The state government has threatened to treat First Nations and environmental groups as trespassers if they continue to use a historic home in the Blue Mountains that was once an infamous “house of horrors” but was reclaimed as a community hub.
But a former state and federal MP and stalwart of the Labor party has criticised the Minns government as “unethical” and “ignorant”, for enforcing the eviction of the groups from Clairvaux in Katoomba.
The NSW government has been gradually evicting longstanding tenants from Clairvaux over the past several years. Last month it transferred responsibility for the property from the department of communities and justice to the department of land and property, which is in charge of divesting surplus government property and selling it to the private sector.
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A meeting of the former resident groups was moved off-site on Saturday, after they were told they would be trespassing if it took place.
On Friday a lawyer acting for the justice department and families and communities minister sent an email, which Guardian Australia has seen a copy of, to one of the community groups.
It noted that “some form of onsite public meeting” at the site was proposed for Saturday.
“Neither DCJ nor the current owner, PDNSW, have authorised any such meeting and attendees may well be considered trespassers,” the email said.
The former NSW attorney general, finance and environment minister Bob Debus, who also served as home affairs minister in the federal Rudd government, said the eviction, and trespassing comment, showed the bureaucracy was “completely ignorant” of its significant history.
“The transfer of land and then the subsequent harsh attitude … threatening these people who’ve been there for years, for heaven’s sake, it’s just not ethical,” Debus told the Guardian.
“They have legitimately occupied buildings on that site under lease or licence for more than 25 years … and I know that’s the case because I helped negotiate the original arrangements sometime in the mid 1990s.”
Clairvaux began life as a boarding school for the De La Salle Brothers’ St Bernard’s College in the late 1930s. After the college’s closure in 1966, the state government transformed it into a boys home which became known as a “home of horrors”. Former Clairvaux children were deemed eligible for the National Redress Scheme after the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
After the government closed the institution in 1990, the Katoomba Neighbourhood Centre salvaged the site and it became the Clairvaux Community Centre. In recent years tenants have included the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Culture and Resource Centre, the Gundungurra Tribal Council, Arts Council, Gateway Family Services and the Wildplant Rescue Service. Only the latter still occupies the site, battling the eviction notice.
The campaign to keep Clairvaux in community hands includes First Nations elders, aunties Carol Cooper and Pat Field, and one of the founders of the community centre from the 1990s, Mary Waterford, who said the community sees the land’s potential sale as a “betrayal” of its long history as a cultural and community hub.
Genevieve Murray, a spokesperson for the campaign to save Clairvaux, said the land held deep significance for the Blue Mountains community and the traditional owners who had been gathering here for millennia.
“To be labelled trespassers on their own land is not only unjust, it’s a betrayal of the trust and dialogue we believed we had with the department,” she said in a statement.
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Murray said the government’s decision to transfer the property to a new government department had been done without notice or consultation with the communities, and a request for an interim agreement on a moratorium on the sale of the land, made in April, had been ignored.
A spokesperson for the department of communities and justice said it was continuing the decommissioning process at Clairvaux and confirmed the department had transferred the site to property and development NSW last month.
The site must be vacated because a 2020 audit found it unfit for purpose due to significant safety, disrepair, compliance, and extreme bushfire zone issues, the spokesperson said in a statement, and the cost of upgrading the property was prohibitive.
“In relation to items that remain on site, DCJ is engaging with appropriate cultural and heritage experts to establish a transparent process with local elders and traditional owners,” the statement said.
“This will ensure respectful engagement with the local Aboriginal community and the appropriate management and care of any items of potential cultural significance.”
Waterford said the best the community could now hope for was an undertaking by the Minns government to convert Clairvaux into social housing.
“The Blue Mountains Community Land Trust has a proposal on the table to turn it into affordable housing, particularly for local Aboriginal people,” she said.
According to a recent Guardian report, more than two-thirds of NSW public land identified as suitable for housing under the Minns government’s statewide property audit has so far been sold to private developers, many without requirements for the inclusion of social or affordable housing.
