27 December 2010

Imperial Canberra?

| johnboy
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Paul Sheehan in the SMH is expounding on how we are the root of all evil:

Canberra is lush right now. The trees are high, the vegetation thick, the birdlife dense and from those trees comes a beautiful wall of sound – black cicadas, in great numbers. “Black princes”, we called them as kids. Australia has created a green capital, the nation’s only major inland city, with 350,000 people, a very comfortable city. But what lies beneath the greenery is increasingly worrisome.

It’s not just the city’s shockingly lacklustre public architecture, which itself represents a poverty of imagination. This has been a terrible year for Canberra, as expressed in the reputation of the federal public service and the very idea that Canberra should be an imperial power within Australia, constantly expanding its reach into the rest of the nation.

Sadly I think he might have a point.

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JustThinking6:41 pm 02 Jan 11

Is the SMH also going to do a story on Sydney??
The kids at the Cross and other places?
Who gives a ratz azz about the buildings??

Why is everyone so worried about how a place looks,,,,and not worried about its inhabitants or how it functions?
Geesh it was bad 25years ago hanging around Blacktown main street at 3am,,,,,but I can still walk around Civic at 3am…

Let the SMH print what they like….stop biting…some azzholes just have nothing better to write about

Sheehan’s article is confused and unpersuasive. For example, the following is offered as fact without any supporting evidence:

The Labor-Greens alliance seems impervious to the reality that Canberra’s track record of delivering services is not intrinsically better than that of the states, which have done the hard work of delivering health, transport, energy and education for more than 100 years.

…when a disinterested observer could certainly take a look at the areas of health, transport, energy and education and decide that the Federal record of service delivery is significantly better than that of the States. For example, compare the Federally-administered air transport system with the State-based rail; or the Federally-run University sector with the State-run Primary and Secondary schooling. The public seems to agree with that assessment, too (76% support for the Federal funding plan).

The article also missteps when it complains about the Labor government wanting to take additional revenue from the mining companies, but then also bemoans the fact that “Western Australia is crying out for revenue to invest in the infrastructure needed to expand and sustain its boom.”. If Western Australia currently receives the boom revenue, shouldn’t Western Australia be awash in perfectly administered State-based infrastructure investment? How can Sheehan possibly keep a straight face when decrying the idea of further centralisation whilst simultaneously castigating the Federal government for a lack of intervention in the States?

I wouldn’t take Sheehan’s comments to heart. When inter-state journalists slag off Canberra, they are usually referring to the Australian parliament and the infrastructure that supports it. They forget most people who live here actually like it. Anyway we should maintain the myth of how sterile it is in order to keep people away.

Thumper said:

“The architecture, aside from the parliamentary triangle, is generally boring, insipid, and completely and utterly devoid of any imagination or courage. Brick veneer and rendered monstrosities does not a city make.”

Your answer is yurts, kraals and igloos?

Sloppy journalism from (a) Paul Sheehan and (b) the SMH. Quelle surprise!

Yep, like all Australian cities, Canberra has its fair share of crap architecture. If Paul were to look at the Sydney CBD, or even dare to venture out to places like Parramatta, Liverpool or Chatswood (comparable LGAs to Canberra), he might be shocked by what he sees.

Whatever they pay him, it is too much. There is plenty of better written and researched material out there in the blogosphere, as the paid readership figures for his rapidly declining employer demonstrate.

I don’t mind him denigrating Canberra in the bigger picture, though. Let them all keep swarming to the much lauded northern NSW/SE Qld region, and leave us in peace.

“Will the Canberra Times follow the SMH into terminal decline?”

I think it preceded the SMH!

Who gives a rat’s what a Sydney joourno thinks of Canberra. That place is a shithole

Agree the first two paragraphs make all Canberrans sound like fatcats, which you’d think we’d be used to by now. And the follow up punch that we choose to live somewhere that’s ugly; ouch…

Although Sheehan’s article of last week was excellent – and gives more context to what he’s really trying to say here: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-diminished-gillard-caught-in-a-storm-of-her-own-making-20101219-191ub.html

I note that Gina Rinehart (the daughter of mining magnate Lang Hancock and arguably Australia’s richest woman) has just purchased a large chunk of the SMH.

I predict we will see a lot more of this rubbish from right wing journos.

Will the Canberra Times follow the SMH into terminal decline?

This of course would be good news for increased readership of the RiotACT.

I love Canberra for its open spaces and greenery, country feel and ease of getting around and will put up with the ‘lacklustre architecture’ for that. As LSWCHP suggests it just depends on what you choose to focus on.

