ABSTRACT
In its editorial of 6 October 2006 titled, ‘On top in Pitt Town: Sartor saves the day’, The Sydney Morning Herald opined:
Of course, planning policy must continue to seek to preserve Sydney’s farms and vegetable gardens by releasing other land first. Ultimately, though, where the choice is between land and lettuce, Sydney will have to take the land. The lettuce, after all, can grow somewhere else.
(SMH 2006:12) This editorial refers to a decision by the then New South Wales (NSW) Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, to reduce the number of houses to be built on a planned 225 hectare development on agricultural land in Pitt Town, situated to Sydney’s north-west in the Hawkesbury River Valley. Farming in Pitt Town dates back to the establishment of 15 small holdings in 1794. As the editorial correctly pointed out, the Ministerial decision to reduce the density of the development did not reverse the loss of the land for farming. Ultimately the trend of continuing loss of agricultural land in the Sydney Basin was not reversed by this Ministerial intervention, but rather it just meant that fewer houses would be built on the same land area.