Victoria Barracks in Paddington won’t be sold off by the government. Picture: NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers
OPINION
Australians woke on the weekend to the news that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese played a would-be cunning hand that was instead wide open: halting the sale of Sydney’s historic Victoria Barracks. The Paddo site and three others on his government’s 67-strong list of Defence sites for sale will now be spared. Great!
But back up there, Bessie.
Sixty-seven?! Just how many Defence sites are there if the Albanese Government’s blatant money-grubbing bender was so quick to deem 67 of them surplus to requirements? The move is also at a time of unprecedented national vulnerability, given economic, political, cultural woes crashing head-on with the spiralling supertech amplification of global insecurity and what feels like the whole of humanity’s rising unhappiness.
I’m no military strategist but it does seem a strange time to unload Defence strongholds, especially when we’ve sold off so much of Australia to foreign interests already.
In reality, Albo has simply assumed his favourite position and it’s a very good thing the fence he’s awkwardly attempting to straddle this time wasn’t electrified or decorated in a row of iron fleur-de-lis. Ouchy!
Okay, yes, he’s trying to appease opponents (pleasingly a very bipartisan, broad church of Australians – myself included, among some unexpected bedfellows – all aligned by outrage and dismay regarding the planned sale), but Albo’s also been clear that the current tenants will be unceremoniously evicted as planned and Victoria Barracks will no longer be a working Defence facility.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the future of the barracks after public outcry over the sale. Picture: NewsWire / Simon Bullard.
Because what Australia really needs is another overpriced cafe in Paddington.
Phew. Our PM has obviously got his best and brightest working on this deal!
In the spirit of charity for those far more fortunate than ourselves, let’s also spare a thought – while politely averting our gaze to give the man some privacy as he aims for a nimble dismount that won’t tear his trousers – for all the bull-horned property developers and their salivating agent minions.
Time is money, after all, and they’ve been waiting and slobbering at the gates to reap the spoils of war. Standing ready to roll in that colossal Trojan horse that’s never let them down: the brazen lie of delivering “affordable housing” whenever they win a prestige development tender in one of these blue-ribbon locations.
The formula is simple: throw a couple of studios and the odd one-bedder on the plan and bingo! Flog every other apartment in the complex for millions, then proceed to handsomely dine out on your glossy social housing credentials at black-tie fundraisers for homeless women’s shelters. (We can see you, you know.)
These self-serving, usually megalomaniacal, more-minted-than-commemorative-Bluey-coins fat cats must have been spraying espresso across Calacatta marble breakfast bars from Ben Buckler to Palm Beach Lighthouse over the weekend.
They were undoubtedly poised to pounce on Victoria Barracks and they’ll be lining up to sink their fangs into the remaining 63 sites. A prospect that brings to mind arguably one of the most recognised and repeated lines in Shakespeare’s epic revenge tragedy Hamlet: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles toured the barracks ahead of their announcement. NewsWire / Simon Bullard.
So declares palace guard Marcellus in the 4th scene, Act 1, in a play written around four and a quarter centuries ago – poetic proof in case we needed it that people don’t change.
For those unfamiliar with the scene, Hamlet’s dad, the dead king, appears in full armour – a curiously apt detail, given the military flavour of what’s currently rotten in the state of Australia.
I had a very brief, unexpected exchange with a close friend who lives a stone’s throw from the Victoria Barracks, back when this federal asset fire sale broke out. I sent a message of solidarity on a group chat, mistakenly assuming my friend would be similarly distressed by the casual disregard shown toward Australia’s military and architectural history.
It was, after all, decisions like this current one that decimated Sydney’s once grand cityscape back in the 1960s and ‘70s. The wholesale demolition of historic Victorian and Edwardian beauties led to an outbreak of cheap, nasty crimes against architecture that stripped Sydney of so much she can never, ever reclaim. But for Jack Mundey and everyone who fought the good fight to save the Rocks, today there would likely be nothing left.
But among my friends on that group chat, there was an uncharacteristic silence, until eventually the Paddo resident sent back a single line: “From what I gather they will be making it into a public space”.
The idea that this vague “public space” promise somehow justified the sale and destruction of an all too rare 1840s site made me uneasy at the time and it bothers me even more now. Because Victoria Barracks has revealed far more than I’m sure the federal government ever intended when they first showed their too-eager, altogether grasping hand.
And that is that part of this troubled, deeply troubling moment in modern Australia’s history includes a not-so-subtle attempt to erase or “cancel” Australia’s colonial and patriarchal history and culture, including its military past, as if it can and should be unmade rather than understood.
The public had rallied support to save the barracks. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Wilson
Many people are complicit in the silence around this movement. They know perfectly well that this cancellation attempt is underway, and they secretly approve of it, but they won’t stick their head out of the parapet because they don’t want to get shot.
Then there are very vocal others, who are way out of the trenches, fighting at the front, waging war against the ghosts of history (who are notoriously slippery suckers, so good luck with that).
Some of these people are public-facing and you can spot them because they’re the ones who are apoplectic with rage about too many things to name but undoubtedly the countless wrongs of the past is the object of one of their throbbing fingers of fury. Some of these people appear to want nothing but a deep, smoking crater left marking the spot where every element of colonial and patriarchal Australia ever stood – including our military and political history, and including the flag Australian servicemen and women have fought and died under.
I think most of these people are likely well-intentioned and thoughtful. Very few of them are frothing lunatics. But we have abandoned the art of debate in this country and it is rotting our hearts and minds. I don’t need the ghost of Jack Mundey – though we sure could use him – to urge me to grasp two opposing ideas and hold both of them in my head at the same time.
I will never recover from the defeat of the Republic Referendum. The vote to maintain a foreign head of state, with no Australian ever eligible to hold that post, made me flinch at the time and my views certainly haven’t mellowed since the change of management after the Queen died.
While the barracks won’t be used as an active defence site, the property has been saved. Picture: NewsWire / Simon Bullard.
The idea that these people genuinely believe they’re entitled by birth to rule over all Australians would have serious comic potential were it not so ghastly because it’s true.
And of course I utterly deplore the treatment of our First Nations peoples since the Brits sailed in. Our society’s collective failure to Close the Gap is breathtakingly awful and the defeat of the Voice referendum struck another lasting shock to my soul.
Who are we? I really don’t know anymore. But I do think we can and should openly acknowledge and discuss our colonial and patriarchal history rather than seeking to erase or rewrite it. Denying past mistakes does not prevent such mistakes from being repeated.
The men and women who continue to serve with honour, courage and distinction do so under an Australian flag that currently still has the Union Jack prominently displayed. Look at what they’ve defended! Look at what we’ve built in this country. Look at our beautiful, incredibly diverse, broadly accepting and overwhelmingly peaceful citizens. Look at all we have been able to grow and share in all our many generations of glorious freedom – freedoms we undoubtedly enjoy thanks in part to the sacrifices of those who fight to defend everything and everyone we hold dear.
That flag and these sites help tell a story – our story. It isn’t always a happy story, and there’s been plenty of ignominious moments tarnishing it along the way, but it’s still ours, and I for one think Australia is a story worth fighting for.
Lest we forget.