Illustration: Simon Letch For lovers of Sydney, or its hinterland, disappointments come thick and fast right now. On the Sunday of Speakman's announcement, I'd been to the country. It was a flawless day, blue above and green underfoot, gently grazing cattle, soft earth, cool air – as though the fertile Bylong Valley had donned its Sunday-go-to-meeting best to farewell the man who for decades had nurtured it like a lover. A hundreds-strong crowd gathered to mark Peter Andrews' eviction, hoping some miracle might save his 40-year investment of intellect, energy and care across the floodplain. Back then, Andrews' soil was light and sandy. Now it's blacker than the coal for which it will be destroyed and a billion times cleaner; a work of genius. But in the thought-bubble above each head hovered the gaping black coal pit, bigger than downtown Sydney, that from the very next day would swallow the lot. The hoped-for miracle was heritage listing, a last ditch protection of the landscape and its spreading century-old Harold Hardwick-designed stone farmhouse from death by mega-mining. But it's a frail protection indeed. That same morning I'd passed the aching gaps that, days earlier, had been the comfortable heritage-listed precinct of Haberfield. Now, with barely a squeak from the Heritage Council, it's a war zone. One thing was plain. NSW heritage listing is no longer worth the time it takes to press delete. Three years hence, when we can finally kick this rapacious government from office, I'll be surprised if anything lovely is left. We'll have skyscrapers, motorways and mines. If anything beautiful remains it'll be because they haven't got around to wrecking it yet.

The Sirius, designed by Tao Gofers for the government architect in the early 1980s, is now a cult classic. Credit:Wolter Peeters The Sirius, designed by Tao Gofers for the government architect in the early 1980s and now a cult classic revered by architects and historians worldwide (as well as every expert in this country), sits within the Brutalist tradition. But it's not brutal. Far from it. What's brutal is the idea that this fine work – custom-fitted to its inhabitants, miraculously giving the poor and the frail some of Sydney's finest views – is really just a site. Many buildings, wrongly labelled Brutalist, are just plain bad. True Brutalism is at once elegant and sexy. It's a style that esteems strength and raw honesty, but especially as juxtaposed against the delicacy of glass, the sway and spike of nature, the play of light. Australia has only a handful of quality examples – Robin Gibson's Queensland Art gallery being the finest, Ken Woolley's Fisher Library (and State Office Block, now demolished), Col Madigan's High Court in Canberra, Andrew Andersons' first addition to the Art Gallery of NSW, the old CAE at Kuring-gai and Bidura Children's Court in Glebe, now also under threat of demolition for yet more residential. The Sirius public housing building will not be heritage listed. Credit:Wolter Peeters You may not like these buildings. Brutalism is an acquired taste, and its revival is fledgling. But that's not the moment to demolish, especially not as decided by a government with a direct conflict of interest, driven to maximise its own profit. (NSW Architects' Institute president Shaun Carter estimates the government will make some $884 million from sales of Millers Point and Sirius public housing. That's some conflict).

But there's also this. Fashions change. In 1961 Lord Mayor Harry Jensen and architect Harry Seidler wanted to demolish the Queen Victoria Building for a carpark. Seidler grabbed headlines by calling it "an architectural monstrosity. A wasteful, stupid building" occupying a "key site". Luckily, the '60s was the age of protest and the building was saved to become the charismatic (and profitable) city treasure it is today. We tend to think progress marches steadily forward, but we've gone backwards in this. Already, heritage NSW has become a contradiction in terms. We no longer have treasured institutions, buildings, houses, neighbourhoods, farms or parks. We have development opportunities. Sites. This makes our city, and our state, one big money-mine. People are no longer nonchalant. They're angry. What with Westconnex, the Anzac trees, the casino, coalmines, the Powerhouse, Parramatta, public housing sell-offs and CSG, I've never seen as many NSW-persons as angry as they are right now. And sure, the Green Bans of the '60s and '70s grew from anger. But there's a major difference. Those battles the people won – saving the Rocks, Woolloomooloo, Kellys Bush. Now, every battle is a loss. What's angrifying is partly a disdain of process. We appoint heritage ministers, and watch them make decisions based on money. We make heritage listings that are routinely ignored. We set in place a system that pretends to listen but does not. But there's a bigger reason for our anger, based on a fundamental failure of self-knowledge. We are complex creatures who strive to make our lives meaningful by creating habitat for ourselves in city and countryside alike, breathing skill and energy, thought and love into material nature. This, done well, is what we call beauty.

Yet somehow, collectively, we act like this is trivial, like nothing matters but money. Not beauty, not love, not meaning. Just money. This takes us right back to terra nullius, where the world is a bare site and we bare primates upon it. Barbarous. The word is barbarous. Twitter: @emfarrelly