As you fasten your seat belts I point out that this week’s column concerns itself with the furore over Canberra’s place names. Bec Cody MLA is piping up on behalf of distressed Canberrans who feel they are living in Canberra places named in honour of people who are now known to have at best feet of clay and at worst to have been brutes or fiends.

Now off we whoosh to 2068, to Canberra (population 1.5 million), and to outer suburbia. There we meet a young couple, Adam and Eve (and their faithful dog, Apple). After looking at homes in the newish suburbs of Thurston, Winx, Assange and Minogue, they have become pioneers in the brand-new suburb of Abbott.

Excited to understand their neighbourhood’s place-name nomenclature they are sat together at their computer, doing some research into a man they have never previously heard of.

“This Abbott,” an ashen-faced Eve gasps, “was a swine!”

“Wasn’t he!” an aghast Adam agrees.

“He opposed same-sex marriage! And he was a monarchist,” marvels Adam, for whom (born in 2043, 10 years after an overjoyed Australia had at last become a republic) monarchists seemed as prehistoric as the Neanderthals.

“And he was a vengeful wrecker who destroyed the career of the prime minister who succeeded him,” shrills Eve, reading further.

Adam and Eve lapse into silence (save for the occasional gasp of amazed pain) as they continue together to read about a man who was their nation’s 28th prime minister, long, long before our youngsters were born. And of this distant figure’s historian-reported idiocies and atrocities there is one in particular that has upset the gentle, humane Eve.

“In October 2018,” she moans in horror, “he was not only opposing bringing desperately ill refugee children from the hell of Nauru to Australia but even said that the refugees should be blissfully happy on Nauru because it was a tropical paradise, and ‘a very, very pleasant island’! Decent Australians couldn’t believe their ears. This is awful, Adam. We can’t go on living somewhere named after a man like that.”

The sensitive, idealistic youngsters vow to find an MLA who will do something to right this wrong, sure that among the 250 MLAs (for ACT self-government has expanded exponentially over time) they’ll find a kindred spirit.

Rocketing back to 2018 I note that like so many people in my sought-after Woden suburb of Garran I live on a street named after a literary figure. My otherwise unpoetic street is named after a mystic poet.

I love fine poetry and so am comfortable living on a street named after a moderately good and (for it is a stipulation of Canberra place naming that only the deceased can have places named after them) thoroughly dead poet.

But some Canberrans are not so lucky.

How upsetting, for example, to live in Ainslie on Foveaux Street, named after Joseph Foveaux (1767-1846), the convict settlement administrator whose sadism and barbarism are so sickeningly reported in the history books. How must it feel to live somewhere named in honour of a monster?

Meanwhile there are so many ways in which our city’s place names policies might be improved.

For example only allowing the names of the dead to be allowed for place names gives our city a strangely deadening, cemetery-like ambience.

How much more warm and exciting it would be to live in a street named after some living celebrity, in Meninga or Gregan, in Kidman, Triggs (after the noble Gillian), Milton (after the maestro of the CSO) or in Everage (after the living Edna).

And what a buzz it would give to suburban life to live in suburbs and streets named after newsworthy and controversial Australians. Neighbours in Kyrgios, say, in Assange, in Greer, in Warne and Rinehart would experience roller coaster rides of elation and shame as the mercurial folk their places are named after lead their colourful and outrageous lives.

I see that the letters pages of this paper have already begun to bristle with accusations that the place names agitation is just more trivial political correctness. But this is insensitive, unpoetic nonsense. To not notice and not to care at all about the names of the places we live in indicates a sad lack of curiosity, of passion for life.

Living in a suburb named after a worthy but dull constitutional lawyer, how I envy the people of Conder living with the name of Charles Edward Conder (1868-1909) the dazzlingly great Impressionist painter.

And how we should all envy the folk of Moncrieff their habitat named after ‘Australia’s Queen of Song’ Gladys Moncrieff (1892-1976). What a gladsome thing it must be to live somewhere named after ‘Our Glad’ and to use her greatest hits (they are all available on YouTube) for suburb-bonding karaoke street parties. Nothing like that is possible in my lacklustre Garran.

We end with another quick whoosh to 2068, to Adam and Eve, uncomfortable now, having just learned the character of the man their suburb is named after.

“I need to go for a walk to calm down,” an agitated Eve announces.

“I’ll take Apple for a walk in Barnaby Joyce Park. I wonder who or what a Barnaby Joyce was. We must look it up one day.”