a. McG, “Banish these backyard blackguards,” Aus, 14/1/93
b. McG, “The meddlers in our backyard,” Aus, 1/10/93

a.
Padraic P. McGuinness, “Banish these backyard blackguards,”
The Australian, January 14, 1993, p. 11.

The NIMBY syndrome is by now well known. It means that whenever an activity unpopular, or feared, or noisy, or dirty, or attractive to large numbers of people, is proposed in a suburb where people live, they always exclaim in horror: “Not in my backyard!”

So people try to block the building of temples, or other religious edifices to which they expect large numbers of people will want to flock on Sundays — or worse, Saturdays.

Orphanages, homes for delinquent adolescents, sheltered workshops or refuges for battered wives, recovering alcoholics, or the mentally unstable are feared, too. After all, you might get people who are uncomfortably different, or threatening, or guilt-inducing, or prone to upsetting behaviour in public, hanging around salubrious environs.

This is, of course, a pretty contemptible and intolerant way of treating the problems of others, or even actual diversity as it exists in our community.

But there is a related syndrome which is even more contemptible, which I will call the NIMBY II syndrome. This is expressed by the phrase “Now it’s my backyard!” This is far worse, since it is a problem which is incurred after deliberate and knowing decision and with the deadly sin of greed firmly planted in the heart of the sufferer.

It is typified by those people who move into old suburbs where there are thriving pubs, and buy the house next door to the pub. This is at a lower than normal price because of the noise of the pub and possibly the brawls, slamming of car doors, and even bands which play until closing time. Having done this, the next move is to start complaining to the police about the noise, misbehaviour, drinking on footpaths, and so on; the result is often sufficient to destroy the trade of the pub and this increase the “amenity” of the neighbourhood, successfully gentrifying it and thus leading to an appreciation of the capital value of the originally cheaper house.

I have a couple of mates who bought a pub in Sydney’s Paddington some years ago who were sent bankrupt by just such tactics. After all, Paddington is far too respectable a suburb to permit such behaviour. The fact that the pubs had been there for 100 years is not considered a relevant environmental consideration, nor is it seen as relevant that the new buyers knew perfectly well that they were moving into what was once a working-class district. The same story is found all over the inner suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.

A similar and perhaps even more obnoxious variant, since it is far more expensive and harmful to the welfare of the community as a whole, is apparent near airports, especially in Sydney. The interesting thing about Sydney is that it has an airport, Mascot, which is quite close to the city. It is surrounded by housing and always has been. When the residents are surveyed it is usually found that those who have lived there for years, often having been born there, are not particularly worried about aircraft noise.

But the really vociferous complainants are those who have bought into the area in relatively recent times, presumably because the average housing values are lower than in areas not under flight paths and also because the suburbs are either favoured by the yuppies, gentrifiers or public-sector employees or are, simply, close to the city and its facilities. (This is somewhat complicated, because there are studies which suggest that houses under the flight path were not, originally, lower in average value that others comparable not not affected.)

Effectively, however, these people are declaring that the flight path is now their business, “Now it’s my backyard!” (NIMBY II), and usually being relatively under-employed (school-teachers, academics, public servants, etc) with lots of spare time, they set about creating phoney and unrepresentative residents’ action groups to campaign to have the airport closed or moved so that, at huge public expense, their own house values will appreciate.

Such people are very good at nagging politicians, too; so they move into the Labor Party branches, which were once full of genuine workers, and capture them, so capturing the ears of the retired plumbers or Telecom linesmen who hold the inner-city seats. (To repeat an oft-quoted but still very apposite remark of Kim Beazley the elder: “When I joined the Labor Party its membership was the cream of the working class — now it is the scum of the middle class.”)

Or they stay outside the Labor Party and set themselves up as radicals, greenies, feminists, new-agers, or whatever and do their best to undermine any Labor Member of Parliament who is mildly aware of what the constituents actually think, or who has some kind of conscience about equitable social and economic policy.

The NIMBY II movement is strong among the environmentalists and owners of petrol-guzzling four-wheel drive vehicles who make occasional sorties into the bush. Now that they have decided the untouched wilderness (untouched, except by them), rainforests, wetlands, coasts or whatever are part of their backyard they are determined to prevent access to it in the form in which they have been converted to liking it regardless of the needs of the community. Every form of economic development or use of the land is an evil and destructive influence.

All this is, of course, only one aspect of the new, grasping baby-boomer wowserism. They want to live forever, they want to keep the built and natural environment as they would wish to have found it, they want to continue to enjoy their high material living standards while destroying the prospects of their children, and even more, other peoples’ children. No material progress of course means that their welfare, health and pension benefits will be paid for by a generation which, because of the virtual cessation of economic growth, will have no prospects of receiving similar benefits.

It takes other forms, too. The Aborigines are part of the NIMBY II concern — they are there to be preserved and pitied, their “sacred sites” a perfect subject for New Age religiose mental masturbation, the living subjects of a guilt trip which will help stop further change.

As long as the “Kooris” are well-behaved, against uranium mining, against new mineral exploration and development, tenderly paying respects to the Gouldian finch, the dugong, the long-footed potoroo, or any other suddenly discovered to be endangered species, they are all right.

But let them start to talk to the mining companies about new projects from which they might derive employment and royalties, then it immediately becomes apparent that they must be debauched drunkards, incapable of looking after themselves, not sufficiently respectful of the whites who know what is good for them; they don’t understand that what they see as their own lives are now part of somebody else’s backyard.

