‘Paradise’ lost to a woke-city future on brazen display in Canberra

The nation’s capital has changed gradually from sophisticated country town to dark green Truman bubble. But it’s still a beautiful place to live.

The woke takeover is sad, yet I still like living in Canberra, writes Angela Shanahan.

What is going wrong with the nation’s capital? Why is it that the government of the federal territory cannot appoint a prosecutor unable to divest himself of his own prejudices in his zeal for a conviction in a high-profile political case? Why indeed? It seems strange to me, having lived in the nation’s capital for 30 years and written about its gradual change from sophisticated country town to dark green Truman bubble, that people have only just woken up to Canberra’s wokery under the Barr Labor-Greens coalition government.

As I wrote during the previous fiasco of its forcible acquisition of a Catholic public hospital, this government has been in power for 22 years, and consequently believes it has carte blanche to do whatever it wants. The Barr administration is more Green than Labor. It is much more Green than even the Stanhope government was. What is more, the ACT government now has the backing of the federal government. Hence Katy Gallagher could crow about getting the territory rights bill passed, the sole purpose of which was to introduce voluntary assisted dying the ACT Human Rights Minister, who is setting up the “framework”, says could be extended to 14-year-olds.

The Drumgold affair might have far-reaching implications outside Canberra as the apostles of woke, safe under the umbrella of state and territory human rights apparatus, are not confined to the federal capital. However, shonky wokery has long infected Canberra’s governance, from various victimhoods to fanatical gas-hating Greens. A lot of this has only just begun to permeate wider Australian society. So, if you want to see the future, come to Canberra where we are steeped in this stuff.

Under Barr, the ACT has enacted some of the most bizarre laws in Australia, covering all the woke preoccupations. VAD for 14-year-olds is quite possible in a place where, under the guise of banning “conversion therapy”, the government has passed a law forbidding anyone, even a parent, taking a child out of the ACT for any gender dysphoria therapy except affirmative therapy. Although this is claimed as a “health measure”, the government has legalised hard drugs and forcibly acquired Calvary Hospital even though it can barely run the one it operates at Woden, which has had some of its teaching accreditation removed.

On fossil fuels, the government has decided to ban household gas by 2035. The new suburbs do not even have gas pipes, and the rest of Canberra, which mainly uses gas for heating and was encouraged to do so, will be forced to find some other way to heat our houses. On transport, it has built a tram that (to the amusement of the population) cannot cross Lake Burley Griffin, so in the government’s own words it will have to “go back to the drawing board” to work that out.

Despite the trenchant criticism of former DPP Shane Drumgold’s ineptitude by the press both within and outside Canberra, it is really these local problems and ideological force-feeding that gets under the skin of Canberrans. So, while many people are shocked by the fallout of Brittany Higgins mark two, many more people are frankly worried about the state of emergency at the hospital and the looming gas ban.

It seems strange to me, having lived in the nation’s capital for 30 years, that people have only just woken up to Canberra’s wokery, writes Angela Shanahan.

So why do people in the ACT put up with all this? Here are some reasons. First, the Liberal opposition is frankly hopeless. Under the leadership of Zed Seselja there was some impetus, but he bailed. The only hope for a shift in government is to take a leaf out of the Greens’ playbook and have some decent independent candidates. Under Canberra’s complicated electoral system, it is easier to vote independent candidates into power. Another reason is the changing demographic of the ACT, which now has a population the size of Tasmania. It has always been a young, well-educated population, but mainly families. Now under the Barr government there has been a huge upsurge in apartment developments aimed at the influx of single young people working for the federal and local governments – and overseas students. There are more renters in the ACT than ever before, and despite opposition to untrammelled development from long-term residents, Barr simply said he didn’t want to talk to anybody over 45. Hence the upsurge in the Greens vote – and they hold the balance of power.

Another reason many of us put up with the crazy stuff in the ACT and don’t decamp permanently to the south coast is because, like Truman, we are captives in a suburban paradise of sorts. After only experiencing life in big cities and one of the world’s great metropolises with two small children in an apartment the size of my Canberra kitchen, Canberra 30 years ago was almost Nirvana for a family.

It still retains many elements of the ideal city its founders envisaged. It has a very high standard of housing and amenities. It is beautiful. Its much-maligned paradoxical sobriquet, the “bush capital”, means everyone has access to a bush reserve. It has a cultural life that is a mixture of sophisticated and popular. It has the youngest population in Australia, and the schools were some of the best in Australia and, unlike most other states and territories, Canberra has real free preschools within the education system. The woke takeover is sad, yet I still like living in Canberra. But for how long before “paradise” is lost?