Rewi Waetford, 33, among tents in Martin Place that the state government plans to remove. Credit:James Brickwood NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller told 2GB the "problem" could be fixed "easily" if council workers were sent to confiscate equipment from the camp. "If one person puts a step out of line, I'll throw them in the back of the truck," Commissioner Fuller said. "We will sort this on the back of whatever means we can. But next week they'll be somewhere else. This is a broader issue than Martin Place, it's about what do we do long-term with these people. "They should be gone and they should not be allowed back in the city."

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller. Credit:Daniel Munoz The government will meet with the City of Sydney and Commissioner Fuller on Friday morning to discuss the camp's future. Some of the camp's residents have been on the streets for a few months, while for others it's been decades. Housing Minister Pru Goward said the people at Martin Place need to be moved on. Credit:Katherine Griffiths Rewi Waetford, 33, who has lived on the streets for 4½ months, said before he became homeless he used to have a poor opinion of homeless people.

"I used to think 'get a job'," he said. Similar taunts are now shouted at the camp by people who walk past. One woman, who did not want her name used, told Fairfax Media she had been homeless for about 30 years. She is wrapped in a puffy jacket, its hood tight around her face, as she sits in the mouth of her plastic-covered tent, occasionally gripped by a bad-sounding cough. "No one wants to talk to us about a solution to being homeless, they just want to talk to us about what it's like," she said. "There seems to be this incredible curiosity about it, and I can't work out why. If you really want to know, go and live on the streets for a week. No one ever takes me up on that."

Many in the camp, including the woman, have a deep distrust of the Department of Housing, while others such as Nigel Blakemore, 45, rush to speak to department representatives when they visit the camp twice a week. The camp's residents fear they will be put into temporary accommodation for a few weeks, then be cast back onto the street, where they will have to start from nothing. Ms Goward, also on 2GB, said she was "angry" and "very frustrated" about the tents. She said the community could "expect action" on Friday, including dismantling the kitchen, which she described as a "magnet" for homeless people. "We cannot make the same mistake that we made in June, when they moved the people out of Martin Place but they didn't move the kitchen or the gas bottles," she said.

"This time - we're meeting tomorrow with the City of Sydney - this time we move all those structures so that kitchen doesn't remain." Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said it was "tragic" it had taken "tents pitched outside the offices of politicians and financiers for it to be now making news". "It's tragic that this debate has dehumanised the people forced into this situation so much that talk is about moving them on rather than on long-term solutions," Cr Moore said. Loading "The City's doing more to resolve homelessness than any other local government in the country but virtually all the levers of power and responsibility lie with the state government.

"Instead of papering over the issue by moving people to Belmore Park, Woolloomooloo or Wentworth Park, we need the government to take practical action. You can't solve homelessness without housing."