Melbourne at 175: City of the White Elephant

August 30 marks Melbourne's 175th birthday. It's as good a time as any to note what a mess this place is getting into. If you've ever been here you would know about the slow-moving disaster that is our public transport over the last five or eight years. That's not strictly a white elephant; it's at least intended to perform a useful task.

But somehow Melbourne people just don't notice when an insultingly ridiculous and expensive public engineering cock-up is stuck in front of them. Take the Southern Star Observation Wheel. onlymelbourne.com.au says:

The Observation Wheel is a stunning addition to the Melbourne landscape that boasts some of the most spectacular views over Melbourne and beyond.

The $40 million ferris wheel based on the London Eye is almost 120m, around 38 storeys into the air featuring 21 airconditioned glass cabins that showcase views stretching as far as Geelong.

No trip to Melbourne is complete until you have seen the views from the Southern Star Observation Wheel.

There must be a lot of unfulfilled tourists because it doesn't work. Currently it looks a bit like this:

Southern Star Observation Wheel... sans observation wheel

After being built up and launched at the beginning of 2009, it failed the first test a month later: the (admittedly record-breaking) heatwave that preceded Black Saturday caused the metal to warp. Now it has been taken down and although it is supposedly going to be rebuilt, there is no sign yet.

$40 million dollars. As I was saying, we have serious problems with our public transport. $40 million would  help fix some of that. Or any other number of problems like homelessness and public housing waiting lists, hospital bed shortages, the list goes on...

And another big fat white elephant: Southern Cross station. Not the station, the new(ish) roof. Confessions of a Graphic Designer has a handy couple of pictures of it and some commentary which I'll borrow:

"On the 22nd of June, Grimshaw architects won the 2007 Lubetkin Prize for the most outstanding building outside of the European Union. The undulating wave-like roof to me is its most interesting creative point because it creates the impression of movement and continuance that relates to the usage of the building. As well as being striking it is also functional, Keith Brews of the Grimshaw team explains: "It's difficult to extract diesel fumes, but if you create a dome, they can move laterally. As the wind speen increases across the roof, the wind goes up the side of the domes and across the Venturi caps, which either allow some air through, or suck it (and the diesel fumes) up." (2007)."

I don't know if Grimshaw got to keep that prestigious prize, because they clearly forgot to model what would happen when it rains:

Southern Cross Station in downpour (image linked from The Age)

Not to mention that the supposedly self-ventilating roof didn't work and they had to put fans in. And the whole enclosed station area echoes with diesel locomotive engine noises and incomprehensible (or inaudible) announcements. The old Spencer St Station (which became Southern Cross) was not real flash, but you didn't cop diesel fumes and noise pollution. And the roofs, modest though they were, worked!

What else? We could talk roads, freeways, the Domain Tunnel (try using it on an afternoon... traffic banked up to Toorak Rd). I could mention the channel deepening: to let in a handful of superlarge container ships, the bay was dredged and the heads blown open. Now beaches around the bay are getting washed away by the increased currents. I could mention the ecological disasters of our carbon-intensive water factory (desalination plant) at Wonthaggi and the pipeline that brings water from the drought-stricken north to wash driveways in Melbourne.

But those are more political and ecological concerns (although if you ask anyone directly affected, you'll get an answer as brisk as asking a stranded commuter at the station what they think of the train operators!).

The waste of public money on these big public show-off projects is insulting.  Melbourne was already pretty without big shiny toy buildings and meccano toys scattered across the cityscape. What is needed is more public infrastructure, not the answer to the London Eye. If they could at least get these things right it might be bearable but I'm not holding my breath. And what will be their next bright idea for a big monument? I dare not speculate. If everyone thought like me, it might be a giant guillotine.
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Socialist Alliance say: No Freeway!

Leaflet for my election campaign
 
Melbourne's west needs its transport fixed, but you won't hear any solutions from the Labor government. They don't care that no-one wants their quick-fix freeway.

Socialist Alliance wants Federal government to block funding for the WestLink freeway. Even if state government is determined to build this white elephant, it can be stopped.

Real solutions to road congestion and run-down public transport don't mean new freeways. One rail track can carry as many people as six lanes of freeway. It is energy efficient, quiet and non-polluting. It takes up a fraction of the land area, it costs less to maintain, and it reduces congestion on the roads.

If we are to have tunnels, it should be for the regional rail link so that it does not demolish homes.

