NIMBYs spoiling it for the rest of us

Peafowls are magnificent and there can scarcely be a corner of the lacklustre world whose people wouldn't feel their lives enriched by their company. The news is bound to cause special offence in India (let us hope it doesn't lead to war) where the peacock is, because of its splendour and because it is sacred, the national bird.

But there is bewilderment closer to home, too. Before the ACT government, with its sad history of appeasing the city's NIMBYs (when in fact it should punish them by doubling their rates until they see reason and give up misery as a hobby) takes the birds away it should think of transferring them away from ungrateful to Narrabundah to grateful Canberra suburbs where they will be welcomed with joy.

For example I'm sure I speak for everyone in my alas drab and uneventful suburb of Garran when I say that the birds would be welcome for the colour and movement they would bring into our dingy lives. We'd welcome, too, the slight amount of noise they're said to make (anathema to the silence-worshipping Narrabundah cluster) given that our suburb, like most in Canberra, is as quiet as the sepulchre, as outer space.

Garran is not very far from (upper) Narrabundah where the peafowls are living now, and one can imagine them all being quite easily coaxed (with food, kind words, promises and their choice of music) over the top of Red Hill and down into the Promised Land of Garran. Dozens of splendour-hungry, ornithologically-appreciative Canberra suburbs would fight with Garran for the right to host this ostentation or pulchritude (the collective noun) of peacocks.

Meanwhile, though, in the longer term what is to be done about Canberra's FWWs (First World Whingers) and NIMBYs? Their miserabilism and their selfishness spoils the lives of all of us, and is a source of embarrassment to their neighbours who don't share their views. Why, only today I spoke to a distinguished, emeritus resident of Narrabundah who was calling himself ''Outraged of Narrabundah'' because he was so outraged by the news of the extraordinary rendition to be inflicted on his magnificent feathered neighbours. His feelings about the NIMBYs of the anti-peacock push are unprintable in a family column.

Perhaps it is time in Canberra to create a NIMBY-free group of suburbs, perhaps a whole new town of them. People aspiring to live there would need to demonstrate a range of qualities, including warm-heartedness and big-heartedness and an indifference to whether or not such and such a small neighbourhood change will make 10 cents worth of change to their property values.

For me they would also need to demonstrate that they have never, not once, written an angry letter to The Canberra Times complaining about something that 99.9 per cent of mankind would never dream of complaining about. Most of all they would need to show that they have a sense of what matters and doesn't matter in this life. They would be folk who know that being a Canberran already makes them the luckiest, most cushioned, most comfortable people on earth, so that some teeny weeny things (like a little of a peacock's regal poo on a local pavement, like the alteration of a familiar treeline by the appearance of a pretty floodlight pylon above the trees) cannot possibly be catastrophes.

Let us start work, now, on building this ACT utopia, this peafowl-welcoming paradise in Canberra for people who by temperament count their blessings, not their imaginary inconveniences