Politics & Government Was Canberra a mistake?

[Blue Arrow]

One of the big arguments before the creation of Canberra was plonking the capital of our country in the middle of nowhere would create an insular city that was out it touch with main stream Australia.
Yet another example of this truth is the fact the ACT is the only state or territory where the yes vote won.

 

[Moonwatcher]

One of the big arguments before the creation of Canberra was plonking the capital of our country in the middle of nowhere would create an insular city that was out it touch with main stream Australia.
Yet another example of this truth is the fact the ACT is the only state or territory where the yes vote won.

As a territory their vote could only influence the population vote and not the state vote. Seems to have worked the way it was intended.

 

[Moonwatcher]

They do seem out of touch though

 

[Plugger35]

I think Canberra was chosen to be the capital of Australia as they couldn't decide between Sydney and Melbourne and it was a compromise.

I don't think you can blame the location for the politicians being out of touch, politicians are still out of touch in London and Washington DC,

 

[Caesar]

I think it was the best decision

The only alternative was to make either Sydney or Melbourne the capital, and both of those are overcrowded already

ACT will always vote different to the rest of the country because it is full of public servants and public servants are not representative of the general population

Personally I reckon the state capitals should all be moved as well - not to purpose-built cities, but to regional centres. State governments are way too metro-centric, and it would do a lot to help regional economies and de-crowd major cities by moving most of the business of government to a secondary city.

 

[PT Bar None]

I always used to refer to it as "Camelot" when I lived there. (4 years).

 

[nobbyiscool]

Nice place to visit. Rubbish place to live and work.

 

[Capital Power]

Nice place to visit. Rubbish place to live and work.

I'll challenge that. We live in the outer suburbs and I worked here for all of my adult life. The big advantage was commute time, either car or bus, was/is significantly lower than major cities. Air quality is excellent and there is still plenty of open space. You can still get a park most places you go, although the govt is trying to fix that.

 

[Capital Power]

Canberra wasn't a mistake. At Federation, neither Sydney nor Melbourne would accept the other being the capital, so the eventual agreement was that the capital could be in NSW but at least 100 miles from Sydney.

Various options were considered, including Bathurst, Bega and Yass. The main argument against Canberra at the time was the climate.

The mistake that was made was not giving it a direct road/rail connection to either Sydney or Melbourne, so it's always been a backwater.

 

[The Passenger]

Personally I reckon the state capitals should all be moved as well - not to purpose-built cities, but to regional centres. State governments are way too metro-centric, and it would do a lot to help regional economies and de-crowd major cities by moving most of the business of government to a secondary city.

Yes, absolutely!! Newcastle, Central Coast or Wollongong would make great candidates in NSW.

 

[the fly]

Yes, absolutely!! Newcastle, Central Coast or Wollongong would make great candidates in NSW.

I reckon they'd still be too close to Sydney. I'd probably go for Armidale, Bathurst, or Wagga Wagga.

 

[Butters and Pepper]

"Peter Harvey - Sydney" just wouldn't have had the same ring to it.

 

[the_interloper]

Canberra is shithouse

 

[Frank Bunn]

They should have tossed a coin between Melbourne and Sydney. Or played rock, paper, scissors. Canberra is a living cemetery.

Some bell end called King O'Malley thought 'cold climates have produced the greatest geniuses'. So a committee went round NSW in horses and carts looking for that. They didn't want to put the capital on the coast because of fear of foreign attack by sea but they added Jervis Bay to ACT as a compromise. The day they went to Orange it was foggy so they ruled it out.

 

[Arwib]

We vote pretty much exactly like any other relatively young, largely tertiary educated population. We're a capital city and have the demographics of one. Nothing mysterious or untoward about it. We are demographically similar to much of Sydney and Melbourne and voted like those areas, the only difference being we are a standalone territory rather than subsumed into a larger jurisdiction with a rural and outer suburban hinterland.

 

[Arwib]

Nice place to visit. Rubbish place to live and work.

