Real estate in Canberra bubble

If there are two things Australians love, it’s real estate and whingeing. The two combined? Even better!

Anthony Albanese pats a constituent’s ferret at the Marrickville festival in his Sydney electorate. Picture: Nikki Short

If there are two things that all Australians love, it’s real estate and whingeing. whingeing about real estate? Even better! That’s why Strewth is delighted to present you with this nugget of property patter for your next dinner party. As of June 30 Parliament House was valued at $2.35bn, according to the Australian National Audit Office.

Talk about a Canberra housing bubble. How did the bean counters come up with this hefty figure? “The valuation is complex due to the unique nature of each building component that comprises Parliament House,” the ANAO wrote in the Department of Parliamentary Services annual report, released last week. “Significant judgment is exercised in making the estimation, which is based on … current replacement cost.” Which means in 30 years the value of the People’s House has more than doubled. That or tradie hourly rates have gone up significantly. An impressive appreciation in anyone’s ledger book.

On the house

The parliament cost $1.1bn and took seven years to build. It was meant to last 200 years but it’s already full. Since opening on May 9, 1988, the 250,000sq m building containing 4500 rooms (including a foyer with 48 Italian and Portuguese marble-clad pillars) can’t cope with the ballooning numbers of taxpayer-funded advisers and bureaucrats. Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin’s secret plan to build two extensions to the ministerial wing at the back of the building was killed off when he was deposed four years and two prime ministers ago. In March, one of the architects who designed the building told The Canberra Times he feared sections of the building would soon be demolished to allow for it to be expanded.

Solitary confinement

And yet … “It’s a very, very lonely place,” Senate President Scott Ryan told the Institute for Government during a speech in London this month. “If you come to our Parliament House on the busiest day of the year, which is our budget day, you can still walk down a corridor and not see someone. It is a cavernous building.”

Ferret fretting

As far as visual metaphors go, you don’t get better than a Labor leader and a weasel. Anthony Albanese posed with Toby, a pet ferret, as he walked the media through the Marrickville Festival in Sydney’s inner-west on Sunday. Pausing to paw at the pet was a curious choice, especially given Albanese had spent the morning dodging questions on the impending federal election post mortem and state Aldi bag autopsy. All we know is that his own staff are calling it a crisis.

On Wednesday evening a few kilometres down the road, all NSW Labor members have been invited to an “emergency meeting of the Inner West Labor branches” at the Annandale Community Centre “to respond to ICAC Inquiry and Internal Review being conducted into the party”. Darcy Byrne, mayor of the People’s Republic of Sydney’s Inner West and part-time staffer in Albanese’s office, issued the email summons. “The damage wrought by the revelations at ICAC has left rank and file party members angry and distraught,” Byrne wrote. “We all know that a clean out is needed and modern standards of governance and transparency must be implemented if our party is to survive this crisis.” Byrne is a member of the Left faction, as is his boss. Or is he? Albanese told journalists on Sunday: “I’m not a member of a faction. I don’t participate in factional activity. I’m the leader of the Australian Labor Party.” Regardless, Albanese will be in Canberra as parliament sits on Wednesday.

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