13 Mar: Sydney Football Stadium

I stand by our decision to take the government to Court over its handling of the Sydney Football Stadium development consent. Our case was concerned with the design excellence elements of the project, including traffic: matters that will continue to affect Waverley residents.

We exercised our civic duty to ensure that the project fully complies with the law, and our legal advice from two of the states’ top planning and development barristers was that the Minister’s development consent was invalid.

We respect the decision of the NSW Land and Environment Court, and won’t be appealing, but the stadium matter is far from over. Council will continue to make sure that impacts of the development on Waverley are minimised through our role on the Community Consultative Committee.

Legal action was never our preferred option, and we gave the Minister many opportunities to respond to our concerns, but he failed to do so.

- Waverley Mayor John Wakefield.

This column first appeared in the Wentworth Courier.