I've found it's pretty much precisely the opposite really

 

[PT Bar None]

I've found it's pretty much precisely the opposite really

I was the same when I lived there. Didn't much care for it when visiting, but once you get a handle on how the place works by living there, yeah I quite liked it. Got a bit cold though. And sometimes the planning lagged in the expanding areas. Getting petrol in the Gungahlin area in mid 2000's was a pain. As was Friday night takeaway! But if you looked around, you could find hatted quality restaurants hidden away and you could often just walk in mid week. Unlike Melbourne and Sydney

 

[nobbyiscool]

I was the same when I lived there. Didn't much care for it when visiting, but once you get a handle on how the place works by living there, yeah I quite liked it. Got a bit cold though. And sometimes the planning lagged in the expanding areas. Getting petrol in the Gungahlin area in mid 2000's was a pain. As was Friday night takeaway! But if you looked around, you could find hatted quality restaurants hidden away and you could often just walk in mid week. Unlike Melbourne and Sydney

I think for me I didn't like the town, I didn't love the self-important mindset of your dime-a-dozen public service middle managers, and I could never understand people who'd come to my grad program from "real" cities who had decided that travelling from Inner North to Woden was akin to driving from Melbourne to Brisbane. One of the arguments people make for Canberra is how good the roads are, and how easy to get places - it's cos, aside from going to work, no one leaves their "city centre". Don't tell me how good the roads are if the mentality of the inhabitants is such that they won't drive on them for 20 minutes to get a beer.

I had a hell of a lot of trouble making and keeping friends in Canberra - I live there for 8 years until 2015, and now it's just like a black hole or a weird blip in my life (a glitch in the matrix maybe...). I don't have any friends in my life left from Canberra, but I do still have friends I grew up with. My career now is crazy different to the grad program I went to Canberra for, to the extent that the only benefit was that I had a job while I continued to study. I had this miserable 8 years where it was like I didn't exist.

The flipside of all this is the art stuff. I love the gallery/museum where the hospital used to be. I love the national gallery and the portrait gallery. I love old parliament. I love the art/monument walk along LBG. I love the Canberra Raiders (although the stadium is an absolute f*cking hole, and if they'd started funding it when they first proposed the Civic stadium 12 years ago it'd be built by now and would've been hosting FIFA World Cup games a couple of months ago. Canberra also would've had an A-League side years ago if not for that shitty stadium.)

The multicultural festival alone is worth a trip, it's one of my favourite food and drink festivals I've been to in Australia cos it's such a perfect size.

Which is why I think it's nice to visit. I can go to Canberra once a year and very much enjoy all of the above. But my life there was miserable.

 

[Gough]

I think for me I didn't like the town, I didn't love the self-important mindset of your dime-a-dozen public service middle managers, and I could never understand people who'd come to my grad program from "real" cities who had decided that travelling from Inner North to Woden was akin to driving from Melbourne to Brisbane. One of the arguments people make for Canberra is how good the roads are, and how easy to get places - it's cos, aside from going to work, no one leaves their "city centre". Don't tell me how good the roads are if the mentality of the inhabitants is such that they won't drive on them for 20 minutes to get a beer.

I had a hell of a lot of trouble making and keeping friends in Canberra - I live there for 8 years until 2015, and now it's just like a black hole or a weird blip in my life (a glitch in the matrix maybe...). I don't have any friends in my life left from Canberra, but I do still have friends I grew up with. My career now is crazy different to the grad program I went to Canberra for, to the extent that the only benefit was that I had a job while I continued to study. I had this miserable 8 years where it was like I didn't exist.

The flipside of all this is the art stuff. I love the gallery/museum where the hospital used to be. I love the national gallery and the portrait gallery. I love old parliament. I love the art/monument walk along LBG. I love the Canberra Raiders (although the stadium is an absolute f*cking hole, and if they'd started funding it when they first proposed the Civic stadium 12 years ago it'd be built by now and would've been hosting FIFA World Cup games a couple of months ago. Canberra also would've had an A-League side years ago if not for that shitty stadium.)

The multicultural festival alone is worth a trip, it's one of my favourite food and drink festivals I've been to in Australia cos it's such a perfect size.

Which is why I think it's nice to visit. I can go to Canberra once a year and very much enjoy all of the above. But my life there was miserable.

A friend of mine moved there when Natasha Stott Despoja entered Parliament and she was working for her expecting to do her time there and move back to Adelaide when it was all over but she met her fella there, stayed and wouldn't live anywhere else now.

