Opposition to the Muslim church in Gungahlin is being led by Christian evangelists with links to the US.

The letter circulated in Gungahlin, via www.the-riotact.com 

I can’t believe we are here again, with yet another protest action against the proposal by the Canberra Muslim Community to build a church in the Gungahlin district.

Except of course I can believe it. Nay - I fully expected it once the development application went in. But that doesn’t make it any less disappointing.

What is even more disappointing though is to find that it seems to be led by a so-called "Christian" pastor who is practising here in Canberra.


Canberra Times journalist Lisa Cox (to her great credit) has been working all week to try to get to the bottom of who the organisers are. She has identified this pastor as Irwin Ross - who doesn't even live in Gungahlin. He's from the Belconnen area. And he identifies himself as belonging to Olive Tree Ministries - a Jewish-Christian evangelist group based in the USA.


Cox has also reported that in the same week these objections were circulated in Gungahlin, other anti-Islamic leaflets were also circulated in Canberra. These ones were produced by "Chick Publications" - another USA evangelist organisation that is blatantly pushing anti-Islamic propaganda.


Despite these extremely concerning revelations, let's consider whether the opponents have any valid points in their claims against the Gungahlin mosque - a church by another name, and in a street where two other churches have already even approved (one built so far):

Picks from my readings and posts over the last week - the Weekly Beach House Wrap.

Here's the weekly paper.li sieve of my week's posts.

Canberra is the nation's capital - a showcase city. But flagging maintenance is taking a toll and needs a fundamental rethink.

As previously described, the ACT Government is running a Facebook page to gauge public thoughts on their upcoming budget. On it, Treasurer Andrew Barr has asked: "Should the Government maintain its current suite of services?"

The problem with this question is that it implies a reduction in services, much as was put by Gary Byers (TaMS boss) to a community forum some months back - "should we reduce public toilet cleaning by 25%?" etc.

The question should be framed more around what can be done to reduce the actual need for the service frequency in the first place.

Can facilities be upgraded to make them easier to maintain? If you treat the budget as an accrual accounting function rather than cash accounting, you can easily come to the conclusion that it is often better to spend some money up front on capital works - even if you have to borrow to do it - in order to reduce ongoing expenditure.

The problem comes when bureaucrats focus on capex but ignore expenditure. Compounded by elected reps who are scared of borrowing.

Great news for Gungahlin - the first major offices are getting closer.

Great news for residents in our neck of the woods - Gungahlin. The ACT Government has received nine expressions of interest to build the new ACT Government office block in Gungahlin town centre.

And the Government has also advised that the 500 staff to be relocated to Gungahlin will be the Shared Services department, currently housed in Woden. Apparently the existing staff are about 50/50 north and south residents, so no prizes for guessing how many of them will be pleased/not pleased about the announcement. But there are at least two years to allow for a gradual transition.

Gungahlin Community Council meetings have featured presentations by two of these proponents (both already owning land behind the Emergency Services and with plans ready to go), so to know there are another seven out there is quite intriguing.

But it does underline exactly what we have been saying to the ACT Government for more than five years - instead of guessing what the commercial market is like, put the land out there and see. From our discussions with various developers, we've always known that the limiting factor has not been interest, but land released to the market.

It's harder now, with the squeeze of commercial credit, and had land been released four years ago, we'd probably already have office blocks by now.
And this is where having the ACT Government put their 'money where their mouth is' has been the necessary catalyst.

We believe that once this goes in, the whole local jobs situation will start to snowball.
Most welcome to see after so many years of GCC lobbying.

And if you'd like to work locally, you now know what vacancies to start targeting!

ACT Budget summary

Media release I wrote for GCC on local impacts of the ACT Budget:

The 2010–11 ACT Budget has been largely welcomed by GCC as a solid further step towards correcting years of lagging infrastructure, as the population surges past 41,000, on its way towards 100,000 people.

Transport

“This budget includes some very important projects for improving public transport services for Gungahlin commuters, over and above the most welcome continuation of the Gungahlin REDEX bus service” said GCC President Ashley Kerlin.

“For more than three years we have been asking for a major Park’n’Ride to be built at EPIC, for a ‘tidal’ bus lane down the centre of Northbourne Avenue, and a fix to the major congestion woes at the Phillip Avenue/Majura Avenue intersection.

Google Places - great for community groups

Community groups wishing to improve their profile in Google should get right onto creating their own Google Places entry.

TaMS budget cuts misguided

The ACT Territory and Municipal Services is asking community groups how to cut its budget. But they’re focussing on little things like frequency of mowing in parks and cleaning of loos.
They have held a couple of meetings with representatives from a wide variety of ACT community groups. Apart from further eroding already degraded services to the community—these sorts of cut-backs will actually cause greater expenses in the future when the government tries to restore things to acceptable condition.
The key reason the ACT is in this situation is that the ACT Government has an unjustified aversion to borrowing for capital projects. Almost all major projects are funded out of annual revenue rather than specific borrowings. This sort of ‘cash accounting’ mentality might be acceptable for a trade subcontractor buying some tools, but even the tradie would buy their work vehicle through a loan or a lease.
Avoiding borrowing makes bad sense for business, but it makes even worse sense for a government. Loans allow governments to amortise a major project over a period and population that will use the project. If the Gungahlin Drive Extension had been paid for via loan, the whole thing could have been built in one go. Instead we have twice the traffic snarls and an estimate $20 million in additional costs to do it in two bites.
What will really turn around the TaMS budget is for them to borrow funds to invest in projects that reduce ongoing expenditure. Things like more lakes for sportfield irrigation, planting in parks to reduce mowing, building a light rail network to reduce road construction.
TaMS needs to think big to save big.

