The biggest thing to happen in Canberra for a while happened this week. Andrew Barr, mayor chief minister of Canberra, declared that he hated journalists and was over the mainstream media. Journalists, displaying a remarkable thinness of skin, then declared they hated Andrew Barr back, getting stuck into him on Twitter.
Press Gallery journalists, most of whom are Canberra residents, berated Barr and stood proudly on the Fourth Estate’s tradition of speaking truth to power, holding governments to account, etc etc. He was compared to Joh Bjelke-Petersen. One former journalist invoked Stalin. As the response grew more hysterical, you wondered when Barr was going to open a gulag in a Hume warehouse. And The Canberra Times, which was directly attacked by Barr, was particularly aggrieved and compared him to Donald Trump.
It’s been more than two decades since Michelle Grattan’s effort to turn the Canberra Times into, in effect, a national newspaper (the comparison with the Washington Post was often made) ended with her being sent packing. Since then, the Times, which later moved back into Fairfax control, has receded into a local rag; its best feature is that it takes the Public Service seriously and, particularly when Noel Towell was on the beat, subjected it to strong scrutiny. But with a rapidly declining circulation, the end of the print edition can’t be too far away. After that, it will be just another Fairfax website.
Why can’t a wealthy city of 300,000 people, the nation’s capital, populated by people notionally engaged with public affairs and home of one of Australia’s best universities, sustain a publication focused on what they do?
Part of the problem is that not much actually happens in Canberra beyond the Raiders and the Brumbies in winter. It’s boring, in a good way. The population is highly educated — 40% or more have tertiary degrees — and high-income. Unemployment is usually at least one whole percentage point below the rest of the country — there has never been double-digit unemployment here. So many of the social problems found in larger and smaller cities have little impact. And because there’s only one level of government, housing and infrastructure are actually planned coherently.
Canberra is also unlike the rest of the country in other ways. It is far less diverse than major cities. Reflecting the Public Service, and the rest of the governing class (politicians, lobbyists, journalists, statutory board appointees, thinktankers, economists), it is overwhelmingly white. Whole sections of the public service look like the post-war wave of migration simply never happened, let along more recent immigration from beyond Europe.
I’ve lived here for nearly a quarter century and love it — I’m thankful I had the chance to raise my kids in such a wonderful town. But it’s in a bubble from Australian life; it’s a Toy Town that bears little resemblance to the rest of the country. We’re disconnected, not from “real Australia” but from other Australias — the one of our major cities, the one of our regional towns, the one that is low-income, or from a non-English speaking background, or Indigenous (the Public Service has been striving mightily to improve its level of Indigenous employment for as long as I can remember, and always struggled).
It is particularly divorced from the Australia that has endured the economic transformation that most of the country has undergone since the 1980s. Not for us the transformation from manufacturing to services — Canberra was always about services. Not for us the dislocation and anxiety from globalisation and foreign competition. Most of us have the skillsets to move wherever we want, even overseas if we want to or have to. Journalist, lobbyist, politician, consultant — we’re the kind of people who benefit from globalisation, rather than be threatened by it.
Neither politicians nor journalists are particularly trusted by people. Barr versus the hacks is a clash of the untrusted, in a city that is divorced from Australian reality.
Aha ! what I have always suspected – funded by the rest of Australia- publicly funded DISNEYLAND.
A former Canberra planning official once described the National Triangle as a “Walt Disney theme park without a theme”, so the criticism isn’t too far off the mark.
The ACT gets its share of Commonwealth funding from the GST and other grants, on the same basis as the rest of the States and Territories. It also largely self-funds through rates, taxes and charges levied on its own residents and businesses, just like the rest of Australia. The Commonwealth does provide extra funding to support the Parliamentary area, the place the rest of Australia infests us with their chosen politicians, so, thanks for that.
“Since then, the Times, which later moved back into Fairfax control, has receded into a local rag; its best feature is that it takes the Public Service seriously and, particularly when Noel Towell was on the beat, subjected it to strong scrutiny.” So Bernard you don’t read Saturday’s edition with its articles by retired former editor and editor-at-large, Jack Waterford? It was Jack who started taking the public service seriously and writing about it. And he still does. Forcefully. Because he no longer needs to be anything but independent and call it as he sees it. His article on the AFP last October was an absolute ripper of plain speaking. Observe and learn!
“And because there’s only one level of government, housing and infrastructure are actually planned coherently.” No they are not. That’s exactly Barr’s problem. It’s only two weeks since the ABC news ran articles on the appalling building standards that have resulted in widespread serious problems for owners. The local government is as much in bed with developers as they are everywhere else. And the shonky builders here, as elsewhere, are never brought to account. They just declare bankruptcy and re-open under another name and continue ripping off the buyers.
