Canberra weird or what – but always willing to innovate

The “weirdness” of Canberra is again in the local newspapers (Canberra Times (May 22, 2012). In an address at the Australian National University, Professor Stephen Dovers, head of the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU, said “Canberra is not as weird as it used to be.” He was referring to the criticism Canberra receives as a boring “bush capital” and largely home to parliamentarians, civil servants, and university students.

Dovers stated that Canberra’s status of a rich, smart and intellectually vibrant city state (it is actually a territory and not a state of Australia) makes it an ideal social laboratory for the rest of the nation and the world. He believes it could be a test bed for innovation in sustainable urban development. Canberra, he said, had the capacity to integrate research across a range of fields to drive evidence-based policy development on a diversity of issues. This, he believes, is predominantly due to Canberra being medium-sized (about 350,000 people), with state and local functions in one jurisdiction, diversity of land uses, a rich capacity for research with CSIRO (the government science research centre), four universities, federal agencies, and a community that engages with issues on future planning.

Issues that could be investigated and researched in a more integrated manner, he said, included social policy, energy and water efficiency, climate adaptation, planning, public transport, and biodiversity. Canberra residents have had a long tradition of being willing to accept innovation in the social sphere – such as moves to abolish plastic bags, sanction same-sex civil unions, conduct drug-injecting trial centres, and trial technologies to control gambling. It was also the only state or territory, during the 1999 referendum on whether Australia should become a republic or to remain within the Commonwealth, that elected for republic status.

While Canberra is already known for its research, Dovers maintains that to correct the media and political denigration of the city there should be greater emphasis placed upon achievement rather than argument.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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