Double Standards on Parks

The City of Yarra wants to charge personal trainers around $40 an hour to use our parks. Meanwhile, people are welcome to park two tonnes of steel all day in the Yarra Park for a peppercorn fee of $8. In terms of damage to the grounds, exclusion of other uses, maintenance, visual amenity and public safety there's no doubt that half a dozen people in a circle flailing their arms and legs around has far less impact. The Council says it's going after the trainers because they're running a business aimed at getting people fit. But if your business is to get people to scoff pies while watching others exercise, it seems you enjoy steeply discounted mates' rates. If we're going down this path, let's have some fairness and transparency in the Council's cost-recovery model.

"Public Privacy" and Google's Street View

The Australian Privacy Foundation is attacking Google's new Street View service on the grounds that photos taken in public may invade someone's "public privacy". This is one oxymoron society does not need. If someone is unhappy about his public urination being observed or photographed then surely the answer is for him to abstain. Banning others from looking is silly, wrong, impractical and against community expectations. No one complained about Brendan Fevola's privacy being invaded when he was caught and recorded urinating in a public street. By contrast, people were up in arms when Southbank management tried to ban photography there.

Public spaces are just that: public. Attempts to control what other people see in public amount to privatisation of the public sphere. We have precious few public spaces as it is without poorly thought through notions like "public privacy" eroding them further.

Keep on the Level

I fear the Victorian Government is about to bullied into doing something rash about level crossings. Grade separation for even a fraction of the state's road and train crossings would cost billions. In any analysis, this is primarily a problem for motorists, not public transport users. Cars and trucks that don't stop at crossings will slam into trains (or into the paths of trains) resulting in death and injury. Motorists who wilfully drive around boom gates and get stranded on tracks face a similar fate.

Taking money away from public transport projects to make it harder for motorists to do this is iniquitous and unfair. Claiming money spent on level crossings as public transport investments is misleading to say the least. Please, if level crossings are to be upgraded, ensure it comes from the roads budget. In light of the $1 billion myki fiasco, Victoria's public transport system simply can't afford any more unwanted projects.

Unexceptional Circumstances

We can't go on calling it "exceptional circumstances" when billions are spent year after year across half the farms. Instead, it should be the "Real Aussies Preservation Program" and run out of the Heritage Department.

Proximity No Measure For Compassion

I reject Prime Minister John Howard's assertion that we should show the same "level of compassion" to Australian victims of drought as to victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami. That terrible tragedy in 2004 killed over 200,000 people, leaving a further 1.7 million people displaced. Whole villages were literally wiped off the map. Many of those affected live in extremely poor areas where their governments lack the capacity to support them or help rebuild their lives. Quite simply, the scale, intensity and relief required are of an entirely different character and order of magnitude.

For John Howard to equate that with a few thousand Australian families facing temporary financial hardship is nationalistic and insular. Of course, these citizens will be looked after by our well-resourced governments. But in our global age, the days when physical proximity, skin colour and accent dictate our levels of compassion are long gone.