City of Melbourne distracted as CBD suffers

While City of Melbourne is distracted with Green-left political and social issues, the inner city economy is facing a once-in-a-lifetime threat to its viability.

Melbourne’s CBD is still a ghost town. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Central city ratepayers would be justified in questioning why their council spent a couple of hours debating an asylum seekers issue in a meeting last week.

City of Melbourne councillors waited patiently as a string of activists zoomed into the meeting to put repeated arguments in opposition to federal authorities detaining a group of men in a Carlton hotel.

One submitter even had the chutzpah to scold the elected officials for allegedly being distracted during the presentations, and therefore not showing respect.

Now, the asylum seeker issue may be important for some, but its relevance to a local council is marginal at best.

If the original motion put by Greens councillors had passed, Lord Mayor Sally Capp would have been required to lobby federal ministers to release into the community people who are awaiting determination of their cases.

The motion was watered down after intervention by the Lord Mayor and others on her team, but the point is, why is the council getting bogged down on such political matters?

Especially when the inner city economy is facing a once-in-a-lifetime threat to its viability. Businesses are struggling, the Queen Victoria Market is on its knees due to lack of customers — the CBD looks like a ghost town.

The council will argue it can’t be held responsible for pandemic shutdowns, and it is doing what it can to help businesses and lobby the state government for more financial support.

This is true up to a point, but what sort of messages is Town Hall sending when it ventures into Green-left political and social territory best left to activists intent on changing our society.

Take Capp’s appearance at an “Invasion Day Dawn Service” when Melburnians were not able to enjoy the Australia Day Parade through CBD streets because the state government dumped it.

Also, the Herald Sun revealed a council submission to Infrastructure Victoria calling for inner-Melbourne’s car park congestion levy to be increased and extended to other suburbs.

At a time when we should be encouraging more people into the city and support traders, the council is advocating a heavier tax burden.

And what’s with the Moomba madness when Town Hall pulled the plug on the festival after initially backing a scaled-down event?

Fortunately Moomba is back in limited form, but surely the whole saga is a wake-up call for a council to not be distracted by irrelevancies.

John Masanauskas is Herald Sun City Editor

[e-mail]

@JMasanauskas