The National Australia Day Council's decision to unilaterally cancel the ACT's hugely popular annual Australia Day Live concert appears to be nothing less than another example of Canberra bashing.
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The irony is while other states and territories have been eyeing off the event nobody comes out of this a winner.
The long-running concert isn't going to be moved to a new permanent home or even rotated from state to state.
It will simply die a sudden death, killing off a very popular annual outing that celebrates the national day in the national capital.
This is part of a sad pattern of indifference and neglect that owes much to the fact Australia's national parliament has a love-hate relationship with its own capital city.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who only learnt of the decision from a letter popped in the mail this week, is right to review whether or not the ACT should continue to chip in the $100,000 it has made available in recent times to help fund the Australian of the Year Awards.
That event, once a highlight of the big night out, is now to be moved indoors to Glebe Hall in Parliament House.
An immediate consequence of that decision is to take what had hitherto been an egalitarian and happy presentation of national heroes away from the multitudes and lock it up in a relatively small space that will be largely populated by the less than enthusiastic ranks of the great and the good.
Hardly a change for the better!
Another irony to have emerged from this farce is the role the Northern Territory, through the now beleaguered Chief Minister Adam Giles, has apparently played as part of the politics of envy.
Mr Giles had previously made representations to the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, seeking to have the awards – and presumably the concert – relocated to the Top End.
All of the venues he suggested – Uluru, the Katherine Gorge and Darwin Harbour – are outdoors.
Given the quibbles about a one-off storm in Canberra that, according to Mr Kirby "potentially put the public at risk" it is worth considering January temperatures at Uluru can be upwards of 44 degrees.
Darwin, arguably still best known for being demolished by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day in 1974, doesn't boast the perfect climate for outdoor summer events either.
The Australian of the Year awards, and the concert that has come to accompany them, is a national celebration of national achievement.
Just as Canberra is the only possible home for such institutions as the National Gallery, the National Museum, the Australian War Memorial and the like, it is also the appropriate home for the awards.
To axe the concert will reduce the presentations to yet another highly politicised function hidden behind the armour plated doors of Parliament House.
