2025 – that was the year that was… and here it is, month by month, through the bright eyes of the CityNews columnists – a quirky, serious, funny and sad look at the 12 months just gone. HUGH SELBY defines the essence of August. 

The four covers of our September weeklies captured the essence of the month: new energy, spring growth, creativity and exuberance.

The first cover celebrated studying plant proteins and then looking to see how those processes might be used in wastewater treatment. 

The second featured the work of Charles Weston who planted three million trees in Canberra.

The third featured the stencil work of Luke Cornish (aka ELK). His art is found in many places here and abroad, including public spaces in Canberra. Refreshingly, he doesn’t think much of “fame”, but he thinks a lot about honesty in his art.

The final cover features the Canberra City Band, started a century ago by a small group of construction workers. The band got a post-war kick along from prime minister Ben Chifley, who liked big bands.

Living conditions for those early Canberra workers were spartan when compared with what we expect now. There was no insulation in their quarters, so the future problems of dangerous insulation and compensating those affected never crossed their minds as they strove to keep warm.

But as the blossoms of spring brought pinks and whites to our roadsides and gardens, Jon Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed examined the meanness with which too many owners of Mr Fluffy blighted homes were compensated by our government.

A culture of blinkered, counterproductive meanness seems to have crept into health financing, too. In a letter to the editor, Bill Stone set out how, as a management consultant 20-odd years ago, he and others worked to set up a system in our hospitals for engaging specialist doctors on either a sessional or “fee-for-service” basis. 

He explained why both were needed. He criticised the recent actions of ACT Health which, he asserted, would make it harder to attract and retain good surgeons. His letter followed an August article in which a surgeon explained why she had resigned after 15 years, rather than accept “new” working conditions.

A partial explanation for this niggardly approach to health services was that we paid $160 million to acquire the Calvary hospital. As columnist, and former health minister, Michael Moore explained, there was no good reason to acquire it. 

Just imagine how that money might have been better spent on improving the services at Canberra hospital. But It’s pointless to cry over spilt milk. We are expected to just “suck it up”.

That’s a sentiment frequently taken up by the faceless Mr Shush in Keeping Up the ACT. Mid-month the strip imagined a chat between our public service Supremo, Kathy Leigh and fearless leader Andy. 

He bats away her timely suggestions of problems overdue for attention, preferring some photo ops at Floriade. It would be hilarious, but for its pinpoint skewering of our Andy’s disinterest in the welfare of the city he claims to lead.

Columnist Andrew Hughes drew attention to how important it is that community messaging (such as quit smoking, healthy eating, getting vaccinated), properly promoted by public service agencies, not be contaminated by political messaging. Our well-founded disbelief in the latter will cause us to ignore the former.

By month’s end columnist Robert Macklin explained how the penny pinching of Andy’s gang – the inevitable consequence of servicing the debt for the cost of a tram that isn’t value for money – has jeopardised Charles Weston’s work and his vision. Trees and gardens need to be nurtured, not ignored.

Little Dion’s gran knows how to turn a dump into a garden. She’s done it while waiting for Housing ACT to re-house her and her family in a non-leaking roof, free of mould and druggie needles home.

I reported how she’d gone to the ACAT and the pleasant people from Housing had agreed to give her a significant rent reduction for the heartache they were causing her. They also offered to speed up her rehousing.

“Speed up”, of course, means different things to different people. As columnist Michael Moore reported, there are some 2000 approved “high need” applications for public housing with a minimum wait of three years.

More than enough time for Gran’s tender plants to mature and to bring her the joy of a couple more September flowerings.

Former barrister Hugh Selby is the CityNews legal matters columnist.