Blackwashing and the Big End of Town
By John Carr
In recent years, a number of corporations have spent huge sums advertising their credentials as environmental good citizens. Media campaigns by large mining and manufacturing companies have sometimes been branded as ‘greenwashing’, cynical attempts to obscure the contribution the companies make to resource extinction, pollution and climate change.
From the same commercial propaganda playbook, we also have ‘blackwashing’, where businesses who have mixed records in their impact on the well-being of people suddenly develop an ethical conscience. At Sydney’s Darling Harbour, a massive building project is now underway – Harbourside Residences. The Mirvac company has demolished its Harbourside Shopping Centre, opened by the Queen in 1988, and purchased by Mirvac in 2013 for half a billion dollars. In its place, Mirvac is constructing an even grander precinct, Harbourside Residences. The buildings offer ‘unparalleled luxury’ in their apartments, the centrepiece of which will be a 48-storey tower. In the first stage, already released off the plan, prices started at $1.7 million for a one-bedroom unit and rose to $27 million.
The language used in marketing the lavish development is poetic and grandiose – The Residences are ‘a captivating expression of timeless elegance’ where residents will ‘live without compromise, immersed in (the) sublime luxury of homes’. This ‘is where you belong’.
At some point in the construction and marketing campaigns, the company appears to have developed a conscience or, perhaps, a fear that those Australians who would not ‘belong’ in such opulence may be offended or, God forbid, angry at such a display of smug chest-thumping. Given some prominence in their marketing is a brief, formal acknowledgement of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, who lived on Darling Harbour for millennia. A slightly more expansive cultural acknowledgement is provided on the Harbourside Community Hub web-page. It may be, of course, that the company will support their acknowledgement in some tangible way in the future.
For ethically-minded Australians, these historical, racial and legal issues may not be the only concern with such massively expensive projects as Harbourside Residences. There are also major economic and political concerns. We live in a time of a serious lack of residential accommodation, when even those with good jobs are living in their cars and tents, or cannot afford to eat well. The Harbourside project clearly shows that at least one basic problem is not a lack of funding for the country’s residential accommodation, but that huge amounts are being directed towards luxury projects for the wealthy minority. Dozens of such projects are underway in all Australian cities – high-rise apartment palaces. Harbourside is estimated to cost two billion dollars and will house fewer than 1,000 people, some of whom will also own other residences. If this sum was used for the building of $500,000 houses and apartments in less expensive locations, it would provide good accommodation for thousands of ordinary Australians.
Disclaimer: views represented in SOFiA blog posts are entirely the view of the respective authors and in no way represent an official SOFiA position. They are intended to stimulate thought, rather than present a final word on any topic.
Photo by John Carr