 

[PT Bar None]

I think for me I didn't like the town, I didn't love the self-important mindset of your dime-a-dozen public service middle managers, and I could never understand people who'd come to my grad program from "real" cities who had decided that travelling from Inner North to Woden was akin to driving from Melbourne to Brisbane. One of the arguments people make for Canberra is how good the roads are, and how easy to get places - it's cos, aside from going to work, no one leaves their "city centre". Don't tell me how good the roads are if the mentality of the inhabitants is such that they won't drive on them for 20 minutes to get a beer.

I had a hell of a lot of trouble making and keeping friends in Canberra - I live there for 8 years until 2015, and now it's just like a black hole or a weird blip in my life (a glitch in the matrix maybe...). I don't have any friends in my life left from Canberra, but I do still have friends I grew up with. My career now is crazy different to the grad program I went to Canberra for, to the extent that the only benefit was that I had a job while I continued to study. I had this miserable 8 years where it was like I didn't exist.

The flipside of all this is the art stuff. I love the gallery/museum where the hospital used to be. I love the national gallery and the portrait gallery. I love old parliament. I love the art/monument walk along LBG. I love the Canberra Raiders (although the stadium is an absolute f*cking hole, and if they'd started funding it when they first proposed the Civic stadium 12 years ago it'd be built by now and would've been hosting FIFA World Cup games a couple of months ago. Canberra also would've had an A-League side years ago if not for that shitty stadium.)

The multicultural festival alone is worth a trip, it's one of my favourite food and drink festivals I've been to in Australia cos it's such a perfect size.

Which is why I think it's nice to visit. I can go to Canberra once a year and very much enjoy all of the above. But my life there was miserable.

I was already career established when I moved there. I was a vendor/consultant so outside of the PS bubble. The 4 years I spent there were very good for my career. We moved there because my future ex wife was accepted into a grad program. She's still there!

 

[Caesar]

A friend of mine moved there when Natasha Stott Despoja entered Parliament and she was working for her expecting to do her time there and move back to Adelaide when it was all over but she met her fella there, stayed and wouldn't live anywhere else now.

I think it is a pretty livable place to settle down and have a family. Not somewhere I would like to be young and single though.

 

[Frank Bunn]

I had a hell of a lot of trouble making and keeping friends in Canberra - I live there for 8 years until 2015, and now it's just like a black hole or a weird blip in my life (a glitch in the matrix maybe...). I don't have any friends in my life left from Canberra, but I do still have friends I grew up with. My career now is crazy different to the grad program I went to Canberra for, to the extent that the only benefit was that I had a job while I continued to study. I had this miserable 8 years where it was like I didn't exist.

I think of my time in Canberra a bit like the two years of our lives we lost to Covid restrictions. It's a fading memory of a null period in your life and you start to wonder if it really happened.

 

[nobbyiscool]

I think of my time in Canberra a bit like the two years of our lives we lost to Covid restrictions. It's a fading memory of a null period in your life and you start to wonder if it really happened.

It's wild how accurately that reflects my experience.

 

[sdfc]

Should be the capital of the state that funds the country.

Perth it is.

 

[MC Extra Dollop]

I think it was the best decision

The only alternative was to make either Sydney or Melbourne the capital, and both of those are overcrowded already

ACT will always vote different to the rest of the country because it is full of public servants and public servants are not representative of the general population

Personally I reckon the state capitals should all be moved as well - not to purpose-built cities, but to regional centres. State governments are way too metro-centric, and it would do a lot to help regional economies and de-crowd major cities by moving most of the business of government to a secondary city.

It'd be interesting to have a state system similar to the US, where only two of the 10 most populous cities are actually state capitals and places like Albany (New York), Annapolis - not Baltimore (Maryland), Tallahassee- not Miami (Florida), Austin - not Houston/Dallas (Texas), Harrisburg - not Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Lansing - not Detroit (Michigan), Sacramento - not LA (California), Springfield - not Chicago (Illinois)... I'll stop there but the list goes on of places that a lot of people have probably never heard of are US state capitals.

It'd certainly be interesting to have State Parliament run out of places like Bendigo, Mackay, Wollongong and Bunbury as the state capitals.