Friday September 09, 2005
Sydney has turned into a ribboned city of traffic jams, tollways and underground tunnels. It is becoming increasingly expensive to get around. This is the M5 tunnel, where the air is thick and toxic; as if it hadn't occurred to the geniuses that built it that air quality might be a problem in a tunnel several kilometres long. The recently retired Premier of NSW Bob Carr declared, as he exited Government House for the last time, "I have no regrets". No regrets? That this city which was once so beautiful, a bohemian paradise by the sea, Amsterdam in the South Pacific, has become a cesspit of snarling yuppies. No regrets at the dozens and dozens of kids who died as a result of the hopeless state of child protection in this state - where the ideologues tromping around in their blunt shoes and f... you glasses had created chaos, ripping kids of perfectly reasonable parents, and not ripping kids of complete lunatics; always painting dad as the lunatic when half the time these kids would have been better off living with dad. No regrets that the lives of many workers had simply got worse; with low wages, shocking traffic jams and spiralling prices. I'll never be able to say no regrets; being inundated at times with melancholic angst, but at least I don't have the mind boggling simplistic of arrogant politicians pretending everything is alright when it is nothing of the kind. Carr has disappeared off the radar very quickly, unlamented by the public, who were sick of hearing him crap on about global warming when the trains didn't run on time, and apparently unlamented even by his own party. In retirement the fuss of leadership, the sycophants that constantly surrounded him, the hub bub of purpose of a practising Premier, will all be gone. No one will care anymore what he thinks about anything. He can stalk the beaches and no one will care to photograph him. He can expound all he wants and no one will listen. The public stuck in toxic and expensive tunnels will remember his legacy of a traffic choked city with rundown infrastucture. Of snarling yuppies and a desperate shallowness that was always the city's want. As Jan Morris once said, it has the feeling of a city that should never have been there, perched between a vast continent and an infinite sea, a feeling that it could be washed away at any moment. The Harbour, the Rocks, the Opera House, the Botanic Gardens, these are the beautiful parts of Sydney. But in the tunnels we see the pointlessness of our own future. We see what arrogant and incompetent politicians have done to a once great city. We smell the chemical air and long for a better place.
