New York’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, is not permitted to stand for a third term. So at the upcoming election the field is wide open. Despite many commentators in New York saying it is a dull election, there is active interest in the city. The newspapers, the air waves and the chatter in taxi cabs make constant references to it. For the people of New York it is an important election. Among the issues are whether an incoming mayor can maintain the law-and-order success of Giuliani without causing what are seen as major breaches of civil liberties.
New Yorkers are interested. They were also interested in the contest at the federal level, both in Hillary Clinton’s pursuit of a Senate seat and the major White House contest.
Similarly, there was an election last year in the City of London. Londoners were intensely interested, first as to whether Jeffrey Archer would be the Conservative candidate and secondly as to whether the endorsed Labour candidate would defeat the previous Labour head of local government, Red Ken Livingston. It was an exciting tussle. The issues included references to Livingston’s previous attempt to ban harmless children’s books because they were homophobic and his campaign to make London’s transport more accessible and affordable at the cost of high-income-earning Londoners.
Both in New York and in London one could easily bemoan the low quality of candidates and the triviality of a few of the issues. One cannot get much lower than Jeffrey Archer, for example. Nonetheless the people of the those cities engaged themselves in the matters at hand. The matters were discussed at a dinner parties, in hair-dresser shops, in taxis and in workplaces.
In a third city, Canberra, the opposite pertains. Many people in this city are actively apathetic out local politics, if you will pardon the oxymoron.. They take a positive disdain about it. It is a point of pride to announce that they do not take the slightest interest. There have, of course, been a few exceptions. Maybe it’s because it is difficult for public servants to be involved in politics, even at a different level, but that should not be an excuse.
We have an apathetocracy.
This week, some of the chickens of apathy came home to roost. The National Trust announced it was putting nine inner Canberra suburbs on its endangered-places list. They joined places such as the members’ pavilion at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The president of the trust in the ACT, Professor Ken Taylor, said the endangered Canberra suburbs had been settled in the 1920s and were the best examples of garden city developments in the world. They were threatened by over-development, in particular, dual occupancy and the new building code which will allow a blanket plot-to-building ratio of 35 per cent, with some cases going up to 50 per cent. Professor Taylor has called for an end to blanket rules that apply to entire suburbs because over time that can destroy the original qualities of them.
The threat has come from the actions since 1989 of the very local government that people are so apathetic about. There is some poetic justice in that the fact that the area most affected has the highest proportion of senior federal public servants, high-powered lobbyists and high-paid consultants to the Federal Government — who are the people who have shown the most apathy and disdain for local governance.
It may be too late now. The election is a little over a month away. But with the bulldozers arriving at the doorstep, perhaps some of the apathy can be shaken out of them in the same way that the people of New York and London have been engaged in local politics without looking down their noses because it so profoundly affects the way they live — transport, crime, health, and building standards.
Also last week we saw an admission that the gung-ho, develop-at-all-costs policy of the past had utterly failed in the development of Gungahlin. The admission came in the form of an ostensible about-face in land planning for six new suburbs in outer Gungahlin.
Urban Services Minister Brendan Smyth said the new proposal would correct “inadequacies” in recent planning practices. “Inadequacies” is a euphemism for a planning bungle. The streets in Gungahlin are too narrow to support the trees and shrubs needed to continue with the garden-city and bush-capital concepts that the city is renowned for. Indeed, it is difficult to get buses and garbage trucks into and out of the place with reasonable safety.
Smith uttered all the right buzzwords when launching the outline of the six new suburbs in North Gungahlin. He called for the rejuvenation of Canberra as a “”garden city”.
“”We want to take the past values of the garden city and the Bush capital, and blend them with a sustainable agenda,” he said.
As an aside, one might well ask what was unsustainable about the early cottages in Ainslie, the elegant houses of Barton and the substantial places of Forrest. Most of these will still be standing all would have been standing long up after some of the eaveless, chipboard muck that has gone up in the area in the past few years, despite a the huge advances in materials technology.
Whether Smith’s buzzwords are translate into worthwhile reality, however, is going to depend on more people taking an active interest in what the local government – – Liberal, Labor or coalition – – does. Left on their own without constant broad public pressure and exposure they will do what is easiest in the short term and at what provides the best for the revenue base which can be then it used for bells-and-whistles vote-catching.
Now the government has admitted the planning blunders in Gungahlin, it might move not to allow similar mistakes to be perpetuated in at the inner suburbs. Unfortunately, Smyth argues that he has done all he needs to by putting limits within several heritage precincts (each only part of a suburb). However, Taylor correctly argues that there are significant elements about the whole area which can only be a preserved and maintained with a broader approach. Plot ratios are quite critical to this. Without generous verges and significant space on a significant number of blocks, there is simply no room for the large trees and shrubs that make that area of Canberra or so unique. Some isolated dual occupancies are not a problem. In fact they provide a lot of social good in permitting people to stay in at the same area in smaller dwellings. But that social good has been used as a vehicle for developers to willy-nilly buy, demolish and a divide. Under present rules the whole character of suburbs change. The number of redevelopments needs to be restricted section by section.
The Gungahlin fiasco was begun under a Labor Government, but continued under the Liberals. It came about by handing over the whole of the planning of each suburb to the private sector without proper quality controls or any enforcement of the weak controls that were there. Without quality controls imposed by the government in the long-term interests of the whole community, the private sector does what it knows best – – makes as much money as possible.
The trick for government is to harness the energy of the private sector while restraining its rapaciousness. Whether that happens in the new Gungahlin and in the inner areas will depend on the interest that Canberrans take in their local politics – – as much as crime control in New York and transport efficiency in London depend on the way those cities residents keep their politicians on their toes.