Why would you name a writers’ group after a restaurant? Marion the restaurant at Regatta Point is named after Marion Mahony Griffin. The writers’ group decision is a mystery that can’t be solved in this week’s “Seven Days” with IAN MEIKLE.

IN trying to dream up a name for a new arts and entertainment section while a bright-eyed sub-editor at the Adelaide “Advertiser”, I ran a selection of brilliant but oblique ideas past my unimpressed features editor, who sagely said: “Just tell people what it is”. We called the section “Arts and Entertainment”. 

Not so the ACT Writers Centre, which seems to have forsaken simplicity for lunacy in changing its name to, ahem, Marion. 

But why? Its board, chaired by Emma Batchelor, said the name could be seen as “a tipped hat to two creative forces that have influenced our region and demonstrated particular fortitude, creativity and determination — author Marion Halligan and architect-artist Marion Mahony Griffin.”

And for all it matters, you could throw in a third, cowboy hat-tipper John Wayne, Emma. He was born Marion Robert Morrison and, like Mrs Griffin, was an American not known for writing anything. 

Deputy chair Alex Sloan was terribly excited: I love the new name, a nod to great creatives who have helped shape us”. Not me, Alex.

While Canberra literary advocate Deb Stevens said: “Rebranding as Marion Inc has my full support as it’s acknowledging Canberra actually has a rich history to honour and it’s a springboard for the organisation as it strives to become a major player.” Que?

However, on Twitter Dianne Porter, the sensible president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers ACT & Region, seemed baffled, writing: “I would like to know how anyone wanting information about writers and writing would know to search for Marion?

“Marion has no link to writing that makes any sense to me. Is this a backward step?”

I fancy “CityNews” arts editor Helen Musa thinks it is. Reporting on the name change she politely suggested that the decision was bound to raise eyebrows as members of the wider community grappled with the obscurity of the name, the difficulty of Googling it when looking for writers’ support services and its gender-particularity.

Why should we care? Because we’re paying for it. Funded out of the ACT government’s Arts Organisation Investment Program, the taxpayers slipped them $178,104 in the last financial year and this year Marion’s up for $185,000 for “presenting professional development programs for Canberra writers at all levels and promoting their work”.

Its website lyrically waxes: “The name Marion, we feel fits in so many ways. The connection it brings to the powerful creatives the ACT region has seen while acknowledging the name is bigger than any one specific person – it is our ambition that Marion will transcend as a name and match our organisational strategic vision and mission: elevating writers and their art.”

“Pass me a bucket,” snapped one of my inner-north, very creative, writing snouts. He says it’s almost a Monty Python sketch, which he then wrote:

“I’m looking for help with my book”

“You want to book a table?”

“No, my book’s not about a table, it’s about the Ottoman empire!”

“The Ottoman? But that’s in Barton.”

In a comment on the “CityNews” website, music critic Graham McDonald wryly saw a silver lining.

“It could be the start of something which could really put Canberra on the map,” he wrote.

“Think of all the other institutions and organisations that could benefit in the same way as the (now former) Canberra Writers’ Centre has done. 

“The National Gallery of Australia could be renamed Betty (after Betty Churcher), the National Film & Sound Archive could be reborn as Snowy (after the long ignored and forgotten Snowy Baker) and perhaps the Railway Historical Society could be called Thomas.”

Anyone got one word to describe the ACT government? (editor@citynews.com.au). 

THE Yarralumla Residents Association responded to the Assembly standing committee inquiry into the 530-page Planning Bill 2022 draft with a virtuous three pages that it summarised, saying: “Overall, the Planning Bill is virtually impossible to comprehend owing to the breadth of the desired planning objectives, the imprecision in the definition of principles and requirements, and the convoluted, complex, interrelated matrix that forms the approach to governance and decision making.”

FORMER chief minister and Liberal senator Gary Humphries has had a hell of a time recently. His holiday in Europe turned into “something of a nightmare”, when he became seriously ill. So unwell, in fact, he flew gingerly home with a nurse in the next seat and headed straight to hospital.

“But I am now back home and recovering steadily,” he wrote. 

“Still a bit breathless and not very mobile, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.” Go, Gary. 

And this photo from John McEwen, of Red Hill with the caption: “The Great Wall of La Perouse Street”.

Ian Meikle is the editor of “CityNews” and can be heard with Rod Henshaw on the “CityNews Sunday Roast” news and interview program, 2CC, 9am-noon. There are more of his columns on citynews.com.au