Rubber necking with Andrew Charlton

Halfway across Parramatta Square on a dark weekday evening, tired workers streaming home, the glass towers soaring above the tangle of cyclone wire, plastic sheeting, and a few remaining shops, I looked up at one particular glass-and-steel horror story, and thought, “That building is fucking that other building.”

All the while, the building did not let up. It was vast and low and long, sides of glass panes and panels and twisted metal, expanding in all directions. It loomed behind the two-storey, yellow-brick, graceful, Victorian old town hall, overshadowing its modest roof and arches, and, well, reaching right into the back of it.

It was a very neat trick, I thought, because it wrecked the appearance of both buildings, giving neither the space to be. Shoved together in ways that some concept document no doubt says is “deconstructive respacing of urban syzygy”, the whole schemozzle is failed, stupid and very, very 21st-century Parramatta. On Google Maps, I dropped a pin at the building’s address. PHIVE, it said. PHIVE?

* * *

Just getting into Parramatta was difficult, the rail station rebuilt and then swaddled with barriers that prevent street exit. These channel you underground and lead you to a Westfield shopping centre that sucks you in with a whoosh, Gruen-transfers you, and eventually spits you out still shaking, clutching a Furby, a new hat, and four buns from Breadtop. The Westfield squats in the centre of Parramatta, where mixed blocks of shops once were. IT and office workers drift out to their boxy sky-high flats, clutching random purchases, a pot plant under an arm, a bubble tea.

Under the awnings of such shops survive bearded, roughish old men, making up beds near where their boarding houses used to be. The place designated to become Sydney’s second CBD is a ghastly, hilarious, dystopian hellscape, an experiment in what happens when the big boys get their hands on a whole city.

The privatised Metro project charges through the middle of town. Heritage has been flattened for the Powerhouse Project — the museum that isn’t — brought to you by, who else, Lendlease, which rises on the city centre’s edge. And where… errghh. From time to time, after you spend years cursing Labor for its sell-outs, you see what the Liberals can really do. My God, this is world-class neoliberalising, whole worlds reduced to intersecting enthusiasms of capital, state and concept pitch.

* * *

The hotel I checked into was a couple of suburbs out, and had appeared from its name to be part of a global chain. But it was some one-off joint they’d taken over, weird as, with wallpaper in two shades of burning scarlet, framed mirrors in the lobby, silvered stand-up lamps burning white light. All around the bunker-like building, grass and weeds grew high in gardens of clinker brick homes awaiting demolition. With a few hours until the forum, I checked the map for the nearest place to get a few supplies. It suggested Westfield Parramatta.

* * *

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Andrew Charlton!”

In the cheery, daggy, cosy hall of the Parramatta Mission, a church and church hall, there’s about 12 people crowded on stage in two rows. Have they invited all the candidates?’

“Jah, hello, I am Jens,” a thickset young man introduced himself to a crowd of about 200, on churchy chairs, people of all colours and shapes, old Anglos and Tamils and Africans, in beige jackets, and thick chunky jumpers, sparkling a little from evening rain. Next to me, a toothy, mumsy Methodist gave me a wide grin, and offered me chocolates from a brown bag. “Looks like fun!” she said. Everyone had brown bags of chocolate.

Old Parramatta you’d have to say, community groups and congregations, activists and organisers. Organised by a community-unions-churches-faiths group called the Sydney Alliance, of whom I’d heard a little but not yet understood. That would change. The crowd on stage looked like a selection had been taken from among us of those who might be taken up by UFOs as a sample of humanity. Were we really going to hear from all 12?

Jens (or it was something like that: South African, earnest, he sounded Jens-y) yielded the lectern to a young woman, his co-host. “One hour before tonight, Liberal candidate Maria Kovacic informed us that she had a scheduling clash and could not attend, despite having committed to this event months ago. “Before I go to our two candidates …” — Charlton, tall and aquiline, Greens Phil Bradley — “… let’s hear some stories.”

My neighbour turned to me. “Oh, this is my favourite bit!” I leaned to my other neighbour, neat, slender, two books with paper slips on his knees, theologian type. “Excuse me, what the fuck is this?” “Ohhhhhhh…” he said knowingly. “First time here?” As the local members looked on, a young man in Lowe’s basic khaki came forward.

“I’ve been like a lot of people who come here, I’ve been an addict, I’ve suffered abuse. With the help of good people, I’ve got my life on track. I’m, uh, not a public speaker. I’ve, um, been an addict…” and it went round again a few times before applause. 

“Thanks, mate, that took a lot of courage,” Jens said. And so it did. But then: “Let’s give him another round of applause!”

“All he did was –” I began to say to the theologian.

“Shhhhhhh.”

Oh, I’m the bad guy? Yes, I guess. 

Then: “Please welcome Andrew Charlton!”

