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 2012.

IT’S the Year of the Farmer and the one in which the world is doomed, predicted to come to a fiery end (again).

December 21 is the date to note (heck, they’d even made a fairly average movie about it three years earlier). The Mayans were to blame apparently, although NASA claims it was all a mistake due to the vanished culture being responsible for the “most complex calendar system ever developed” and rather than going out with a bang, it was really more of a “Grand Cycle” restart. 

Speaking of restarts – or maybe “retreads” …

The political merry-go-round goes on: suggestions by ousted PM Kevin Rudd (PMR) that new PM Julia Gillard (PMG) can’t win the next election sees PMG spill leadership blood – again – beating PMR by the rather large margin of 71 to 31. Rather than a much-needed end of days, this giddy trip will keep on spinning into the following year.

On the subject of spin, PMG’s big announcement is cutting the cost of electricity for households by – wait for it – $250! Bills won’t come down until at least 2014 (post election) and the plan does require significant market reform (is there an echo in here?).

In case we’re not dizzy enough yet, in Queensland, Campbell Newman fronting the LNP secures a thumping win – as in the largest parliamentary majority in the joint, ever – ending Anna Bligh’s tenure. NT too, sees Labor whirled out the door, Terry Mills and the Country Liberal Party getting back on the horse.

In the other Territory, Labor just manages to hold on: Katy Gallagher gets past a hung parliament with the helpful vote of ACT Greens MLA, Shane “All By Myself” Rattenbury (the golden carrot, a handful of ministerial portfolios and support for no less than 100 Greens policies).

Queen-maker or no, it was a comedown for the ACT Greens from four Assembly spots to sole survivor. Former independent MLA and columnist for “CityNews”, Michael Moore, tsk-tsk’ed that while the local Greens may have “influenced” outcomes, they shouldn’t have cultivated false praise for the likes of “almost $50 million in increased funding for mental health services” and “increased investment in ACT housing”.

Cheering the parochial pollies up though, in a clear reflection of all their great work (ahem), the Marion Mahony Griffin Lecture on Canberra as “a modern planned capital city”, sees it described by president of the illustrious Twentieth Century International Scientific Committee Sheridan Burke as “a showcase of cutting-edge 20th-century town planning ideas… an extraordinary cultural landscape of 20th century heritage significance”. Of greater chagrin to said pollies, president Burke also exhorts that the ACT is worthy of a World Heritage listing – never mind what lurks in that Pandora’s Box.

Cheering up Canberrans more generally, finally getting a team in the AFL: the GWS Giants. Sure, they’re based in Sydney, and yeh, they represent Great Western Sydney like their name says, but hey, they play “at least three AFL Premiership Season games” a year at Manuka. And they’ve agreed with the ACT government they’re definitely “Canberra’s team” – until 2032 at any rate. For my two bob’s worth, elevating the incredibly successful Queanbeyan Tigers – also the oldest club in the region – would have been on the money.

In matters of a higher order, Anglicans gain a bishop and the Catholics lose one. Genieve Blackwell, of the Canberra and Goulburn Diocese, is appointed NSW’s first female Anglican bishop while the other side’s equivalent, Pat Power, retires. Born in Cooma, raised in Queanbeyan, schooled at St Edmund’s and Canberran of the Year in 2009, Bishop Pat demonstrated his credentials as “social justice warrior” chairing an inquiry highlighting the growing issue of poverty and inequality in the ACT (2000).

And in the most sobering moment of the year, another vindication in the most infamous (though tragically, certainly not singular) miscarriage of justice in Australian legal history: a fourth coronial inquest on the 1980 disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain from an Uluru campsite rules that mother, Lindy, was accurate in proclaiming “a dingo’s got my baby”.

The full collection of Nichole Overall’s “CityNews” anniversary columns can be seen here.

2011… Gillard’s year of ‘decision and delivery’