Seems the SMH is still bitter that the other states didn’t back Sydney for the capital. Perhaps Sheehan would even like a recount on the 1899 referenda? He would no doubt be counted among the 40% of New South Welshmen who voted no…

georgesgenitals7:52 am 28 Dec 10

Who really gives a stuff if some idiot journo tries to write a piece like this? Those of us who choose to live here do so for a reason.

Ahhh bollocks.

Picture the scene. Paul Sheehan goes to any one of a hundred remote communities and tells the locals: “You don’t know how lucky you are. You could be living in crappy old Canberra, where people have to endure shockingly lacklustre public architecture, representing a poverty of the imagination!! You lot are living in a paradise by comparison!!”.

The fact is that Canberra is (despite its problems) a well organised modern city with good infrastructure, good educational facilites and lots of well paid work.

I’d say it was a slow news day, and Mr Sheehan had nothing else to write about so he thought he fill his required column inches with a bit of Canberra bashing.

1 out of 10.

Apart from stating some Canberra facts in the first paragraph and the personal opinion on architecture thrown into the second paragraphs Pauls article has little to do with ‘Canberra’, rather it’s a big dig at the Labor Federal Government.

Yeah, lots of Civic buildings are rubbish. I direct the reader towards the Crowne Plaza building (Casino Canberra) and its contemporaries. No idea what that last sentence is about though.

Hells_Bells745:40 pm 27 Dec 10

I haven’t noticed the cicada’s this year at all.

It is true, although I’d prefer it if columnists would once in a while portray Canberra as a community in its own right, and not slander that whole community for the Federal Government’s decisions.

Gosh, who’d have thought that the Australian Government should try and run Australia. More power to Hutt River.

About what JB?

Sheehan is hard pressed to find a coherent logical argument at the best of times.

Buildings designed by committee and focus groups are universally ugly, but Canberra doesn’t actually have them all to itself.

As for the State vs Federal argument, ho-hum, been there before methinks, but it is the slow news season.

Reputation of the APS, so no one likes taxes but everybody wants the services, a bit droll really.

Perhaps there was an interesting point in the linked article that I missed.

sexynotsmart4:22 pm 27 Dec 10

Now I don’t mind a bit of scene-setting… but the link between the opening paragraph and the rest of the piece was pretty tenuous.

How tenuous was it? About as thin as a Gillard government’s grip on power. Which coincidentally was a point the scribbler tried to make.

Mr Sheehan could have used his opening para to describe a hick-ridden NSW backwater. Say where Our Oakeshott of the Immaculate Independence hails from. It would have been a neater tie-in to his final fingerpointing.

PS: please forgive the nitpicking. I was sober over Christmas and am now the proud owner of six (6) “can you drive please honey?” brownie points.

Isn’t the SMH the same newspaper which published a piece by the gladly departed Paddy McGuinness two days after the 2003 Canberra bushfires – with bodies still being recovered – which described Canberra as a “socialist utopia” and that the bushfires were a good excuse to bulldoze the whole place. The paper has no credibilty whatsoever and their miserable circulation attests to the fact that their “paper of record” days are long since gone.

Nope, it’s just Paul Sheehan. He rarely has a point. Not a valid one, anyway. When you think that he, in fact, does have a point, it is merely an indication that you have, in fact, missed his point completely.

He’s just having another bash at talking up some of his conservative hobby-horses. He might have written a thoughtful, reasoned piece looking at the decline of federalism in Australia, with the consequent shift toward a more unitary system. Nope. Much more fun to have a crack at ‘Imperial Canberra’ expanding its reach over the poor benighted states and territories.

Those self-same states and territories are colonial anachronisms that should have been abolished decades ago. Their systems of governance appear to serve only as cushy sinecures for party hacks, seat-sniffers and serial nuisances that don’t have the talent or ambition to aspire to the federal parliament. Yes, getting rid of them will require the national parliament to take on bigger roles and the APS to take more of a hand in direct service delivery than it already does. But the roles of local/regional government in services delivery will have to expand as well, so it’s not going to mean the unchecked centralisation and bureaucratisation that Sheehan is apparently so afraid of.

Of course, abolishing the states would also mean Canberra (the city, not the political entity) would have to grow. It’s the national capital – that’s how it works with unitary political systems. If you don’t like it, then pick another city to be capital. Fine by me. If Canberra is going to be strangled simply as a result of ideological cant, then I’d be delighted to move.

