Comment | Dull, wasteful and overblown - is this the best Australia can do with the Australian War Memorial renovation? | emfarrelly
In city-making, everything has meaning. Even supposedly accidental cities like Sydney, with its dumb devotion to greed and expedience, comprise sedimentary layers of decision. Even Sydney reifies cultural value and belief. But in Canberra it’s more explicit. Here, the tension between the landscape romanticism of Canberra’s design and the hard-headed militarism of its execution is a constant presence.
, servicemen received preferential allocations of both jobs and land. By 1918, he writes, “it became established policy that rural leases would in practice be restricted to returned soldiers” and “access to the public service was to be restricted to those who had been on war service. The Commonwealth was to be a closed shop.”Such practices mobilised a gung-ho mindset that, although no doubt stupendous under fire, is less helpful in city planning.
Back in 1916, though, legendary war correspondent Charles Bean had dreamed of an Australian War Memorial. Bean, who became the energetic curator of the Anzac legend, wrote that such a memorial should “not be colossal in scale but rather a gem of its kind”. Fast-forward to now.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Australia signs film deal with Malaysia amid charm offensiveAustralia has signed a film production agreement with Malaysia as the country becomes the focus of Australia's new public diplomacy initiative.
Read more »
Who's Australia's best semi-aquatic mammal? We thought it was a rakali, until a fight to the deathFootage has emerged of a platypus killing a rakali or native water rat, throwing into down the once-undisputed standing of the rakali as Australia's greatest semi-aquatic mammal.
Read more »
Australia is 'almost obliged to give protection' to self-proclaimed spy Wang Liqiang | Sky News AustraliaFormer Labor Advisor Darrin Barnett says the government is “almost obliged to give protection” to self-proclaimed spy Wang Liqiang, despite the Daily Telegraph revealing he may have only been engaged in low level work, which would be of little use to Australia’s security agencies.\n\nAccording to senior members of the Australian Intelligence community it is “highly dubious” that Wang Liqiang, who claimed he was a high-level Chinese spy during a 60 Minutes interview, was “major player in the espionage space,” according to Sky News host and Daily Telegraph journalist Sharri Markson.\n\nMr Barnett said despite Wang's claims being seemingly debunked, Australia does have a responsibility to not send him back to China. \n\n“It is concerning if someone is using what is essentially a vexatious claim to become an Australian citizen, but we do have a sense of obligation to look after people and their humanitarian concerns,' he said. \n\nImage: Getty
Read more »
Talking through the generations: Why Australia is known as a 'graveyard of languages'Migrant languages tend to disappear by the third generation. It's an alarming trend — and one these people are fighting.
Read more »
Is this Australia's most sustainable building?A university research centre on the NSW south coast ace the world's toughest green test to join an exclusive list of some of the world's most sustainable buildings.
Read more »
How the welfare system let these two toddlers downThe death of two little girls in a hot car last weekend led many to question why authorities hadn’t intervened sooner.
Read more »