Nothing Works Anymore

Nothing works any more. All the colours are wrong, bleached out in the heat. This tunnel, another secret contract, has all the hallmarks of being another Cross city tunnel; or at the very least bound in controversy. The collapse of the corner of an apartment block into the giant hole which had opened up in the middle of the night did little for their public image. While things have been much quieter the last two nights, the city remains shocked by unparalleled scenes of race violence, of "white" mobs hunting down "Lebs" and gangs of men of "Middle Eastern appearance" smashing cars and rampaging through shops. Fissures open everywhre in the debate. These sorts of things didn't happen in Australia.

These cranes, fed by a ceaseless line of red cement trucks, poured hundreds actually I think it was thousands of tonnes of concrete down the hole which suddenly opened up down into the Lane Cove tunnel through shale, another public/private tollway project nearing completion which will once again add to the cost of just getting around. There wasn't anywhere else to go. There were those scenes on television, attacking ambulance officers, police wielding batons, hoeing into crowds. This sort of thing had never happened here, in Australia. Shades of France? the interviewer asked. Absolutely it is, he said.

For a while he thought unfashionable views, then enough commentators came out to attack the fashionable shibboliths that he felt comfortable once again. Then in inconsistent grumpiness he kept broadening his ideas. The roads are wrong, and the traffic, he can hear it, the fabric of things. The red concrete trucks queued up the side ramps of the freeway and around the corner. The cranes poured well into the night. No one was killed. The company executives looked trapped. Summer had gripped the city, but in it was no tomorrow; the beginning of a long hot summer or a brief, uncontrolled and shocking flare? Pundits from all sides had their say today. In praise of shock jocks, was one, from David Flint. The occasionally unlovely voice of democracy. NSW Parliament re-convened today and rushed through legislation increasing police riot control powers. A thousand police are being ordered out for Saturday night, and 1500 for Sunday, the day everyone is expecting trouble, embraced, as the news channels say, with increased powers. I have to work Sunday night.