Well this is interesting.
Matthew Guy, watching a possible victory in November’s state election slip away as the federal taint spreads, is going both right and left in his attempt to gain any traction. Right, with every more surreal-sinister law ad order measures, and now left-ish with a commitment to keep Federation Square in public hands.
Fed Square should remain a place for the people, the Libs said in a press release last night, hours before Labor announced the largest infrastructure project in Victorian history — an outer rail tunnel (gosh the Libs do politics well) — and Apple needs to find another home.
The Libs have been trying to find a way to come out against Apple in Fed Square since it was announced by restyled geek hipster minister Philip Dalidakis. But they’re a free enterprise party and so it was a tough reach. But they’ve been watching the gradual rise of the Our City, Our Square campaign, and the fact that the general disgust with Labor for giving away public space has not abated.
Apple helped by producing a gold-plated ’70s-era McDonald’s of a design, and then replacing it with a giant golden iPad. At this point, even the cynical right-wing goombahs who had pushed the Apple store through must have felt a little queasy at how they’d been played. The Heritage Council gave the Libs the final break they needed by slapping a four-month interim protection order on it. As with the Libs line on suburban planning — which is in some respects to the left of Labor’s scorched-earth suburbs policy — this may yield very little.
But it will be an extra pincer movement in an attempt to win the Melbourne southeastern middle classes, who swing between the two major parties, and who do not regard heritage as unimportant. In the inner city, it’s going to bite Labor’s ass. People of all stripes are really, really pissed off at this giveaway.
The Andrews’ Labor government has become so functionally cynical in its four years in office that it could never see how nihilistic it is to give away a public square — even, or maybe especially, one created by, gasp, a Liberal government — as a progressive social democratic party. Those who didn’t fight it in cabinet may now pay a heavy price for their acquiescence.
I dont know what is going on down in Un-Australian Melbourne but:”In the inner city, it’s going to bite Labor’s ass”
It’s ARSE in this country
But like all apparatchiks they tend to be donkeys.
Isn’t it bum?
Need to get out of your inner city hippy Greens bubble, Grundle. Most people even in the inner city do not give two shits about space in a commercial area being leased to Apple. They have about 20 bigger problems actually affecting their everyday lives. This is an issue for NIMBY Greens who don’t have backyards because inner city, so they get all NIMBY about Fed Square instead. And for Matthew Guy who is following the “oppose everything Labor does” blueprint laid down by Tony Abbott, except with about 5% of the energy and political talent.
You and Keane can get on your high horse about Fed Square and firefighter union deals, and the rest of us will just have to make do with a government actually committed to renewable energy, public transport, jobs, and standing up against racist dog-whistlers.
Love your riffing Arky.
Surely not having backyards validates residents’ right to be concerned for the maintenance of public spaces rather than undermines it: the fewer the back yards the greater the need for publicly owned spaces.
In any case, most people in the inner city did vote Green (putting the ALP/LNP pro-developer gerrymander for the MCC to one side): that’s why they have a Greens MP. Thus, most people in the inner city do care about space in the Square being leased to Apple and are perfectly entitled to care.
No arky,
If labo(u)r parties aren’t concerned with keeping public space public in the city, they’ll poison themselves with their own cynicism. If Labor is only about the means of life and not the ends, then it has already capitulated to the market. The 8 hours movement was 8 work, 8 rest, 8 re-creation, by which they meant becoming human again. Public space is essential to that. Its labor’s cynical right damaging labor, not me. You’ll find a lot of very non-green melb people hate the Apple sell-out; ask them
They’re not paving paradise to put in a parking lot here. They’re putting a building in the place of another building in an area with a bunch of shops and restaurants. I don’t really get how it’s a loss of public space any more than, say, Transport/Transit/Taxi which has been there since the start.
I suspect if it wasn’t Apple, with all the baggage that company brings (including on tax minimisation), people would care a lot less.
I know my means of life were improved for a number of years by increased apartment building in the city (which let me afford to live within walking distance of my jobs) and then increased infrastructure in the city to support all the new apartments (supermarkets and new shopping springing up everywhere to service the increasing CBD population) while people who lived nowhere near the CBD signed petitions about how city apartment blocks were a blight on Melbourne and ruining livability, sounding like conservative reactionaries who hate everything new. I know a few younger people now who recently took the same step I once did, moving into the city to be close to where they work and where they socialise, and they’re loving it. You couldn’t do that in Melbourne 20 years ago.
Having experienced how livable a city like Tokyo is with population density far exceeding anything in Melbourne by a couple of orders of magnitude, and having experienced how Melbourne NIMBYs complained about old decrepit CBD buildings and carparks being pulled down in favour of structures people actually want to live in and shop in because apartments are evil or some crap like that, I’ve got a pretty high bar for hearing complaints about Melbourne planning these days and the Apple store complaint isn’t even close to making the cut.
I’ll add to this- it’s at least said that the Apple building will be SMALLER than the existing building, and so there will be extra “public space” compared to the status quo. Seriously. It’s replacing an existing building, not taking up existing public space, I really don’t see the “it’s taking up public space!” argument.
Your working definition of “public space” is too narrow for a proper reading of the article, Arky..
Federation Square is one of my least favourite locations in Melbourne, siting an Apple store there will make it worse. Corporate advertising & logos already blight our cities to the gunnels.
Why the Andrews govt fails to read the public mood on this is inexplicable.
Completly agree, Zut Alors. It is a lack of judgement and aethectics on the part of the government to pursue the Apple redvelopement. However, Andrews knows few will be concerned; and those that are will likely vote for him anyway, as a usually better maker of policy.
Guy and Co have second rate minds and are really clutching at straws on this one, but as another correspondant said they will oppose anything, it goes with their mindset.
Honest question, do you really think this issue figures more prominently in any voters calculations than today’s public transport announcement?
Hence the aside: “gosh the Libs do politics well”, ice.