Month: February 1999

This week, the National Capital Authority is likely to approve the start of work on the National Museum of Australia on Acton Peninsula. The museum has a troubled history. It came into being with an Act of Parliament in 1980.

In the ensuing 18 years there have been many promises and false starts. Originally the concept was to move away from the big monumental building with static displays. The museum was to depict human interaction with the environment of Australia. To that end the 88-hectare site at Yarramundi would have been uniquely positioned. Others, however, argued that Yarramundi was too far away and that it was more important to get activity into the Parliamentary Triangle or at least the central national area.

The Hawke Government did virtually nothing about the museum. When Paul Keating was Prime Minister he raised objections to another monumental building by the lake.
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The Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, was quick to take some Australian credit for the dramatic change of stand by the Indonesian Government over Timor last week. He asserted that a letter from the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, to the Indonesian Government expressing concern about Timor and the need to look at autonomy had helped changed the Indonesians’ minds about Timor. If that is so, it fairly damns Australian policy over the past 27 years, under both Labor and Coalition Governments. It means that the Australian view matters and that if from the moment Portugal deserted Timor in 1975 Australia had firmly insisted on an act of self-determination, then perhaps the past 27 years of death and torture might not have happened. Perhaps, even, the East Timorese might have voted for Indonesian sovereignty with local autonomy.

More likely, though, the change in the Australian position was only part of the reason for Indonesian change of heart.

Once the stubborn President Suharto was off the scene, leaders in Indonesia reviewed the equation. They saw falling international support because of Indonesia’s stand on East Timor; they saw a steadfastness in those opposing Indonesia’s stand; they saw a steadfastness in the resistance to Indonesian integration; and they saw and increasing economic cost in hanging on in East Timor which was not balanced by any oil revenue.
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We must pay for the privilege or have the privilege taken away.

This is the view of Chief Minister Kate Carnell who points to the latest round of comparisons between the ACT and other jurisdictions over the delivery of government services.

Ultimately she is right as any credit-card junkie knows. A prudent household manger, though, would prefer not to get any consumer credit charges even though you are willing to cop some mortgage repayments in the knowledge that ultimately home ownership is better than perpetual rent.
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