposed on Victoria Street in King's Cross in the early 1970s led to the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen, a young local journalist, in 1975. Nielsen's neighbour, a young man called Arthur King, wasfor two days. One of the many suspicious house fires that occurred on that street in that period killed a young indigenous woman,in the early 1970s, locals drew up a People's Plan for the precinct, detailing their ideas for how the area could absorb new development while maintaining the area's historic character."By the 1990s, the Ministry for Planning admitted that the green ban had resulted in the plans for the area being 'an overwhelming success', reflected in the millions of tourists who visit the historic area each year."So what should one make of Milton Friedman's claim that Australia's green bans were another example of the "harm" that unions do to society?The value that the historic precinct adds to the city is incalculable today.Locals have argued if the expansion in Woolwich were to go ahead it "would be like putting a bus station in the middle of a children's playground". What Friedman criticised as the "arbitrary private power" of unions was not arbitrary, and it wasn't private.Governments in the 1960s and 70s were failing to keep up with changes in community expectations about what our cities should be. The community-led green bans helped to change official attitudes about heritage, conservation, and environmentalism. They were part of the messy democratic reality of living in a city where developers had become too powerful and politicians had forgotten how to listen to their constituents. Of course, one could now have a debate about whether or not those green bans also left a negative legacy for our cities, given the argument YIMBYs make today that overzealous heritage protections are currently locking young people out of inner city areas.If there's truth to that claim, it may just need the pendulum to swing back a bit. But the more serious question is: would the green bans of the 1970s have been necessary in the first place if governments had been more responsive to residents' concerns?Analysis by Lucia SteinAustralia's story is vast and deep. It's unlikely you've heard it like this before
Unions Jack Mundey Milton Friedman The Rocks Kings Cross Local Resident Action Groups
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