Canberra is, in so many ways, an unknowable city.
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In other ways, it is a city so bureaucratic and predictable you just want to scream.
To shout and hoot, for example, at a list of 21 very serious, and well-thought out, recommendations on the part of a joint house and senate committee into fostering and promoting the significance of Australia's national capital - which had nine hearings and received 43 submissions over 13 months.
By and large, these recommendations make perfect sense and address some of the culture and tourism sector's long-standing real and perceived problems.
Or rather, they address problems that have already been solved, or outline solutions that have already been attempted and rejected, or weigh in on issues that are well and truly in the public consciousness, or suggest innovations that are well in hand but have been stymied by minor things like a pandemic or the ongoing efficiency dividend.
Recommendation 3, for example, is for a "hop-on, hop-off shuttle bus service which stops at each national institution, and other ACT points of interest".
You mean like the Culture Loop, inactive since 2020 (the start of the pandemic), which did just that, and obviously wasn't successful enough to be reinstated now that we're back in Normal Times?
How about working to "upgrade Canberra's stadium" to "provide the necessary infrastructure to support national and international sporting events" (recommendation 14)?
Has no one been paying attention to this very long-running Canberra issue?
Or recommendation 6, which suggests the Commonwealth government "develop and fund a marketing campaign that promotes digital access to Australia's national collections, particularly to regional, rural and remote communities"?
Did no one stop to consider the cultural institutions have been doing this, individually and collectively, for the last decade, if not longer? That they all have online portals and, in spite of the continued funding cuts that have for years gone by the name of the "efficiency dividend", most have succeeded in making their collections as accessible as possible to those who can't make it into the buildings in person?
The National Gallery of Australia even has a dedicated, Commonwealth-funded regional touring program, much vaunted by the federal Arts Minister himself. The National Library has been in the process of digitising its own collections for years, and even used its celebrated Trove website as a pawn in the brutal game of Please Give Us More Funding So That We Can Perform Our Legislative Mandate.
The National Archives of Australia is still in a race against time to digitise all its stuff, and the government only has itself to blame, no matter the party in power.
Some of the recommendations are downright quaint: a Canberra pass giving free entry to all of these institutions that are ... already free (recommendation 9)?
A program to promote heritage-listed sites in Canberra (recommendation 20)? Which ones? Lanyon? Calthorpes' House? Those come under the ACT Cultural Facilities Corporation. The National Gallery? The High Court? Parliament House, old and new? These are all well-documented tourism sites.
How about that the federal government work with the ACT to develop and improve Mount Ainslie, Red Hill and Black Mountain (recommendation 21)? Carry out some expensive feasibility studies to look into "food and comfort options" for each site? Ignoring that one houses a privately owned icon that has been left to rack and ruin by said owner (that's you, Telstra), and the other will soon be home to a fancy new dining venue?
Who is making these recommendations, and do they live here, follow the news or engage with what Canberrans are talking about?
I get that the point is that the ACT government should be seeking Commonwealth support in promoting the capital as a place to visit. I thought it already did. The stark demarcations between the National Capital Authority and the ACT government are, again, well documented. So maybe the report should begin by acknowledging this, and all that has come before.
Anyone reading these recommendations would be forgiven for imagining Canberra as a small, forgotten country town that could do with some love and attention.
Canberra could always do with more love and attention but not from a committee that barely understands its subject.
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Sally Pryor
As features editor at The Canberra Times, I love telling people things they didn't know - or even things they've always known - about the city we live in.
As features editor at The Canberra Times, I love telling people things they didn't know - or even things they've always known - about the city we live in.