From his chair Charlton rose in instalments, one white limb after another unfolding. Impossibly tall, impossibly commanding, in a casual green knit suit, chosen by a Labor focus group in a bunker in Newtown somewhere. He surveyed the room and shuffled his notes.

“Parramatta is a wonderful place, an amazing place. It’s got all the world’s cultures, it’s got colonial-era and Indigenous heritage, it’s beautiful. But it’s also got problems. Unemployment, rental stress. We now have a 26.7%…” and he was off into the figures, which would come thick and fast all night.

He was commanding, but also relaxed, friendly and focused.

I just had one question. What’s the deal with that neck?

* * *

Outside the high brown brick walls of the Brewery Yard Markets, Strathfield North, stained dark with a century of malt and fumes, at a little cafe table, where once men dragged sacks for decades, then died, I’m steering my way through a drawing Suzette Meade is tracing with her finger. Suzette’s the prime mover of the North Parramatta Residents Action Group, which has been fighting a Stalingrad-style resistance in the place for a few years.

“So the rail used to be here.”

“No, the rail’s still where it was. That’s the new metro line.”

“But there’s already a train line.”

“Yes, but the metro line’s privately owned, so they can run it privately…”

“But they’ve pulled down half the centre to build it.”

“Yes, they’re going to surround it with shops.”

“But there’s already a shopping mall around the old station.”

She looked at me, with a rueful smile.

“The place has been fucked, really,” she said. 

* * *

There’s a mild flare-up in the candidates forum, when Phil Bradley, a gentle, reflective, Greens elder type, makes a couple of arch remarks about climate change and Labor’s limited reduction emission targets. 

Andrew Charlton responds: “Look, I lost my job, and we lost the Rudd government because of fights between progressives over how to get a framework. We have to stop making the perfect the enemy of the good…”

The crowd is warming to Charlton, which they are going to need to. He’s had a rough time coming into Parramatta, as lost in the great Westfield “Shoppingtown” as the rest of us. When popular local member Julie Owens announced she would not recontest the seat she has held for nearly 18 years, the presumption was that her replacement would be chosen locally, and would most likely be Durga Owen (no relation to Julie), a local and much admired Labor stalwart and community activist, but of the wrong faction.

She and everyone else was surprised when head office dropped in Charlton: a former Rudd advisor, LSE and Oxford graduate and teacher, UN official, global citizen, wealthy and successful consultant. And, embarrassingly, just about the whitest guy you’ve ever seen, Grenadier Guardsman, Beau Geste, a bloke one pith helmet away from being Parramatta’s colonial governor rather than its next member. He is talking great good sense from this church hall this evening — “We’ve got to connect mental health problems to education system problems” — but my golly gosh it can’t help but feel like an Empire Day address north of Mombasa sometime in the 1920s.

Furthermore, I mean, look: Charlton is handsome, smart, successful and rich, so I don’t feel any compunction in asking, what’s the deal with that neck? It is a magnificent structure, plunging out of his neckline, broad and tall, white with a touch of speckle, commanding as a new apartment tower, the sort of thing Lendlease would build for government money. Fascinating, alluring, with a huge Adam’s apple. I can’t take my eyes off — I mean, there’s some sort of central raised structure down the front middle of it, what is that? Jesus, it’s another neck! Charlton’s neck has its own neck. Neckneck. What the hell is happening here?

Charlton had yielded his place to Greens candidate Phil Bradley, who noted a few additional things. 

“Look, some of these things are simple but big. Make dental part of Medicare.” (Murmur.) “Make mental health part of Medicare.” (Bigger murmur, and a nod from Charlton, which was like watching a giraffe bend to nibble at a baobab.) It was easily the most civil, constructive and mildly tedious debate I’ve been to.

Then we had another personal story, from a queer woman of refugee background with domestic violence issues and homelessness related to caring for her special needs brother, and as we all wiped away a tear or two, Jens burst forth:

“Total courage there. Give her a round of applause!”

Applause.

“I just want to stop and reflect on how awesome this all is! Give yourselves a round of applause! And just a reminder to any Sydney Alliance people here, we’ll have a debrief event about this event straight after this event, I’d really encourage you to come along.”

I leaned across to the theologian.

“Is this a cult? Is there something in the tea? Am I going to end up giving away flowers at an airport somewhere, after being part of a mass wedding in a stadium?”

Theologian just smiled.

Charlton took to the podium once again. The question was housing. He launched off again:

“Well, look, we need a multimodal approach. We want social housing, a $10 billion housing fund, 30,000 units over five years…”

This was getting dull. I was thinking of leaving.

“ARRRR, YER GOBSHITE,” an angry voice yelled. “YEWW KNO’ YR TALKING SHITE, MAN!” It echoed across the hall, but no one paid it heed. I looked around and back at Charlton. On his neckneck, a mouth with tiny teeth had formed, and was trying to talk over him.

