Four years to fix public loos but Melbourne Council debates Oz Day and revives the Yarra birdman rally

After taking four years to fix public toilets and bringing back the Moomba birdman, what hope is there Melbourne’s council can deliver a decent Australia Day celebration?

Reviving the Moomba birdman rally “on a narrow, polluted brown creek called the Yarra River” was a council priority. Picture: David Crosling

On Tuesday night the 11 councillors that make up the Melbourne City Council made a tough decision that’s been nearly three-and-a-half years in the making.

It was agenda item number one on the council meeting list; made public on the council website.

Tuesday, as we now know, was a busy night for the highly paid Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp – current salary plus perks of $238,634 in what was once an honorary role – with Australia Day in her sights.

Lord Mayor Capp and her deputy Nicholas Reece (salary $119,317) plus CEO Justin Hanney (salary $520,000 plus perks) needed to deal with item one before blowing up Australia Day.

This was listed on the order of business before an item referring to getting office workers back into the CBD and a junket for another councillor to travel to Auckland to look at street art and the treatment of the Maori population.

Agenda item one was the debate on public toilets in Faraday St Carlton, or more accurately the lack of public toilets in Faraday St.

You see way back in 2019, before Covid, the existing underground public toilets in that street were deemed too dangerous to leave operational.

A design render of the new Carlton public toilets for Faraday St, which have taken years to be settled.

Council in its wisdom closed them and of course the obvious result happened. Locals and businesses owners started making complaints about public urination and defecation in the street.

Faraday St itself had been turned into a public toilet because the council and all its highly paid councillors figured you could shut the public lavatory and people would find somewhere else to relieve themselves.

They did — in people’s front yards, on footpaths and in doorways to businesses.

The MCC was stung into action and after public consultation in March 2019 – that’s three-years-and-four-months ago – and 23 emails of complaint and more community consultation, we ended up in mid-2020.

Two-years-ago, and more than a year after the first consultants started work on this smelly problem, our highly paid council gurus were presented with four possible locations for a new toilet block.

Council convened and decided on the new spot … only problem being they would lose two carparking spaces and seven spots for motorcycles and scooters.

The solution? Put the already-purchased new toilet into storage and work out what to do later.

So Tuesday night — with a vote pending on caving in to politically correct critics and for Sally Capp to keep her inner city voters happy by putting a motion to scrap Australia Day — they had to devote time to an entirely different motion, forgive the pun: the toilet location.

After four years and numerous recommendations from armies of consultants and complaints from ratepayers, the Capp-led council agreed on a location for Faraday St’s new dunny.

The project is expected to be completed by April 2023 at an estimated cost of $210,000.

Residents and local business will have to put up with yet another year of smell and mess from another failed decision by a dysfunctional council that couldn’t build a toilet in under four years but could carpet bomb the city with chaos causing bike lanes.

If Victoria had a State Government with any concerns other than getting themselves re-elected in November, this mob would have been booted years ago.

Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp wants to debate Melbourne’s celebration of Australia Day. Picture: Getty Images

Traffic congesting bike lanes, streets littered with homeless people and the city heroin injecting facility. As if they are not enough? And now the council is sticking their well recompensed noses into Australia Day.

And it’s not as if the council does much of a job with big events like Moomba or the national holiday anyway.

I’ve written before about the outdated notion of a King and Queen of Moomba, and also about that weekend’s water skiing extravaganza - on a narrow polluted brown creek called the Yarra River - where people are given prizes for jumping off a bridge dressed as birds.

Then to celebrate Australia Day, the city council and State Government have offered us a vintage car display, some average fireworks and carnival rides .

Rather than finding a reason to transfer this tacky underwhelming occasion to another day, what about earning your inflated salaries and using your army of toilet consultants to come up with a real celebration of what it means to be Australian?

This year’s Moomba King and Queen Fifi Box and Peter Hitchener. An outdated tradition which shouldn’t have come back says Steve Price. Picture: David Crosling

Use Melbourne’s magnificent obsession with sport and our first rate stadiums to stage a celebration and stop trying to be oh-so-politically-correct about how dreadful the day is.

Have a carnival of home grown sport and a feast of Melbourne food, include our Indigenous icons, and teach our children the modern history of Melbourne.

Melbourne City Council’s three main figureheads — the CEO, the Lord Mayor and deputy — earn between them just short of a million dollars a year.

It took them almost four years to fix a toilet. What hope is there that they can deliver an Australia Day we can all be proud of? Ask the people of Faraday Street.

LIKES

Northcote golf club to remain a full time golf club; sensible council decision based on common sense.

New Senator Jacinta Price from the NT and her maiden speech; just outstanding.

The soap Neighbours and its classy finale and sad exit for Australian fans.

Sky News Chris Kenny’s special on the ABC shining a light on its

failings.

DISLIKES

Rugby League club Manly and its self-inflicted own goal over a gay pride jersey by not even telling its own players.

Mask wearing goes political with the new Labor government wearing them in parliament while the opposition does not.

The NT government’s crazy decision to scrap grog bans at remote Indigenous communities, sending sales through the roof.

Greens Senator Lydia Thorpe’s no show for the start of the new parliament.

Australia Today with Steve Price can be heard live from 7am weekdays via the LiSTNR app.