To mark the 30th anniversary of “CityNews”, social historian and journalist NICHOLE OVERALL has written an eclectic history of Canberra and beyond over the past three decades. Here is 2013.
“We give you, CAN-berra” declared Lady Denman from atop three foundation stones on March 12, 1913.
After about 10 years of political machinations, the pollies had finally got their act together and agreed the First City of our great nation would be the middle of a sheep paddock (with quite a few growing pains thereafter).
Said sheep paddock was more-or-less Queanbeyan’s backyard and while by no means attempting to one-up, 2013 also marks a sesquicentenary for the neighbouring regional city (a not-bad book – if I do say so myself – published on its 175 years).
They’d written a song for the smaller borough when it turned 100 in 1938, the capital scoring one, too: “Canberra is calling to you”.
“Our great Commonwealth Australia
Founded her new home
From God’s good earth there came the birth
Of our Capital our own”.
For this 100th milestone, a world premiere by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra (itself now 63 years old), of the specially commissioned “Symphony No. 3 – Century” by Andrew Schultz.
Parties, monuments and exhibitions abound – the biggest musical on the planet, “Phantom of the Opera”, even comes to town. Long-time, indefatigable “CityNews” Arts Editor Helen Musa interviews Free Rain Theatre musical director Ian McLean on its expected success (I can verify, it was an excellent production).
The capital also gets a new entertainment Mecca. Palace Electric Cinemas opens featuring films such as “Keira Knightley’s period piece ‘Anna Karenina’, military thriller ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’”.
Its name’s a nod to former local cinematic icon, family-run, independent Electric Shadows (1979-2006, first film Monty Python’s “Pleasure at Her Majesty’s”, the last was “Volver”). The architecturally-distinctive Center Cinema of the 1960s had closed in 2003, reinvigorated a year later as the Academy nightclub).
“A passing era, not only in Canberra’s cultural history, but in Australian cinema generally”.
Never mind ASIO’s a spy agency – what’s the point in having $630 million spent on your new HQ (named for the “unmessiah-like” PM, Ben Chifley) if it isn’t going to be a dazzling piece of art? In the aesthetic capital, one must simply look the part…
The official cash rate is reduced to its lowest level in more than 50 years (2.75 per cent).
Adam Giles becomes leader of the NT’s Country Liberal Party and Chief Minister making him Australia’s first indigenous head of government.
In our capital territory, the government earns ire for not grassing Kingston businesses, “Green Square” no longer, while ACT Liberal leader since 2007, Zed Seselja, controversially overthrows Gary Humphries in a run as an ACT senator. Jeremy Hanson is dubbed successor.
Federal Labor also has quite the year. Announces $14.5 billion worth of funding for schools over six years to mark the anniversary of the Gonski review. Announces $2 billion worth of cuts to the university sector.
The “pink batts home insulation scheme” inquiry determines the deaths of three workers was due to “inadequate training, safety and supervision” and that warnings “were ignored”.
At the end of 2012, PM Julia Gillard delivered her “misogyny speech”, reverberating around the world, and while readying to take on the bloke she’d levelled it at, she instead has to contend with another attempted leadership coup.
Would-be comeback kid Kevin Rudd though, chickens out. Then.
Three months on, he’s back. First job: can the carbon tax. Second: a corruption crackdown on the NSW Labor Party.
2CC presenter and “CityNews” columnist, Mike Welsh, pens a “laugh-out-loud” rap (not bad for a Boomer) for the return of the king, “K Rap”: “I’m Kevin Bloody Rudd and it’s all about me”.
Michael Moore’s political Nostradamus-ing on Big Kev being re-returned as PM turns out as accurate as political professor Peter Van Onselen’s later prognosticating. As does Robert Macklin’s on “why Kevin was never coming back”
It’s the pugilistic “Mad Monk”, Tony Abbott, who becomes “first among equals”.
When it comes to more accurate future forecasts – the ACT passes the Marriage Equality Act 2013, first Australian state/territory to legalise same-sex marriage, but …
The full collection of Nichole Overall’s “CityNews” anniversary columns can be seen here.
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