Gungahlin offices on the radar

I managed to trigger Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner to talk about department offices in Gungahlin. Took an attack on how Bob McMullan has failed to deliver on his promise to stop departments relocating out to the airport.

The media release I put out was:

ALP welches on Gungahlin office relocation commitment

The Gungahlin Community Council has accused the Labor Party's Member for Fraser Bob McMullan of welching on his pre-election commitment to halt Federal Government office relocations to the Canberra airport precinct.

The Department of Defence has agreed to lease two new sites in the Airport's business park - tenants GCC says should have come to Gungahlin.

"If Bob McMullan had kept his promise to stop Federal Government departments from relocating to the airport, Gungahlin could well have seen its first major office tenancies through this Defence relocation," said GCC President Ashley Kerlin. "Instead he's allowed another key tenant to be crossed off the list for Gungahlin.

Density debate redux

The debate arount density flared up again at the launch of Sustainable House Day at the CSIRO Discovery Centre on 8 September 2009, with the Australian Institute of Architects' ACT President David Flannery continuing his attack on suburbs in general and Gungahlin in particular. There was also a presentation by the ACT Planning and Land Authority's Director of Planning Services Kelvin Walsh on upcoming new suburbs.

I've previously spoken out on these issues, including on ABC's Stateline, and was invited to the launch to respond to these speakers. Following is the transcript of my responses.

Response to Australian Institute of Architects’ David Flannery:

There is much of the arguments put by the Australian Institute of Architects that is valid. There does need to be increased density in some areas closer to city centres—all of the city centres, not just Civic.

And there are certainly some areas of Gungahlin—altogether too many areas—that are truly cringe-worthy. There are places where I have to focus very intently on the road ahead of my while driving through them so as to avoid looking up in despair. But these areas are not our fault. They were created by politicians and planners and architects and builders both past and present. People bought them often because they were the only places available in a land-stock starved market.

But the AIA have mixed valid arguments up with an unfounded attack on the suburbs in which many of us choose to live.

As people who care about environmental issues, we get used to people from time to time calling us ‘greenies’. We don’t mind, our friends don’t mind, but the name callers are trying to invoke it as a derogative term, to somehow degrade the value or importance of those issues we care about.

So it is with the term ‘urban sprawl’. It’s used as a derogative to try to argue that suburbia is somehow evil.

But is it? Is the AIA’s call for more density based on solid evidence?

A 2005 study by Energy Australia found in fact that high-rise and medium density residential developments are far worse for overall greenhouse impacts than normal suburban housing.

Bunyip to come to Gungahlin - campaign pays off

‘Alexander Bunyip’ from the famous children’s book The Monster that ate Canberra will be immortalised in bronze outside the new Gungahlin Library.

The Gungahlin Community Council’s campaign for a public art piece recognising the popular children’s book by Michael Salmon has been successful, with ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope approving the idea for a sculpture.

This is the book that introduced many Canberra children to reading, by allowing us to relate the book back to local monuments we knew so well.

GCC suggested such a statue would be ideally located outside the new Gungahlin Library currently under construction on the corner of Hibberson and Gozzard Streets in the Gungahlin town centre.

From this location, pedestrians can look down Gozzard Street straight to the Telstra Tower on Black Mountain, which Alexander Bunyip thought was a “double yum ice cream sundae with nuts on top” and so proceeded to eat it.

“I am taken with the Gungahlin Community Council’s proposal and believe an artfully executed sculpture of the bunyip placed outside the new Gungahlin Library would be a very popular addition to the town centre’s landscape,” said Jon Stanhope in his reply.

“The bunyip is certainly an icon for those of us who lived in Canberra during the 1970s and 80s, and still features prominently on the shelves of our public libraries,” he said.

The idea for the statue came during a debate on RiotACT.

Estelle Sydney-Smith (aka Granny) said “I reckon we should get a statue of that iconic Canberra legend Alexander Bunyip, The Monster That Ate Canberra.”

I said “I’m picturing a statue of the bunyip biting a chunk out of the Telstra Tower, placed outside the new Gungahlin library! A tribute if you like to the book’s role in teaching kids to read.”

Density debate - defending the backyard

The Australian Institute of Architects has hit out at the growth of suburbs around Canberra, calling for a halt to all greenfield development. They are targetting Gungahlin in particular, raising hackles here with claims of not enough density. Their arguments could be well enough made without slagging off at the most dense suburbs in Canberra (e.g. Palmerston 3000 people/hectare vs Canberra average 1000/hectare).

ABC's Stateline interviewed me on the AIA's attack:



There is further clarification of the agrument on the Gungahlin Community Council website.

Poor resealing means noise for residents

Unfortunately the poor quality road resealing that has been getting rolled out across other parts of Canberra has now come to Gungahlin. A section of formerly smooth Horse Park Drive east of Forde has received the rough and cheap chipseal treatment—how much more will get it we don’t yet know.

GCC has been campaigning against this sub-standard road surface, which has been used this past year on everything from suburban culs de sac to major arterials such as Woden’s Hindmarsh Drive. It is harsh, noisy, and in suburban streets highly inappropriate, making for a hazardous ‘cheese grater’ surface for any of our children unlucky enough to come off their bicycle.

And it doesn’t last. At a recent GCC meeting Roads ACT head Tony Gill conceded that the surface would only last 15 years. Yet he also revealed that the Canberra road resealing program is based on a 20-year cycle. So we are on an unsustainable downward cycle?

Many of us have suspected the ACT Government is allowing Canberra's urban assets to gradually run down, and here was confirmation our suspicions are correct.

The ACT's ALP government needs to put an immediate halt to use of this unacceptable road surface on anything other than rural roads. Or the Liberals and Greens need to call them to account on it. This is a city - not a rural backwater.