Parkinson’s law about work expanding to fill the time available applies especially to government. The tasks will fill up to take whatever time, money and space is available.
It is certainly true of overseas visits. When the Australian Prime Minister goes overseas about a hundred public servants, attendants, journalists, photographers and television camera people go too.
So if 55 heads of government come to Australia for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting we might expect 5000 people. These meetings seem to grow in inverse proportion to the importance of the work at hand. More Heads of Government are using their own aircraft — and therefore fill them up. There was a time the Australian Prime Minister went on commercial aircraft and there is no reason why that should not happen now.
Canberra should be able to house a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. But it cannot. This is not because Canberra is too small, but because CHOGM is too big.
At the most recent meeting in Durban, the heads of government took five five-star hotels and two four-star hotels. The retreat, at which the hangers-on are reduced to the minimum, was at a four-star resort. Canberra does not have that capacity. That must have been known in 1998 when it was announced that Canberra would get CHOGM, so why announce it? It was also known before the Durban meeting. It could not have housed the numbers at the previous CHOGM in Edinburgh in 1997. So why was unsuitable Canberra ever contemplated?
We have been focussing too much on the future in explaining the move to Brisbane. It has been suggested that Queensland is more important electorally to the Government than the ACT and CHOGM will be held just before the next election.
But ADFA political scientist Malcolm Mackerras (in a letter on Page C6) puts another theory which has a lot of merit.
He suggests we look back to 1998 when the Canberra announcement was made. Prime Minister Howard was facing an election in November. At that time the ACT was crucial. It was essential that Liberal Margaret Reid retain her Senate seat. Unlike state senators who take their seats for a fixed six-year term on July 1 after the election, territory senators take their seats immediately and have a term concurrent with the House of Representatives (usually three years). If Reid lost her seat, Howard would lose a critical majority in the Senate that he could cobble together most of the time with independents.
Reid was being threatened by Democrat Rick Farley in an environment very hostile to Howard. Howard refused to live here and had cut the town’s main industry.
So Howard tossed Canberra the prospect of CHOGM to save Reid’s skin and his own. Now the ACT does not matter electorally, he has moved CHOGM to a city capable of housing it.
The cynicism is not that the Government has moved CHOGM to Brisbane, but that it said it was going to have it in Canberra in the first when it must have known that such a thing was never possible.
Howard will get two electoral bites at the CHOGM cherry.
There are several lessons for Canberrans.
We could just “”get over it” as Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has suggested.
Or we should point out to Australians how their capital has been abused as a political plaything. If Canberra did not have the necessary hotels why not say so in the first place?
We should also try to get a third seat, preferably a very marginal one. As the Reid-CHOGM theory suggests, there is nothing like a marginal seat to sway political decision-making.
We should also build a critical mass of attractions to generate a hospitality industry which can cope with large government and industry conventions.
That means welcoming the Summernats, the V8 race, major sporting events and upgrading transport links as well as welcoming National Gallery blockbusters and visitors to the War Memorial.
Canberra’s suitability is down to accommodation. It has nothing to do with the local government’s failure to mow laws or its decisions on the Bruce Stadium, the V8 race or the hospital.
Howard did not prevent CHOGM coming here because we are to run a V8 race through the parliamentary precinct. His party agreed with it federally. Rather CHOGM cannot come here because we do not have enough events like the V8 race. When Summernats came a decade ago many residents complained. It is still an inconvenience for some, but it is only a few days a year.
Sure, local residents do not want to subsidise people putting on events. We want accountability and our money well spent. Also, we want certain elements of Canberra to be maintained, particularly the open-space and not building on the hills that give us the Bush Capital effect.
But Canberrans cannot have it both ways. We cannot wring our hands about CHOGM not being held here without being willing to accept that to support CHOGM the city needs a critical mass and the inconvenience that comes with it.
Alternatively, we can acknowledge and be proud of being a very small Bush Capital and rejoice that CHOGM with its traffic and security nightmares and self-important delegates with their varying democratic credentials is taken to a place where they will feel more at home.
One thing’s for sure. Parkinson’s law will not be broken. CHOGM will not contract to fit Canberra’s smaller space.