Keating did little to improve Australian architecture

My guess is that opposition to shifting the Australian capital to Sydney or Melbourne would be even more fierce today than it was 110 years ago; this time, however, probably joined by the citizens of NSW and Victoria as well as all the other states. Each of these cities is a beautiful thing, Sydney more organic, for what that is worth, than Melbourne but neither is so well planned or designed that it could easily cope with the transport and other problems of plonking a parliament in a prominent place, let alone the infrastructure, buildings and insignia of a national capital. Keating's autodidacticism extends to imagining himself the Albert Speer of Sydney, but the kindest thing one could say is that in all his years of power he did very little to change any physical landscapes.

Not in Sydney. Or even in Canberra. Neither the Hawke nor the Keating years have a significant building in Canberra that anyone will associate with their term in government.

Parliament House was completed in the Hawke years, but is rightly associated with Fraser (even if Fraser is a now ambivalent father). Hawke kept a certain distance, both because of the risk of its cost becoming a political issue and because, whatever he was, he was no parliamentary performer and had no particular affection for either of the two houses in which he served.

Australians with an interest in good architecture perhaps Keating aside should probably be grateful for the lack of interest by 1980s and 1990s prime ministers, and the only casual interest by the post-Menzies ministers, in fine buildings, whether in Canberra or anywhere else. A few desultory courthouses none of any distinction were built around the nation. And any number of awful office blocks were built or rented, but not a single one anyone would want on a postcard. That reflects on modern architecture as much as on prime ministers. Imagine what the War Memorial might look like if it were being commissioned today. Fraser also owns, or shares with Gough Whitlam, the High Court and the National Gallery, neither of them buildings of which anyone could be particularly proud or anyone could love, but each familiar to most Australians and attracting thousands of visitors each year.

John Howard's only permanent physical monument how this must make him writhe is what he would probably call the Museum of Political Correctness. I remember his being roundly booed and deeply uncomfortable at its opening; his revenge was to put his biographer, David Barnett, on the board. Howard's other monumental edifice will perhaps be what is presently called the Headquarters Joint Operations Command, on the road to Bungendore, which will probably first see service as some sort of overflow concentration camp for boat people. It is of little military use, now or in the foreseeable future, and could not even serve effectively for the purpose for which it was intended securing the re-election of Gary Nairn to the federal seat of Eden Monaro.

The amazing thing is that a government virtually secure in a re-election has not decided to stop work on it now, as a down payment on finding $10billion in savings over the next 10 years. The savings at this base alone would be many times those achievable at some perfectly harmless bases and military facilities salted in odd marginal electorates, the "rational" closure of which can cause actual damage to incumbents. Defence, after all, has long proven itself incapable of achieving any sorts of economies of scale in anything, and many of its internal cost blow-outs have arisen from the attempts say, with the "one big IT solution", payroll systems or project management. Nor has it ever been able to save money by collocating facilities indeed it has usually increased the average cost, as it has added bureaucrats and bureaucrats-in-uniform to co-ordinate the confusion. There is only rarely any economic case for facilities or services being anywhere in particular, given the ease with which they can be transferred, in time of strife, to the place, probably overseas, where they will actually be needed. Where savings can be made is in abolishing unnecessary bases and facilities, and Bungendore ought to be top of the list (as it would be, if the promotion possibilities for the brass did not depend on the unnecessary middle-to-senior ranks it will sustain).

But those who do not worry greatly about the musings of prime ministerial superannuants might do well to consider whether the Canberra we have is yet the perfect place, as a national capital and centre of politics, administration and the law, as opposed to just a place to live. When Keating was prime minister he would muse aloud, sometimes, about having the executive government thrown out of Parliament House. It would, he thought, be good for Parliament, as a legislature, and for improving the quality of administrative government.

I think he was right on that one does not hear him on the subject now but it would be even better if the press gallery was thrown out of Parliament at the same time. Not prevented from reporting Parliament and the politics in and around the building, but forced to headquarter itself elsewhere, in the process being forced to inhale some of the air of Canberra as opposed to the air-conditioning of its mini-city. Relocating ministers to offices in their departments could serve as a partial antidote to their increasing tendency to see comparatively little of their departmental advisers but to live cheek by jowl with political advisers. Minders themselves spend more time liaising with minders in other political offices than in dealing with departments.

Building, for our Prime Minister, a proper lodge with adequate living quarters and public spaces for entertaining and conducting cabinet, etc, and a reasonable "west wing"-style prime ministerial office, would give the position the dignity it holds in our constitutional system (whether in its present monarchical or later republican form). Just as importantly, we might get a better parliamentary service from a building no longer so dominated by the "need" to give so much accommodation to ministers or for prime ministers and other ministers to colonise parliamentary spaces for their press conferences and functions, and by the way that ministers feel able to alter parliamentary timetables and routines simply for their personal convenience.

This is not to say that governments would not have the numbers in the Parliament, or be in a position to arrange matters according to the incumbents' view of the world. But a controlled distance between executive and Parliament might increase mutual respect, and, possibly, help restore a few balances.

A part of Keating's lament is that while one is slaving away at Parliament House, a run down to Manuka for some Chinese food does not always seem attractive. No doubt it is different these days in Double Bay, where he presides over coffee and croissants most mornings.But his comment conceals a truth which reflects on journalists and minders as much as on politicians. Parliament House is a city in itself, down to its own cafes. A good many people who work there leave it only to fall into bed. Or, leaving late, only to go to bars patronised by journalists, minders and politicians, before falling into someone else's bed.The politicians who fly in and out according to the sitting schedule experience very little of Canberra. Those parts of Canberra, chiefly Manuka and Kingston, which were created for this sort of bizarre lifestyle, bear very little relationship to the way most Canberrans live, or the way most Australians live. It may suit politicians to pretend that they hate Canberra and can never wait to leave it, and that leaving Canberra is re-entering the real world.

The unreal world, however, is not "Canberra", but the life of the suitcase, the non-stop meetings, pretending one is living in a university college or boarding school, and the Holy Grail and other such hangouts. Young (mostly) unmarried journalists like to affect the same sort of ennui, anomie and world-weariness, and tend to blame Canberra rather than themselves. Merchant bankers and young lawyers, I am told, have many of the same problems in Sydney, if at about thrice the expense.