The easiest possible path of lazy politics journalism:
– List everything you believe to be a failing of Federal politics (such as a policy you watched become a feeble shade of itself when a team of weak politicians compromised their ideal to avoid immediate criticism, rather than accepting long term credit for the end result).
– Direct blame at either supporting crew instead of the directors, or the stage but not the play.
– Never analyse or investigate your own assumptions.
– Confirm your readers biases with anecdotes.

(and above all, blame all bad ideas on Canberra or public servants and their meddlesome ways, but all credit for good ideas goes to whichever party you support)

Successful article is now written, journo can return to doing important things, like training monkeys to joust.

Sheehan’s article is very poorly written. It’s just the old chestnut of “Canberra” being used as a convenient handle for the collective incompetence/bureaucracy/power grabbing tendencies of federal parliamentarians. The article is really about, to use Sheehan’s term, the “incorrigible imperialists of federal Labor”, rather than the city of Canberra itself.

I’m not a public servant, but think that the policy decisions made by this administration have given the APS absolutely nothing to work with. Look at the mess Swan has made of the MRRT – compromised to within an inch of its life because Swan and Co. are paranoid about copping any kind of criticism, from anyone. And yet it’ll be “Canberra” getting blamed when the MRRT fails to raise any meaningful revenue, rather than the Queenslander who brokered it.

It’s kind of funny how “Canberra” never gets any credit for things that work well – like, the introduction of the GST or the HECS system

Because Sydney is such a fine place to live, with a high quality of life…..and is the centre of the known universe.

What my house costs me here would only get an equivalent in the most western part of ‘greater’ Sydney.

Complain all you like SMH. If it keeps you away from the joint then all the better

What a strange article.
Its like he never passed a unit of Australian history, nor paid any attention to the country since World War II.
Income Tax Act and States Grants Act (both 1942) denied States the ability to receive income tax revenues, and forced them to satisfy their spending commitments by seeking conditional assistance grants from the Commonwealth, so long as the States keep the Commonwealth on-side by following Federal policy as required.

We’ve been under that arrangement for almost seventy years now.

But its not like everybody in Canberra gathers together and comes up with a conspiracy on how to control the nation, in the end Departments can only get away with what the Minister (elected from a seat in the Federation) agrees to. By nature of the Federal system, component States will only ever be semi-autonomous and accept that as the price of membership.

I agree about the architecture though, we’ve become bland.
Bring back brutalism!

Two points about this article.

It annoys me that the actions of the Federal government are so easily referred to as “Canberra said….” or “Canberra did….” as if the citizens of Canberra decided to get together and screw over the rest of the country. The decisions that the reporters are talking about are made by people who don’t come from Canberra, except for 4 of them. Public servants will usually have come up with a policy but it’s the government ministers who make the final decision and they don’t have to agree. And it’s not a given that these public servants come from Canberra as the government is spread across the nation.

The second point I want to make is that if there was a clear and precise demarcation line between the powers and responsibilities of the Federal, State and local governments things would be better as the citizens would know who to actually blame for the stuff ups that invariable happen. The constitution covers this but the Federal government is trying to take it all over using it’s powers of taxation, a Federal responsibility, and the way in which it spreads the common wealth. The citizens should punish their local representatives, at what ever level of government, who try to over step their area of responsibility.

Growling Ferret11:00 am 27 Dec 10

Johnboy

Don’t lazily assume that Canberra referred to is the population of the city. Canberra as referred to by Sheehan is the fly in fly out workforce that is the Federal Parliament and its hundreds of small minded advisors

It’s not just the city’s shockingly lacklustre public architecture, which itself represents a poverty of imagination.

Agreed. I drove through the city for the first time in many years, a week or two ago, and I could have sworn I was in Sydney or Melbourne. Big glass buildings everywhere, no parking, pedestrians having to risk life and limb when crossing narrow fast roads. We need to stop trying to copy Sydney and Melbourne, and bring back the Canberra imagination.

This has been a terrible year for Canberra, as expressed in the reputation of the federal public service

Spoken like a true sydney journalist, unaware of the fact that Canberra has changed in the last 100 years. Maybe in the early 1900s, the place was full of public servants, but these-days Canberra seems to be more private than public industry. My fathers public service job (infact his whole department) just recently got moved from Canberra to Sydney.

Canberra should be an imperial power within Australia, constantly expanding its reach into the rest of the nation.

Does this guy have any clue? Maybe he should look at actual news reports and when looking at Canberra and ‘the rest of the nation’, see who interferes with the other the most? I daresay Canberra would get the short end of the stick from the federales.

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