Bridges Too Far
This is the bridge down at Darling Harbour, a reclamation project which transformed an old part of Sydney into a modern sweep of shops and entertainment centres, one of Sydney's show case areas; with everything from an Imax theatre to a Japanese garden, to Italian cafes and fancy restaurants. I always think it would be a nice place to take my mother, but she wouldn't be comfortable and an expensive lunch would be largely wasted. People reach an age where they don't want to go outside their comfort zones. I worry that I might have caught some interminable, or terminal, disease, against the odds. We are always frightened that life will be truncated; packed as it has been with everything from moments of clarity and indeed ecstasy, through to pools of discontent and hugging sadness. We could walk free but that was not our destiny. The wealthy tourists chatted happily over their expensive lunches; and we looked on, knowing we could never be the same.
During the 1980s, when Darling Harbour was under construction, I was working as a reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald. It didn't matter what happened, no matter how small the incident, at the slightest sniff of something going wrong we would be down there to write a negative story about them. Some trees that had been transplanted wilted one day, the leaves going brown, suffering stress from the transplant. It didn't matter that the botanists insisted this was perfectly normal die-back, and the trees would rejuvenate and be perfectly healthy once they settled down, we were determined to pillory them. Those brain leaves turned into another disaster for the problem plagued project, as we put it. The hatred for Darling Harbour was driven in part by the utter egocentric of the minister then responsible, Laurie Brereton if I've spelt that right, from the right wing of the Labor Party.
The whole of Sydney was plagued with these signs that everyone hated; with Laurie claiming credit for every last piece of infrastructure. Built by the Minister for Public Works. Never mind the people that actually did the work, the people who were out on the roads digging and driving earth movers at six o'clock in the morning; they didn't matter, there was Laurie and his signs claiming credit. It was typical of what the Labor Party had become, no longer a party of the workers but a party for everybody but the workers. Most of the parliamentarians were back door party officials who had never wielded a shovel or run a business; in smart, expensive but still sleazy suits. And the public sensed these betrayals of the comman man. There were always rumours now about the close relationship between Labor and developers; with millions having been made along transport corridors and in mile after mile of suburban houses. A height restriction shift by a councillor from two to three floors along a single street was enough to make millions.
The Labor councils had become yet another sleazy part of Sydney life. Now no longer a minister, Eddie Obeid, who has just won a defamation case against the Sydney Morning Herald over an article claimed to have defematory implications relating to a multi-million dollar development; Paul Keating, the retired Prime Minister who's astonishing arrogance made him probably the most hated and polarising PM in Australian history, made millions from a piggery near Scone in the upper-Hunter; Bob Carr, the recently retired Premier who told everyone he was retiring to spend more time with his wife and promptly took up a half a million dollar a year position with Macquarie Bank. It was one of the few enjoyable moments in journalism when I asked the present premier Morris Iemma - are you making this announcement today to avoid the odium sticking to the party because of its close relationship to Macquarie Bank? No, he snapped, in his media-trained deep, supposedly authorative voice. No; and the press conference was rapidly wound up. They're all millionaires; and they're all a million miles from the original ideas of a party representing the working class.
And oddly enough, Darling Harbour became one of the most popular and most successful precincts in Sydney.
NEWS:
ABC:
Laurie Brereton to retire
AM - Saturday, 5 June , 2004 08:20:00
Reporter: Louise Yaxley
EDMOND ROY: An era is closing. The Labor Party's Laurie Brereton has decided to retire from Federal Parliament at the next election. Mr Brereton says he will release a statement later this morning outlining the reasons for his decision.Mr Brereton revealed the news last night to the federal electorate council for his eastern Sydney seat of Kingsford Smith, in a move which has surprised his Federal Parliamentary colleagues.Louise Yaxley looks back at the controversial powerbroker's career.LOUISE YAXLEY: Laurie Brereton's one of the cornerstones of the New South Wales right faction of the ALP. And he helped oversee Mark Latham's victory in the election leadership battle last year.Mr Brereton's been a powerful figure on the Opposition backbench since stepping down from his job as Shadow Foreign Affairs minister in 2001 when he cited the need for new blood.Mr Brereton's played a leading role in shaping Labor's foreign affairs policy in recent years. He helped change the policy on East Timor and has been a vocal critic of the war against Iraq.The Inspector-General of Intelligence last year cleared the spy agency the Defence Signals Directorate over allegations it had tried to bug Mr Brereton's phone calls after a secret government document on East Timor was leaked to the media.Laurie Brereton's nicknamed "dangerman". He's spent almost all his working life in politics, beginning in 1970 in New South Wales State Parliament. And in 1990 he moved to the federal arena where he had stints as Industrial Relations Minister and to Federal Transport Minister.It's not clear who will replace Mr Brereton in his safe Labor seat of Kingsford Smith. The seat is home to the New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, who was quoted in a biography last year as saying he'd be interested in federal politics after the 2007 state election.EDMOND ROY: Louise Yaxley reporting.