One of the highlights from the local government summit earlier this month was from Michael Spencer of Monash University.
Reading through a fairly detailed report of this is challenging. You might be taken aback by some of his observations. We know there were several people who were super impressed by his presentation and it’s pretty obvious why.
There’s highlights like this:
- So I see that the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority has started a process for local adaptation plans. Victoria did that a couple of years ago. We have lovely sets of adaptation plans sitting on bookshelves. I can give you the full seven sectors, five regions, beautiful plans, but nothing happening, no money in the budget.
Or this, regarding councils in Tasmania:
- “Oh, we don’t want to do climate change work anymore, we’re going to pull anything that’s happening in that space”
And:
Victoria is not allocating money for adaptation in its infrastructure spend, because managers are reluctant to use resources for climate risk and adaptation “if there’s not going to be any results.”
According to Spencer, there are no legal obligations for councils to participate in climate resilience other than to protect their assets. So they’ll often ignore the work that’s needed, mostly through lack of funds.
You have to wonder what the results need to be to warrant the funding that’s needed. That’s a tad gruesome to ponder.
But in the wake of the sobering National Climate Risk Assessment released last week we no longer need to guess. This document is a candid assessment of the diabolical mess that’s on the way – and already here in many cases.
Check out the video of the luxury hotel in Hong Kong suddenly confronted with a massive wall of water coming through its front doors thanks to the latest typhoon.
https://bbc.com/news/videos/cqlzkvlkn2yo
In Australia the NCRA estimates a $40 billion bill can be expected from climate damage, with insurers pulling out wherever they can and communities and businesses left to fend on their own.
Property valuations are likely to drop by $611 billion. Property is absolutely in the front line of climate damage. And there’s likely to be global supply disruptions…again.
Here are the most critical impact priority areas:
- communities – urban, regional and remote
- defence and national security
- economy, trade and finance
- health and social support
- infrastructure and the built environment
- natural environment
- primary industries and food
- water security (cross-system risk)
- supply chains (cross-system risk)
- coastal communities (cross-system risk)
- governance (cross-system risk)
And that’s without a proper focus on the human cost.
It’s dystopian. A vision of the future that the US brings us ever closer to, on a daily basis. But as the world’s richest country works to fight climate action and further the interests of the oligarchs who run the legacy fossil fuel system, Australia has an opportunity to be a sanctuary, a place of reason and calmness if we stay our course. It’s a view that dare we say seems to be gaining global recognition.
But given the paths we’re treading in finance and governance, as noted clearly by Spencer in his address that we carried in detail, it’s either a miracle that this country still looks so good – or we’re about to lose our advantage.
Maybe it’s that weird contradictory spirit that Australia carries. There’s the colonial-bred tendency to hate authority but at the same time generally do as we’re told. And the contradiction of a harsh land but immensely innovative responses, from this country’s Indigenous past.
Will our luck last?
The crazy attacks on logic when we talk about the housing crisis might be another case in point of the contradictions: people like Peter Tulip of the Institute of Public Affairs lead the battle cry for deregulating planning and zoning and people on the logic side consolidate, get off their backsides and start to put together incredibly coherent counter policies that make sense.
Check out the work of Tim Williams in our pages in recent times, or the debate on social media with a thread that includes Peter James’s illuminating article on social housing throughout the world, that defies the nasty asset price boom that’s locking out our young and vulnerable people. There’s also this interesting thread that discusses the abundance trope – again.
Callan Park is fine – just as it is
Meanwhile, while all this obfuscation is going on about housing, they’re trying to eat away at Callan Park. Again. The two things are related. Make no mistake.
The state government has forever had its eye on turning it over to housing and no doubt developers have too. And the latest plans are a foot in the door.
For those who don’t know it, this park is a jewel of open harbourside space in the inner west, a rare piece of dishevelled earth. A former psychiatric hospital with gorgeous old buildings in various states of elegant abandon. The parkland, same.
This is the zone that’s about to get 31,000 more dwellings in around Marrickville, Ashfield, Dulwich Hill and now another 8000 dwellings along Parramatta Road. And for whose residents the lack of open space is one of the main reason for their fierce backlash to the housing plans proposed by Inner West Council. It’s critical to human health – physical and mental. Take nature away and people can go a bit strange.
Callan Park was previously a psychiatric hospital – so at least in intention (if not its many misguided medical experiments of the past) it’s a place of healing and even today you can feel its healing properties. These are there in abundance, just the way it is. And mostly because it’s a bit wild and unkempt. You can almost imagine you’ve found a hidden part of nature. And with surprising nooks and crannies that are naturally formed or created by its former residents, to hide away for a while. So an unusual blend of human forms, slowly being re-absorbed by nature.
But for some reason this seems to irk people. There’s a persistent and powerful driver to maximise every piece of the built environment we can get our hands on – restore, turn over, crimp and trim, put in “proper” paths and steps, neat parking spaces and so on.
The proposal now, according to The Guardian’s article on Thursday, is to turn it over to creative ventures such as film studios.
But just because a venture is creative does not exempt it from commercial imperatives. With the film studios are likely to come all the bells and whistles expected of commercial enterprises, no doubt meeting global expectations.
You can expect a call for great amenities – cafes, professional kitchens, offices, technology installations and car parking with its inevitable bitumen. The park will need to be “maintained” the story goes. But why? And from whose budget?
Guess where they’ll look to make the money to do the maintenance?
Not so long ago we held a very popular urban greening event that brought into sharp focus the beauty and power of rewilding. This is the notion of letting our parks run free – letting nature take over. It’s charming but threatening to many people. The instinct is to command and control.
Sure, retain and restore some of the best buildings at Callan Park, but if they were reserved for low-key community activities, there’s likely no problem. But if Planning Minister Paul Scully really needs “a banana bread and flat white” we think he can go up the hill to Darling Street and have his pick.
It would be nice if now and then we resisted the urge to turn all our built form into Westfield shopping centres and all our city parks into Switzerland – manicured to within an inch of their lives.