NIMBY II is worse than the old NIMBY syndrome, which in many cases was simply the product of conservatism and fear of the new or different. It represents what amounts to a fierce intolerance of the right of those who disagree with the politically correct to lead their own lives and a determination to allow the Australian economy and the generation which will follow the welfare generation, to suffer.

***
b.
Padraic P. McGuinness, “The meddlers in our backyard,”
The Australian, October 1, 1993, p. 19.

SBS television is now providing a superb morning news service; at 7am you can get an excellent half-hour bulletin from German television in English; at 7:30am there is a repeat of Paul Murphy’s Dateline, now the best current affairs program on television; at 8am there is a French language bulletin; at 9am Novosti in Russian, and so on through to a final half-hour at 11am which is the German language news. Why bother with the ABC?

Of course for anyone in real life to watch all this would mean they were extraordinarily well informed, something of a linguist, and unemployed (or shortly to become so as a result). But clearly it is great for people learning the languages. And I value highly the German bulletin at 7am, which is an excellent corrective to our London-based foreign reporting.

I was particularly interested yesterday morning to see on this a report of the activities of the German taxpayers’ association, which has published a black book of wasteful local government actual or proposed expenditures. This is an example which could usefully be emulated here, since local government is one of the most inefficient, wasteful and corrupt of all agencies of public spending.

Untold millions of public money are wasted by these bodies on such things as speed bumps, pedestrian precincts or whatever is the latest middle-class fad, as well as on planners and administrators whose main function is to interfere in the normal functioning of the community and to regulate, annoy and tax any useful business out of existence. For example, councils charge usurious rents to cafes and pubs which offer footpath tables, instead of encouraging them to add to the amenities of the area.

The metropolitan councils are usually the worst offenders, as well as outdoing all the others in squabbling, absurdity and general harm done to the environment and amenities of the cities.

So I was delighted to hear this week of the abolition of the Melbourne City Council. This is a reform which was long overdue, and its replacement by city commissioners, as well as the extension of its boundaries especially to include the south bank of the Yarra will enable Melbourne as a city to be run in a more logical fashion than hitherto.

Unfortunately, the Victorian Government has not really made any effort to rethink the whole issue of local government. It has allowed itself to be excessively influenced by studies such as that recently produced by the Institute of Public Affairs and its Project Victoria, which while very useful and pointing accurately to the wasteful nature of local government in Victoria especially, nevertheless encourages the notion that consolidation of local governments into larger units will cure its problems.

The biggest problem for city councils in cities like Melbourne and Sydney is that they have an entirely inappropriate population base. Once the CBDs were ringed by the semi-slum, low-income areas whose residents could be relied upon to vote solidly old-style Labor. Now that these areas have been largely gentrified by quasi-professionals, who can be relied upon to vote according to the fashions of the moment, the population base is even more inappropriate.

These are the people who are the leading exponents of the two NIMBY syndromes. NIMBY I is of course the classic Not In My Back Yard syndrome — you can’t build orphanages, refuges for the bewildered or anything new near me. NIMBY II is the even more vicious form of the syndrome — Now It’s My Back Yard. This means that now I’ve moved in, any pubs, cafes, industries, orphanages, airports or any other activities which might prevent my capital value from rising have to go.

Both forms of the NIMBY syndrome are clearly incompatible with the proper workings of a large, metropolitan city. Their exponents are usually those who have little to occupy themselves with other than “participatory democracy”, which means interfering with other people’s lives, and so are positively harmful to any rational urban policy.

But the Victorian Government is making the mistake of thinking that it is appropriate to maintain local government on the inner-urban fringes of the city — the city of course being a much larger and more important entity than the Central Business District. As with Brisbane, the appropriate local government area for a metropolis should include the CBD, the essential economic, cultural and artistic facilities of the city, and its main approaches and surrounding suburbs. To these should be added the port, railhead, airport and similar facilities.

Once this is made clear it becomes obvious that the only authority appropriate to govern a metropolis like Melbourne or Sydney is one responsible directly to the State government and parliament. While it will be an improvement for Melbourne to have city commissioners instead of the ridiculous warring cliques which have dominated its politics from time to time, it would be an even greater improvement if the commissioners were to be directly answerable to an appropriate minister of the government, who in turn was answerable to parliament. The governance of Melbourne is of as much importance to the residents of Geelong or Swan Hill as to the residents of South Yarra or Carlton.

Much the same applies to Sydney. Just what the Lord Mayor (a silly antiquated title) thought he was doing in Monte Carlo supporting a bid for the Olympic Games which will be largely held in, and require construction in, areas outside his bailiwick it is difficult to imagine. As with Melbourne, a large and important part of central Sydney is administered by a separate council, the South Sydney Council, which is, if that is imaginable, even worse than that of Sydney.

The Olympics will be financed by the Commonwealth Government, the State Government and the business community as well as by those who come to Sydney for the games and for tourism. The only likely contribution from the Sydney City Council will be a negative and obstructive one. It, and its neighbouring local government authorities, can be guaranteed to try to extract every ounce of petty power, every penny of extra revenue, from the city by way of obstructing the preparations for the games and by taxing accommodation, other tourist facilities, and every business hoping to benefit from the games and increase employment.

The sooner the Sydney City Council is also dismissed and Sydney’s government put on a workable basis the better.