Building more roads leads to more reliance on cars, more traffic, and soon the new roads get jammed up as well. Look at the West Gate and Ring Road. Melbourne has had no new railway lines since 1930, but the freeways just keep rolling out. They haven't fixed the problem.

Cleaner, effective transport is a federal priority for Socialist Alliance. Our policies include:
No new freeways, in Footscray or elsewhere;
Freight on rail, trucks off suburban roads;
Free, fast and frequent urban public transport extended to all urban areas.

Federal government can stop this freeway. Melbourne needs a world class train system for commuters like cities in Europe. Vote to send a message to Labor: don't let them get away with this anymore.
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Tote: totalled

Over a thousand gathered on January 17 to protest the enforced closure of The Tote hotel, a victim of changes to Victoria’s liquor licencing laws that have seen the popular inner-city music venue upgraded to a “high risk” venue.

The change in licencing from January 1 meant that the owner, Bruce Milne, felt he could no longer afford to keep the venue open. "The high-risk conditions they have placed on the Tote’s licence make it impossible to trade profitably," he said in a statement. The new state laws, supported by the ALP and Greens, are ostensibly to reduce alcohol-fuelled violence on the city’s streets.

Local councillor Stephen Jolly of The Socialist Party ridiculed the new laws, speaking to the rally. “The Tote is a safe place and has iconic status in this area,” he said. “If you wanna get beaten up, you go to King Street or Crown Casino and not The Tote.” The venue does not have a history of violence.

The Age reported on January 20 that local ALP MP Richard Wynne had met with the venue’s landlord, and was lobbying for changes to the licencing laws, in a bid to save the venue. There is a possibility that a new consortium of local bar owners may step in to save the venue, but nothing certain at this stage.

The Tote was one of the few remaining venues where up and coming rock and alternative bands could secure public gigs. Another venue, the Arthouse in north Melbourne, has also announced it will not renew its licence and will close in May.

The closure of The Tote echoes the 2002 closure of the Punters’ Club, in nearby Fitzroy, which was due to rising rent. Gentrification and licencing laws are not the only villains of course. Veteran Melbourne musician Dave Graney reminds us that “The hoteliers kicked the bands out of the big rooms as soon as they could see that poker machines were more lucrative.”

Even if The Tote receives a last minute stay of execution, Milne still has a message for live music fans. “It’s too late to save the Tote but not too late to try and save other inner city venues that are feeling the same pressures” he said.
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Melbourne’s green belt: sacrificed to Real Estate?

Victorian state government plans release on June 17 to expand Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary for new housing developments, overturning previous commitments made as part of its Melbourne 2030 strategy for containing urban growth.

The June announcement has been criticised widely in the media. Michael Buxton, former senior planning advisor to the government, said on June 9 in the Age “we have Rafferty's rules led by the development community and the Government just rolling over… we are going to end up with two cities - we are going to end up with a whole lot of houses far from services and employment in the outer suburbs and more and more people being shoved into them."

Areas under consideration for urban expansion are in Melbourne's outer west, north and far south-east. These areas include endangered native grasslands, one of the state’s most endangered ecosystems that are home to a total of 68 threatened animals and 26 threatened plants. While new grassland reserves have also been announced, environment groups are skeptical about their effectiveness.

Matt Ruchel of the Victorian National Parks Association welcomed the new reserves in a June 17 press statement but added that this “does not excuse the potential loss of more than 6,000 hectares of grasslands that could be destroyed by new urban developments,”

“Within the proposed expanded urban growth area there are some of the best examples of high quality grasslands and these areas need to be retained as part of the urban parks network within growth areas, not automatically cleared to make way for more housing.”

Government spokesman Matthew Hillard said in the June 9 Age "In these difficult economic times, the Brumby Labor Government makes no apologies in doing what the community expects of it, which is securing and protecting jobs."

State government has also changed planning laws, removing appeal rights against developments by schools or those including social housing. ‘Development Assessment Committees’ are to be set up for decisions on some planning matters, a move welcomed by the real estate advocacy group Property Council of Australia.

Residents’ groups held a rally against these changes on June 10. An article on the Property Council website by Jennifer Cunich called protesters “NIMBYs” and said that critics of the changes “advocate the BANANA approach – building absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”.

Green Wedges Coalition state on their website that government has “dumped the developer levy it announced to provide for infrastructure in 2005 to avoid development delays and has imposed a new levy on land sales in the new urban growth areas. We doubt this will ever be collected either.”

(This is the unedited version of my article published in Green Left Weekly no. 799)
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