Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We’re still building then burning down love
In the U2 song Where the Streets Have No Name, the city depicted is Belfast, Ireland — but I had in mind Canberra and its glorified town council, otherwise known as the ACT Legislative Assembly. One of its members is Labor backbencher Bec Cody, who was elected in 2016. Her base wage is $164,382.
So what does the member for Murrumbidgee think is the most pressing concern for her constituents? Is it enacting anti-consorting legislation to combat the outlaw motorcycle gangs who have committed numerous drive-by shootings and arsons in the suburb of Kambah? Not at all. Her number one priority is changing the names of streets and suburbs she deems to be “hurtful”.
“I was a hairdresser for 30 years,” she told ABC’s Radio National on Tuesday, “and people were often telling me about some of the hurtful place names that we have in Canberra and the pain that they feel when they have to see them.” This was quite the revelation. As someone who has frequented Canberra’s barbers I have overheard many conversations there, none of which involved clients bursting into tears over distressing naming conventions. It appears Cody is embellishing a tad or ten, but at least we can take solace knowing she once worked in a useful occupation.
Her motion will be debated in the Assembly next month, but Cody has already asked the ACT Place Names Committee to review all place names to ensure they meet “community standards”. In the meantime she is taking her scissors to the suburb of Stirling, named after WA’s first governor, who in 1834 led a party of police, soldiers, and settlers in what became known as the ‘Battle of Pinjarra’, resulting in the deaths of 14 indigenous people and one police superintendent.
“Some people would have a real problem with a person being commemorated for massacring Aboriginals,” she said. Some people would have a real problem with a politician using straw man arguments to justify cultural cleansing, you might retort. Next on her list is a city park named after British WWI field marshal Douglas Haig, who commanded forces on the Western Front. He, according to Cody, sent in troops “just to be killed”.
“The reason for my motion is to start a conversation,” she said this week. No problems. Let’s do just that. We begin with the suburb of Watson, named after Australia’s first Labor PM. In 1901 the then Opposition Leader asked the Barton Government to deal firmly with the “coloured alien trouble generally”, saying “Chinese, Hindoos (sic) and such like objectionable races should be dealt with promptly and effectively”. What is the solution to this historical blight? Elementary, Watson: it’s time for a new name.
Then there is the suburb of Fisher. Delivering an election speech in 1913 to sugarcane farmers in Maryborough, Queensland, that Labor PM was unabashedly bigoted. “Legislation will be passed to equalise the bounty and excise, and thereby protect the white growers against unfair competition by those employing coloured labour,” he declared. Andrew, you’re about to be airbrushed.
I hope you are taking notes, Bec Cody, for the suburb of Scullin is also tainted. In 1928, only a year before James Scullin became PM, this Labor leader publicly announced “The first plank of Labor’s Fighting Platform” was to be “the maintenance of a White Australia.” Former Labor leader Francis Forde was PM for only eight days, but he still has a suburb named after him. Not for much longer though. In 1932 the then Deputy Opposition Leader angrily denounced the Lyons Government for granting trade concessions to the British colony of Fiji. This “struck a blow at the ‘White Australia policy,” he protested, “one portion of which was to prevent the products of black labour entering the country”.
The residents of Curtin take pride in having a suburb named after the great Labor wartime PM, but that too will change. In 1917 he attacked PM Billy Hughes, claiming the latter intended to dismantle the White Australia policy, and replace “Anzacs with Chinese” while the “white sons of Australian mothers are fighting for the Empire on the bloodstained fields of France”. Ditto the suburb of Chifley. He may be remembered as an affable Labor PM, but in 1928 a young Chifley castigated the Bruce Government for admitting “so many dagoes and aliens into Australia”.
The suburbs of Evatt and Calwell, both named after former Labor opposition leaders, will suffer a similar fate. As Attorney-General, Evatt told Parliament in 1947 that the White Australia policy was “absolutely basic to the politics and economics of this country”. Calwell was also known for his racist remarks, as evident by his “Two Wongs don’t make a white” joke in 1947 when he was Minister for Immigration.
Last year the ACT Government announced it had gazetted the new suburb of Whitlam. He was, according to Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry, “a one-of-a-kind man and prime minister, who helped Australia rethink the way we approach ideas relating to inequality and social justice”. Presumably she is unaware of Whitlam’s inhumane response to the fall of Saigon in 1975. “I’m not having these f..king Vietnamese Balts coming into the country with their religious and political prejudices against us,” he said when urged by his Foreign Minister, Don Willisee, to grant South Vietnamese refugees asylum. “Vietnamese sob stories don’t wring my withers,” he said contemptuously. Does that meet your community standards, Bec Cody?
We can also look forward to the demolition of a $72,000 taxpayer-funded bronze statue of Whitlam’s Immigration Minister Al Grassby in Canberra’s Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre. Grassby worked tirelessly for his Griffith constituents, especially the Calabrian ones. Following the disappearance and murder of anti-drugs campaigner and Liberal state candidate Donald MacKay at the hands of the mafia in 1977, Grassby unsuccessfully tried to persuade a NSW state politician to read out in Parliament a disgusting claim that McKay’s wife and son were complicit in his murder.
A commission of inquiry later found Grassby had acted to protect the real murderers, and that “no decent man” could have disseminated the “scurrilous lies” that Grassby did. On that basis we can be sure Cody already has an angle grinder in hand if she is true to her principles. And given her insistence the name of Stirling is no longer suitable as it does not meet “community standards”, it must follow the suburbs of Calwell, Chifley, Evatt, Fisher, Forde, Scullin, Watson and Whitlam be renamed.
In the event Cody resisted such moves, she would be a rank hypocrite. By her own assertion she supposedly has a zero tolerance for racism. Last year in a speech in the Assembly she labelled the RSL Club in the NSW town of Sussex Inlet “a disgrace”. The crime? The tiles in the men’s bathroom include those depicting indigenous men in a traditional setting. “In 2017 in Australia in a club that promotes itself as championing our values and respect for our national heritage, men are expected to urinate on Aboriginals,” she said, telling an outright falsehood. Club president David Woodbridge noted there had never been an official complaint about the tiles since their installation in 1971, thus confirming Cody’s claims of toilet racism were nothing but piss and wind.
Perhaps the would-be Minister for Monikers should reconsider her virtue thought bubble, especially given what renaming the suburbs would mean for her party idols and what remains of her credibility. There is also the slight matter of the inconvenience this would cause for the 29,000 residents in the suburbs concerned, not to mention the emergency and postal services.
On a related topic, the ACT Government, a Labor/Greens coalition, will name the streets of a new suburb, Denman Prospect, after activists, particularly feminists and unionists. Even the militant Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union will be so honoured, notwithstanding its appalling history of flouting industrial laws and the thuggish behaviour by many of its officials. Do not count on Cody’s objection. Her Twitter profile proudly features her displaying the CFMMEU’s former logo. This, from the same politician who wants to rename suburbs “to make life a little kinder for others”?
I think we should review place names in the ACT because some of them are named after bad people, and are hurtful to the victims. It's a small task for us to make life a little kinder for others. #ACTpol
— Bec Cody (@Rebecca_Cody) October 28, 2018
Incidentally, you might think the citizens of Canberra deserve this circus they have elected, and to a large extent you would be right. Spare a thought though for the roughly 40 per cent of voters who wanted nothing to do with Labor or the Greens and must suffer this progressive idiocy. With them in mind, let’s end with the opening lyrics of Where the Streets Have No Name:
I want to run, I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside
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