Conveners Message
To me one of the many pleasures of living in the NT is sitting quietly with the Weekend Australian on a Sunday morning while the wildlife goes about its business in my garden.
An article caught my eye which dealt with reformist politicians – particularly those of the planning nature. The first example was a Dutch Prime Minister whose agenda was to bulldoze the 17th century city architecture of Amsterdam to create a motorway. The second example was a mayor of Paris who sought to bring skyscrapers to the city of Paris to ease the crowding.
Over my years of membership with PLan you might have heard me say that there is no agenda for Darwin and the Territory. I suppose I always thought that is some way we were lucky that we did not have a reformist politician of the ilk mentioned above. But, in my humble opinion, with no agenda we have ended up with as much of a disaster as could have been created if someone had set out to do the deed.
To explain, many Queensland cities show a pattern of develop where you can, take the precinct of Cairns near the working harbour, pretty rough looking opportunist buildings. Or look at Townsville, one jewel that survived to this day is the railway station in the centre of town, they have closed the railway station and built a new one further out of town and now of course there is this unused building in this prime building site …
I could propose that Darwin has been developed using the Queensland model with some small elements of restraint.
I suspect that the one agenda that we (as in the activist members of the Darwin community) did not grapple with early enough was the agenda to industrialise Darwin Harbour. It is now clear that this was what was going to happen and that is was planned. I don’t say this as some sort of apology or to seek forgiveness for inaction, as if a bunch of Territory citizens are to blame because they couldn’t raise enough of a fuss over an impending environmental and planning disaster. I say it as matter of record it was coming and there was a chance of preventing that occurrence.
Fixed term elections will bring a mixed bag, lame duck governments will exist way past the use by date, the positive I believe is that genuine people who care about the Territory may be able to position themselves to make a difference by being prepared to take on the responsibility of holding government to task.
I take heart in talking with some politicians, I know the dedication of Territorians at work and play, but I have consistently wondered at the lack of common sense in what is being inflicted on us and our children. My father says beware the armchair expert and I see the point, but Blind Freddy could have seen it coming.
