“It’s this pathetic attachment to ‘growth’ as the economic miracle-maker that Barr is using to destroy the quality of life that made living here such a pleasure,” writes “The Gadfly” columnist ROBERT MACKLIN. 

ONE of the rare pleasures of the pandemic has been the chance to get to know the national capital’s hidden delights, especially the nature walks and picnic spots. 

Last weekend at one of the best – Dairy Farmers Hill in the Arboretum – came a revelation: it’s time to vote the Barr Labor government out of office.

The hill commands the most delightful view of Canberra, bar none. On this day, the lake was a shimmering wonder from the foreshore of Yarralumla, across the wide reaches past Morrison’s folly, the Queen Elizabeth II islet, under the bridges Commonwealth and King, and away to the Molonglo with the midday sun flashing off the aluminum triangle above Parliament House.

From this angle and at this height, it’s a scene that would make Walter Burley and Marion Griffin weep with joy. But when you work your way around the lookout, the sudden reality of the Barr government’s vision of the capital’s future glares back at you. Everywhere you look you see the mad expansion designed for his Canberra of endless growth as he calls for a huge increase in immigration.

And though his foolish obsession with the tramline of 19th century technology is hidden behind Black Mountain, its raison d’etre, of catering for endless suburban development, is everywhere you look. New suburbs named Whitlam and Throsby (discoverer of the Limestone Plains) and Taylor (who knows?) are being torn out of the landscape, all designed for Macmansions to house the migrant influx.

It’s this pathetic attachment to “growth” as the economic miracle-maker that Barr is using to destroy the quality of life that made living here such a pleasure, and that delighted visitors on their journeys to the cultural heart of the nation with free access to the National Gallery and the solemn memorial to the servicemen and women who gave their lives in the horrors of war. That’s the way it was when Barr took over from Chief Ministers Jon Stanhope and Katy Gallagher in 2014. 

It was Stanhope who sponsored the magnificent Arboretum – against much opposition – that is now Canberra’s crowning glory. And it was Katy who carried her Labor convictions into the Senate where time and again she has exposed the profligacies and incompetence of Morrison government ministers. 

But Barr, alas, is a convert to the neo-liberalism that uses massive increases in rates, parking fees and stamp duties to finance his tramlines when electric buses made much more sense then, and especially now when public servants are working from home. 

And it’s Barr, timid as a mouse, when the Feds are turning the War Memorial into a sideshow of weaponry, normalising if not promoting the obscenity of war.

He even set forth to buy NSW land beyond the ACT boundaries to feed the developmental frenzy. 

The result, already, is overcrowded roads, complaints of suburban potholes and overgrowth of the undergrowth in many of those nature walks and picnic places that provided us with relief from the confines of home in the seemingly endless battle against covid.

Labor has been in office, mostly with Greens’ support, for two decades and that alone should be enough to demand a change of government. 

Indeed, these days the Greens’ leader Shane Rattenbury has been totally subsumed into the Barr-becue, a mere sausage among the Labor chops. And since none of them are obvious chef material, and the Libs are split between right and extreme right, perhaps it’s time for a local version of the Rise of the Independents to step up to the Barr.

robert@robertmacklin.com