“Get people into home ownership…” Charlton intoned.

“THART’S CRAP AND YEWWWWWW KNO IT! YA CANNAE” — for some reason McNecky had a Glasgow accent — “YA CANNAE, PROMISE NOWT MUN, WHEN YERRRRR PARTY HA’ SAID YEWWWWWW WON’T BE RAISING TAXES! BE HONEST, MUN!”

Charlton battled on, giving McNecky no notice, and everyone in the hall was too polite to say anything. 

“Address unemployment through skills-based infrastructure projects…” Charlton said.

“SHITE, MUN, PURE SHITE! YER PARTY HA’ RENOUNCED ANY PUBLIC-LED INFRASTRUCTURE RECOVERY, FER YER COMMITMENT TAE ‘SOUND FINANCE’! FA SHITE’S SAKE TELL THA FOLKS THA TRU’HF! YEWWWW’LL BE NEOLIBERALISING PUBLIC FINANCE TEW PUMP PRIME A DEFLATING ECARRNAMY I’ THA’ WAKE OF G’OBAL MUNNETARY QUANTITATIVE TIGHTENING! THA’S WHA’ YEWWVE BEEN PARACHUTED INTO GOVERNMENT TAE DOOOOO!”

Nooo, McNecky, nooooooo! I thought in horror. He was saying the quiet bit out loud. But he wasn’t stopping.

“THA’ WHOLE NATION’S GONNA LOOK LIKE PARRAMATTA WESTFIELD. YEW KNO’ THAAAAAT AN’ SO DO I. TELL THE TRU’ FAE GOSSAKE!”

Shut up, McNecky! Shut up till after the election!

* * *

“You can’t use my name,” says Tina, large, non-Anglo, DIY punkish in black T-shirt, her name being nothing like Tina. “You can’t even describe the shop.” So let’s say we’re in one of Parramatta’s few surviving art deco buildings, in a wood turning shop, sharp tools and carved bits hanging in a reconditioned office. It wasn’t that, but anyway…

* * *

“We were set up a few years ago, on a social enterprise grant,” Tina says, running a chisel along a — OK, not doing that. “There was money from both the state government and council. Now we have to be out within a year.”

The workshop was one of a number of enterprises that got grants, as Parramatta tried a “social model” to fill in vacancies and the declining buzz of the core, as the place became more transient. But now that’s been reversed, in favour of an “asocial” model. “There was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea once,” says Tina ruefully. “Then it just seemed to evaporate,” she says, spinning a “wooden wheel”. 

“The talk had been all about an arts precinct once,” says Susan Price, in the offices of Socialist Alliance, in a neat little 1950s building, a coffee collective in the front, other offices behind. It’s the last on the street, all others having fallen to boxy black-mirror-glass buildings which would have Jeffrey Smart going, “No, too bleak.”

I’d come to ask about social struggles here, but in Parramatta social struggles are space struggles. “That was the Baird government. It all began to change around 2015.” After that, as Parramatta and the wider region was put into play, the absurdities multiplied. It’s a measure of where Sydney is now that you are turned again and again, to Australia’s rich vein of urban gothic — David Ireland, Peter Carey — to find precedent.

“Wentworth Point’s a good one,” says Price. “That’s a private development wedged in between Olympic Park and the Parramatta river.” (For non-Sydneysiders, the Parramatta river is the one that flows into Sydney Harbour, dividing more suburban inner-north Sydney — Ryde, etc — from steadily rising inner and inner-west Sydney on the south bank, from Leichhardt to Parramatta, where it runs out, and full Western Sydney begins.)

A pocket suburb entirely privately built by Billbergia corporation, it is all mid-size apartment blocks, with little variation, few shops, virtually no services and no public transport. Stage two of the Parramatta light rail was supposed to come here, but is on hold, as stage one — vastly late and overbudget — is completed. (“More than anything,” Suzette told me, “Church Street [the central shopping drag] has been killed by the light-rail construction.”)

“Instead, the management company run a shuttle bus to transport points, along the suburb’s sole road in and out,” Price says. She has the same amused tone as we all have for these tales, the activist’s protective humour. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry at the giving away of a prime piece of inner Sydney for this ghastly, exclusionary non-planning. One becomes a connoisseur of capitalist absurdity, gathering fresh insults to human possibility, sharing examples like swap-meet collectors. “Now, it’s been announced that a new stage of the development will block the views of those who thought they had a riverside vista. Did Suzette tell you about Willow Grove?”

