A GOVERNMENT FACADE

Name the most famous buildings in Melbourne? The parts of our history worth preserving in one manner or another. There’d have to be the Exhibition Building, scene of our first Federal Parliament opening in 1901 when we actually became a commonwealth of states on our way to being an independent nation. Not there yet but we will be. Despite Prince William and the recent fawning over him.

Government House, which will one day be the Melbourne residence of an Australian President. Or a museum.
 
And Flinders Street Station. Probably Melbourne’s most iconic building to give that word its due for a change.
 
‘Meet you under the clocks at Flinders Street station’. A date kept by generations. And how many people danced in the ballroom there?
 
That station is back in the news yet again because it is its 100th birthday. And what a shabby birthday it is.  Flinders Street itself, and the station and the crumbling ballroom, are a disgrace.
 
Victoria’s new Public Transport Minister, Martin Pakula, says the Government is considering a proposal from the CAE – the Centre for Adult Education – for an ‘arts and cultural hub with exhibition, classroom and studio space’.
 
He says it’s ‘an early proposal but a good one’.  How early?
 
About five years ago this government paid yet another consultancy firm  $150,000 to come up with ideas on what should be done to salvage the decrepit formerly famous ballroom. The money went to Arup and SGS Consulting – through the Committee for Melbourne.
 
A year after they got the report the Government had still done nothing despite the minister concerned, Lynne Kosky (yep her, again) wearing two hats as Minister for Transport and Minister for the Arts.
 
Back in 2007 I said: What has happened? Nothing. Not quite true. More paint has peeled, more dead birds have rotted, more plasterwork has crumbled.  And yet this is one of only six Victorian ‘icons’ listed by the  National Trust. Surely the $150,000 would have been better spent literally stopping the rot.
 
The idea of the place being used by ‘community groups’ was floated then. It still sounds like a recipe for disaster. The ballroom needs to be restored not turned into a haven for basket weavers, bead necklace shops, and touchy-feely groups.
 
Why can’t it be restored to its true grandeur? The government can find $360 million to put a roof over yet another tennis court and yet they can’t find the money to preserve a genuine piece of our past and present and future. It’s a disgrace.
 
Friday, January 22, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010