Lord Mayor Clover Moore recently announced that their "much loved" Sydney Park was awarded the Jury Award in the Architecture + Water category of the 2020 Architizer A+ Awards in New York. What a fantastic achievement.
Todd Park and Sydney Park both share similar origins. Both are large parks and are former landfill sites located at busy traffic junctures.
However, the treatment of these parks by their respective Councils could not be more different. On the one hand, Sydney City Council has nurtured Sydney Park to make it an award-winning and highly functional community asset. On the other hand, Georges River Council has long neglected the sporting facilities at Todd Park, has failed to provide much-needed upgrades and is now making plans to rip up the park and build a monstrous aquatic centre on it - despite overwhelming community opposition. What's more, these plans solely stem out of the earlier failure by Georges River Council to care for and maintain another much loved and historic community asset, the Kogarah War Memorial Pool.
Like Sydney Park, Todd Park is also a "much loved" and highly valued park. The community have repeatedly told Council that they strongly feel this way. But clearly, GRC doesn't share or respect these sentiments. This, in itself, is unacceptable.
Greenspace in Sydney has become critically endangered. Our city continues to cannibalise itself at an alarming pace, spilling out more and more development which covers our land and punctuates our skyline. Once our parks are gone, they will be lost forever as there is simply no more available space to replace them.
Our parks are also more important than ever now with our rapidly increasing population. We have felt this need even more acutely with the impact of COVID, where for so many the local park was their only escape from the confines of home lockdown.
In announcing the award for Sydney Park, the Lord Mayor said: "I believe that urban consolidation is responsible, but that greater residential densities only work when they are accompanied by the appropriate infrastructure and amenity - such as enlarged and improved parkland and community facilities. That's why we have taken so much care and made such investment to provide parks and green spaces across the City, from the big waterfront parks to pocket parks and playgrounds and all our street plantings. Sydney Park is a fantastic example of a much-loved and much-needed open space, and of the benefits, such space can bring to a community and a whole city. As our city grows, our parkland must grow with it".
Congratulations Lord Mayor Moore and Sydney City Council! Sydney Park is a great example of what can happen when there are a Council and a Mayor who understands community assets and gets it right. It also shows up even more emphatically the dismal failures by Georges River Council to maintain, and protect and preserve Todd Park and Kogarah War Memorial Pool.
Council has a duty to protect and preserve our parks for the people. Mayor Green and the other seven councillors at GRC want to build a regional aquatic centre at Todd Park that the community does not want, and in turn destroy our much-loved park. I put to the Georges River Council that they should look to the Sydney City Council and its Lord Mayor as a guiding example of how they should do their jobs, and follow their lead.
I also urge readers to pledge their opposition to the demolition of Carss Park Pool and the destruction of Todd Park by signing the online Pledge: https://tinyurl.com/yanykfo3.
Karina McDougall, Protect & Preserve Todd Park Association, Blakehurst
Face Masks
How dare the NSW Premier behave like a bully and threaten the people of NSW with another lockdown and punishment if more of us don't wear face masks. There should be no more lockdowns and we should be free to wear a mask or not with the knowledge that they reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses.
Why has it taken health bureaucrats and the politicians over six months to admit that a face mask does have efficacy in preventing the spread of COVID-19? That Dr Brendan Murphy has finally conceded that face masks can reduce the spread of a Coronavirus and probable deaths are distressing when one considers the state of things and worse is yet to come.
The science that a mask (without a valve) reduces the risk of illness from airborne infectious particles was known before this Pandemic. Obviously, the bureaucrats are making it up as they go along. They are just clueless with the medicos and politicians hiding behind each other, with neither accountable for the destruction of the economy and society.
The consequential health crisis in the aged sector, which was obvious from the Italian experience months ago is just being repeated here. Why frail aged Australians, their carers and relatives were not told by doctors to mask up to prevent transmission needs answers.
From the beginning, in January when the Prime Minister quarantined Australian's flown home from Wuhan, the Federal Department of Health should have told Australians to wear masks by choice as a precaution.
I wrote to the Prime Minister in January and advocated wearing of masks by Biosecurity Officers at Sydney International Airport due to my observations of the virus in Wuhan and my experiences as a Quarantine Officer.
The reply I received in May from the Director of Inspections Group-Biosecurity Operations informed me amongst other points, that from 31 January 2020 biosecurity officers "have a mandatory requirement to wear a mask..." and that "social distancing measures" were in place to ensure the health and safety of airport workers. It was good enough then to wear a mask at work.
This pandemic has shown the new Biosecurity Act 2015, which superseded the Quarantine Act 1908 to be a complete failure that has created an economic disaster. In the future, responsibility and legislation for the protection of Australian human health from foreign diseases should be under a jurisdiction removed from the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment. It should include the AFP in a role enforcing regulations to stop Quarantine breaches once a disease crosses the Australian border. All Public Health Orders should be Federal for quarantinable diseases for a united approach.
Joanne Jones, Bardwell Park
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craig.thomson@austcommunitymedia.com.au