Willow Grove is the acme of Sydney fuck-uppery, the triumph. It will never be bettered, here or anywhere. Having been determined to move the city’s Powerhouse Museum to the west, to extend culture there, the state decided that the only way to connect it to one of the key heritage areas was to demolish two of the buildings, large distinctive villas from the 19^th century. After two years of struggle by the North Parramatta Residents Action Group, the CFMEU green-banned demolition in 2020, and then, as COVID decimated construction work, removed the green ban in 2021 — in exchange for the dismantling and relocation of the mansion elsewhere, which was duly done.

“But the team they got in had no experience of heritage removal,” Suzette said. “We don’t even know if they numbered the bricks or anything. So currently Willow Grove is sitting in a warehouse somewhere. It may never be reassembled. It may not even be possible to reassemble it.” How we cackled at that. Over those three years, the Powerhouse project went from museum status to some sort of “experiential” site, a shopping mall for mass culture. 

* * *

“Phive,” said Suzette, grabbing her keys from the table to go pick up her kids.

“Phive?”

“I’m not going to spoil it for you. Google it. Phive.”

* * *

Andrew Charlton was gone too quickly from the post-forum mingle — held in the Mission’s reception room, a large place with a cute little corner cafe, serving coffee and vast amounts of sweets and cakes, aimed I suspect at some of the mission’s addicted clients, who were there with us. Team Alliance disappeared to have its debrief, while the rest of us chatted about how moving it had been, to mix real people in among the candidates, and also how crazy Sydney Alliance was. Its commitment to running a flawless event which would not, unlike the city all around, sprawl aimlessly, had included ditching any questions from the floor on the night. 

McNecky was there, banging tiny fists on the cafe’s counter. “CAN YA DINNAE GI’ ME A TASTE, MUN?” He had separated himself from Charlton with a wrenching sound, blood everywhere, though neither appears to have been damaged. Now with tiny feet and hands he was causing mayhem.

“YR SYDNEY ALLIANCE I’ JUST MUH CONTROL, MUN! I’S THE SOCIAL JUSTICE VERSIO’ O’ WESTFIELD SHOPPINGTOWN. WE SHOULD BE BREAKIN’ WINDOWS! CANNAE NO’ GET A DRINK?”

“McNecky, it’s not a bar!”

“EVERYWHERE’S A BAR!”

Trying to find a swinging voter here would be nugatory, I thought, so I just accosted a young Tamil man.

“Is the dropping in of a Labor candidate from outside disappointing?”

“Well, yes…”

“Will it make a difference to the vote?”

“Well, no… but I mean, the Tamil community here is spreading out, leaving here gradually.”

“Why?”

“Rents! Rents…”

“AYE YAH, YR LASS GLADYS YR MAN PERROTTET DINNAE CARE WHUT SORT OF BROWN PEOPLE, LONG AS THEY’RE BROWN FOR YA DIVERSITY THART’S THUH TRUH’ ‘F IT, AND YR MAN ELBOW’S NAE DIFFERENT TAE BE STRAIGHT WI’ YE!’ McNecky had wandered up. He’d found whiskey somewhere, it sloshed around in his styrofoam cup. But he had a point.

“There’s a lot of ‘placemaking’, I’m told,” I said.

“Teams of government consultants re-engineering community,” Susan Price had said. While community and economic cleansing continues apace. 

“Do you know Phive?” I asked. “Phive with a ‘PH’.”

“Phive?”

“It’s the council building. The big glass one behind the old town hall. It’s called Phive apparently, because it’s at number five.”

“Ah, I never knew what it was. It’s called Phive?”

“Apparently so…”

* * *

Scarlet walls, scarlet walls, like blood filling your eyeballs. The very end of the night of the forum, back at the hotel, watching the scarlet wallpaper fade in and out, waiting for the lift, I wondered again what sort of place this was. At reception, a platinum-blonde woman, who was saying her name was Sensamilla, was trying to persuade the clerk to give her a keycard for the second floor. “I’m meeting my friend up there,” she said. That’s what type of place this hotel was.

In my room I pulled a Breadtop from the bag on the table — when did I buy that? — and lay down tiredly on the faux marble, imagining myself on the slab, like a dead man, or a salmon, or a writer for The Australian Financial Review. I should call an escort, I thought, be over here in 15 minutes, get a golden shower on this stone-hard floor, in celebration of the city. But I worried about acidisation. Would it eat away at whatever this was? Forget $250 for smoking in your room. How would this be explained? Placemaking, I guess. I took two Temazepam and some Breadtop and blacked it all out.

* * *

McNecky had gone before I had left — breaking through the windows, as he said he would. His pale body shone white under the streetlights, his back was bloody, as he trailed down one street after another of black-plastic-wrapped demolition sites. He banged on the doors of the old Roxy nightclub, magnificent Spanish arches and roof stark in the nigh. “BADABING,” he yelled. “BADABADABING!” And then he gave up and disappeared into the underground entrance to Westfield Shoppingtown.