Endless Argument !

 The New South Wales government recently bought a parcel of land  in the Sydney suburb of Camellia for the purpose of establishing a rail freight depot. This caused a political furore when it was claimed that the price paid was many millions more than that land was worth.

Now the government has changed tack and is proposing to build a new thousand bed prison on that Camellia site, despite a sharp drop in the numbers held in incarceration due to the coronavirus sweeping the state.  The NSW prison population has dropped by six percent and our jails are now holding 12,700 prisoners.

Prisons are an emotive issue and the state has recently constructed Australia's biggest prison on a site near Grafton in northern NSW.  It seems there is the expectation that more prison beds will be needed because of increased policing and our ever growing population numbers.

Present thinking is that this new prison needs to be within Sydney to facilitate visiting rights and to service the nearby court systems, but there are queries on whether that Camellia site is suitable because of the heavy pollution evident.

Camellia was the site for James Hardie's asbestos cement plant and the suburb is heavily impregnated with asbestos.  The state has a duty to keep its prisoners free from harm and there is doubt that this site can ever be made entirely safe to permanently house people.

Now there is a persistent rumour rife concerning Long Bay prison, situated on a thirty-two hectare site at Malabar in the eastern suburbs.  This has sweeping ocean views and has long had land speculators salivating.  If the old prison was demolished and the site sold for prestige housing it would add millions to government coffers.

The government is denying any plans to redevelop Long Bay but this plan for a prison at Camellia breaks new ground on the issue of prisoner safety.  Camellia was where Sydney sited its most noxious industries and the site redevelopment will be immensely costly.   A new prison there will be surrounded by air pollution from the existing industrial mix and the health of prisoners will become an issue. 

The site of prisons has long been a matter of acrimony.  Old prisons in country towns have the support of their residents because they contribute to the town economy, but where any new prison is suggested brings a groundswell of opposition.  A new prison proposed to be build in the city of Wollongong was quickly abandoned when local opposition threatened to turn against the politicians holding regional seats.

 This prison also offends the plans for the rehabilitation of Camellia by the residents who actually live there.  It is sited adjacent to the Parramatta river and close to the burgeoning city centre and is a natural growth area if the pollution can be brought under control.  During its commercials era a lot of people chose to live there because of proximity to their jobs and the reduced price of housing compared to the rest of the city.

The prospect of a major prison being dumped in their suburb is unlikely to raise Camellia to a more salubrious status.  It sounds like the government trying to  rectify a bad buying decision when they paid too much for highly damaged industrial land.