The Clovelly Institute

By Pearl Bullivant on July 14, 2013 in Other

Picture: Die Toon Die

Of Pearl’s many credentials in life, a highlight is my membership of The Clovelly Push, a dubiously named left wing ‘think tank’ considering some of its members reside in Newtown, Marrickville, parts of Queensland, Western Australia and Spain. After many years as president, I have decided to add credibility to ‘the cause’ by changing The Push’s name to ‘The Clovelly Institute’, enabling me to gain access – via large donations scrapped together from aged pensions, superannuation and proceeds from the occasional garage sale – to important people such as politicians, media tycoons and hopefully Gina R if I whip up a chocolate cake to her liking.

‘Think tank’, ‘task force’, ‘institute’ – all official sounding names set to fool the public, who have no idea these organisations are in fact powerful lobby groups prepared to circumvent democratic processes via generous donations in an effort to advance their members’ causes. Ask most people what the IPA or Urban Taskforce is and they assume they are government agencies. But not everyone can form a lobby group and hide behind the veil of an ‘institute’. As soon as a community group gets together to defend itself against a powerful lobby group they are labeled ‘nimbys’ and ‘trouble makers’.

‘Nimbys’ are definitely frustrating the McKell Institute, an organisation that claims to ‘support robust debate’ on ‘policy issues and reforms’. Blame it on May Madness (there were lots of silly men saying silly things like Bernie Brookes berating the NDIS and Tony Abbott with his ‘women of calibre’ comments) but back in May the McKell Institute graced the pages of the SMH with a ridiculous and thoughtless article pushing its own cause while criticising anyone who stands in the way of its stakeholders.

The gist of the article amounted to a land grab, pointing the finger at the big, bad evil residents of the North Shore who refuse to give up their beloved heritage homes on quarter acre blocks in order to eliminate potential ‘homelessness’ (not to mention lining someone’s pockets) and ‘provide more homes for our children and those in need’. What the? Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t homelessness a mental health issue? And any residential development on the North Shore surely means million dollar apartments marketed to the usual cashed up yuppie families rather than being an affordable solution for ‘those in need’. I hate to be cynical, but one thinks that ‘more homes for our children’ really means more investment properties available for those cashed up from the mining boom.

The article continues on with an emotive barrage against those who stand in the way of property development. Online petitions and social media come in for a serve and there is the usual argument that more housing stock results in better infrastructure. What utter crap! Yet again ‘economies of scale’ is used as a false analogy to justify a growth in population, which benefits no one except marketers and retailers. On the contrary, the steep increase in Sydney’s population has not been matched by improvements in public transport, education or healthcare (instead, any increase in tax revenue goes to ‘vanity projects’), with the government encouraging housing developments whilst disregarding the infrastructure required for a healthy, functioning community.

The article concludes with the statement ‘the long reign of the nimby must end’. That’s not the way a democracy works and it certainly doesn’t adhere to the Institute’s creed of ‘robust debate’. It’s a community’s democratic right to use Facebook to garner support just like it’s become a ‘right’ for a business or media lobby group to use whatever means is available to influence the government and stifle community debate.

Pearl xx