LABOR Chief Minister Katy Gallagher surprisingly found herself echoing our Liberal PM’s “open for business” mantra during a lightning trip to China to sign an as-yet-unseen “friendship exchange” with the sprawling industrial metropolis of Shenzhen.
Ian Meikle.
“My message to Shenzhen businesses is that Canberra is open for business and ready for international investment and partnerships,” she says.
TRAMS are pretty similar to buses to former ACT Treasury boffin David Hughes who, in a swingeing disassembling of the Grand Tram Plan, says light rail is a folly and not worth the likely 80 million coconuts a year the ACT government will be stuffing in the pockets of its private-sector operator.
“It’s still fundamentally the same proposition. You’ve got to get to a station or stop, you board, and then you get off and you walk to where you’re going… so it has all the same characteristics,” he says.
“Very simply, the light rail is not transformative at all, it’s just more of the same in a somewhat different form.”
Not so, cried Capital Metro Minister Simon Corbell’s flak, hands doubtless on hips: light rail has its own laneway, a higher capacity, greater accessibility, lower emissions and is more appealing. So there.
Opposition transport shadow Alistair Coe leapt cheerfully into this economic cold shower saying: “Over 20 years, this means the cost of light rail could jump up to as high as $2 billion.” Steady, Al – that’s around $2 million a week!
LAKE Burley Griffin celebrated its 50th anniversary under the cloud of an unthinkable name change.
It appears that including the middle name of Canberra’s original designer, Walter Burley Griffin, was a mistake by ‘60s PM Bob Menzies and that alternatives such as Lake Walter Griffin or simply Lake Griffin are to be wrestled with by the PM-led Canberra National Memorials Committee.
Fifty years ago there was “widespread feeling” that the lake should be named for Menzies himself, but he’d have none of it. Menzies’ daughter Heather Henderson, a Canberra resident, poo-poohed any revival of her dad’s name saying, wisely, a change could be difficult and costly and “I think it is a bit late for anything like that. The argument there is over.”
ARE they banning cats from the streets or not? As suggestions of election-losing lunacy to ban cats from the outdoors were taking hold Greens minister Shane Rattenbury’s office was running backwards from the idea, saying nothing’s happening beyond the government considering recommendations of an expert paper from the Responsible Cat Ownership Steering Committee. “One recommendation was Canberra-wide cat containment. But certainly no decisions have been made.”
PRISON guards continue to try to extricate an overdue pay deal from the ACT government, which in turn is trying to link any rise with its unpopular needles-in-prison push.
Crying “blackmail”, union negotiator Vince McDevitt warned the stand off “may be that the government, as the unstoppable force, actually impacts with custodial officers as the immovable object”. Fireworks ahead.
FLORIADE escaped the misery of spring’s changeable weather last week leaving Tourism Minister Andrew Barr to his annual trumpet of “the largest ever attendance figure in the event’s 27-year history” with 481,854 visits. He does concede Floriade was “blessed with good weather”.
And despite the seductive temptation of the early spring sunshine to plant tomatoes, Seven Days has kept the faith with gardening guru Cedric Bryant’s tireless good advice to hold back until Melbourne Cup Day to escape any surprise frosts.
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