The parliamentary press gallery is precious and self-absorbed while sneering at “the wonderful town” that they all “love” to live in. Rack off the lot of you.
See Bernard. It’s not so difficult. Jack has done it again. This article has just appeared on the website of The Canberra Times – the outlet that “has receded into a local rag” in your opinion.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/all-media-critical-to-effective-government-whether-andrew-barr-likes-it-or-not-20180315-h0xjkd.html
Bernard, being a journalist, and “underage”, you might have missed one of the important elements in the Barr Backlash, which you can see in the letters pages of the Canberra Times. Twice, in a period of a few weeks (which made the point stick) Barr managed to alienate “older voters”, and it is these people, a substantial and well-educated portion of the ACT electorate, who you will see in the CT telling Barr to get on his bike.
Barr told us that “older voters” were standing in the way of his glorious vision for transforming Canberra with high rise towers like Singapore (and concrete canyons for his old tech trams) while ripping up the NCDC built arterial road system that was planned to support a flexible (electric) bus transport system servicing all Canberra, not just the citizens of Gunghalin.
Older voters are apparently upsetting him by demanding more sensible and sensitive planning in developing Canberra for a growing population, and standing against the brutal demolition of our beautifully scaled and carefully planned Bush Capital nestling between hills on the Limestone Plains.
Then a few weeks later he announced that “older voters” listen to the ABC and read newspapers so he was no longer interested in anything they have to say, and he will move onto social media to get his message across to younger voters (clearly so out of touch that he does not know many of those “older voters” are already highly engaged on social media and sitting there waiting for him).
Barr never had much personal popularity in Canberra, he was just the last man standing in a city too smart to vote for the Liberals, and he will not be given a free pass by the electorate, poor press notwithstanding. The Labor Party had better replace him soon with someone who understands this “town” better than he does, before they go down the tube at the next election, when it is likely more independents (and ratepayers) will stand to put a brake on his brainless and expensive destruction of the National Capital.
I agree Susan. Those of us who have lived here for forty or fifty years remember what was intended to plan and distinguish the national capital, which Bernard feels free to diminish as “toy town”, from other developing cities.
I also remember times when the electorate was not denigrated by its politicians. And I have not long returned from living in an Asian society where respect for elders was a basic tenet. Bernard and Barr would both do well to show more regard for others.
yes and yes
Yes. Older voters are standing in the way of his vision (glorious or otherwise) but they are also standing in the way of any vision that does not strictly adhere to the nonsensical restrictive residential zoning that Canberra is overly locked into. As for the Singapore effect, any hopes of densification of this far too decadently sprawled town are limited to high rise in small parcels of land, lest any alternative housing model encroaches into the leafy streets and the predominantly older, white, middle class population is forced to share their neighbourhoods. Shame on them all and their cold and sterile NIMBYism.
Last year, I attended a public seminar by former NCDC chief Tony Powell. The grey haired brigade were out in force on that day, cheering on this old relic as he castigated the Barr government (and in fact the whole concept of self government) in what amounted to a rant.
During the Q&A that followed, Mr Powell had nothing to offer for any of the valid questions asked other than a call to return to the good old days of mid 20th century planning that has been thrown out the window across the western world.
At one point, when asked how to alleviate hosing affordability issues, his answer was to ‘build more parks’– a reply met with approval by the septeganerian and well heeled grey army.
This pretty much sums it up. Older Canberrans should definitely get out of the way. They got to live their docile suburban dream, and they don’t need to now foist it on the newer generations. And as for their ‘bush capital’, well give me less bush and more capital any day.
I recall our last election was fought strongly, and lost by the Liberals on the issue of light rail, trams as the Liberals call them. I really doubt they’ll fight another election on this.
Was ‘Frontline’ a training video?
It’s past bloody time that our by-line obsessed press took a good long hard look at themselves to decide whether they’re here to indulge their precious egos and opinions – to use their elite positions to patronise the public with their prejudiced supercilious interpretations of what’s going on, viewed through the prism of their personal politics : or whether they’re here to serve the society of which they are members.
Whose side are they on.
Who do they work for. Either some ideologue media mogul (bent on using their market reach/share to preach one side of politics to the detriment and negation of others; meddling in our political system, to influence electoral outcomes – the sort of thing Tuppence says he is so against) employing them to push those politics : or the edification and good of the voting public.
That they are not “entertaining” when news seems to be aimed to that end.
Those awards are Walkleys, not Wankleys.
If, as a working Canberra journalist, politicians disliked or loathed me I would wear it as a badge of honour. As long as reportage is factual who cares what they think.