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GX is a new way of experiencing a new way of living. More than a display village, here you’ll find 16 cutting-edge display homes, explore sustainability and local art trails, learn from a range of fascinating speakers and demonstrations, and be amazed by Mini-G – our very own ‘tiny house’.

Join the opening celebrations this weekend. The streets of GX will come alive with a packed weekend of entertainment, food and family fun. Meet Scott Cam (Sunday only) from The Block and Paul West from River Cottage Australia.

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THE GADFLY

Failure fans the fires of prejudice RACISM is as old as humanity. It arose even before Homo sapiens became a recognisable branch of the evolutionary tree, a time when there really were distinct races. Today, however, there’s only one.

Sure, there are some cultural and trivial ethnic differences as any geneticist will attest. In fact, it’s the remarkable advance in genetic science allied to similar progress in paleo-anthropology that has exposed the various “races” that perished via natural selection until there was just one survivor. Us. Unhappily, it’s the knowledge carried deep in our lizard brain of the struggle between those races that has persisted until today. But even it would have probably died away had it not been for one particular group who we can thank for the tragedy that besets America.

Until only 12,000 years ago the people of the British Isles and Northern Europe were themselves dark skinned. It was only their continual habitation in their cold, wet, environment that gradually bled the need for melanin from their DNA and made their skins pallid. And Britain was favoured with the arrival 2000 years ago of an invasion from swarthy southern Europe led by Julius Caesar who brought them their first written language. This allowed them to keep records in Latin and then their several vernaculars.

Gradually, through further invasions from Scandinavia and Germany – and centuries

of religious warfare – the island nation developed a mastery of the seas and began to colonise distant lands.

Needing a cheap workforce, they absolutely dominated an horrific trading of less mechanised communities in Africa. In the centuries from 1640 their ships made more than 10,000 journeys from Africa to the European colonies of the Caribbean and America carrying 2.7 million slaves to be bought and sold at the whim of their (white) masters.

So the lizard brain’s notions of race as the “other” to be feared and resisted was planted within the very nation born of a rebellion that declared: “All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

Add to that little moral dilemma the British industries, which demanded cheap cotton for their satanic mills, then spice it with the notion that poverty equals inferiority, and you have the perfect predicament for the American community to solve.

They tried civil war, a civil rights movement and even the election of a melanin-rich president in Barack Obama. Nothing worked.

The evidence of failure is all around us in the fires of prejudice most recently lit by the orange man in the White House.

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The evidence of failure is all around us in the fires of prejudice most recently lit by the orange man in the White House.

Here in Australia, since 1991, some 432 melanin-rich First Australians have died at the hands of white men in another British colony still struggling to resolve a similar dilemma with an obdurate man in The Lodge.

The big difference is that the Aboriginal people were here first. It’s the whitefellas who brought white slaves here in 1788 and it’s their bastard sons with their British laws of property who tried to make them slaves, too. And when that and their contagious diseases failed, they tried to shoot them out and failed again.

Now with the great fires burning, the contagious diseases spreading, seas rising and the climate rebelling, the melanin-poor fellas are at last looking to them for at least some of the ways back to preserve and protect our land and our future. They hear the cry: “We’re all in this together.”

One race perhaps. robert@ robertmacklin.com

NEWS Police chief sad at US racial violence SADDENED by racial violence at the hands of police officers in the US, Canberra’s new chief police officer, Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan, says dialogue with the community is really important to prevent that happening here.

“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t get to the situation here where those sorts of things take place and that’s why dialogue with your community really early on is really important. We’ve just got to keep those lines of communication open,” says Neil, referring to the violent death of African-American man George Floyd, who was killed by a white, Minneapolis police officer.

“We do police differently here than the US. We’re much more community focused but we’ve got to maintain that community focus and remember why we’re here.”

Neil believes the communication between the police and the community here in the ACT is good and highlights the co-operation between the community and police during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We haven’t given out an infringement notice, every other jurisdiction in Australia has,” he says.

“My officers have shown fantastic restraint and have education and awareness as being used over anything else and I think the community supports us with those endeavours.

“The fact that we haven’t had to do that shows that the community listens to us and the fact that we’re here for the betterment of all Canberrans is what we’re here to do.”

Police chief with a sharp focus and a sense of fun – Page 12

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SEVEN DAYS

Comrade Al wants to paint town green with trees AT last! A politician who has truly woken up to the tragic tree crisis in Canberra.

Not Labor, who can barely muster the political fortitude to water the ones we’ve got.

Nor the Greens, who have shamefully borne mute witness to the loss of 40,000 trees.

Astonishingly, it’s the Liberals – and on World Environment Day leader Alistair Coe made the election promise to plant a million trees over the next 10 years – that’s 100,000 a year, 2000 a week, 400 a day! Brilliant.

“We want to make sure that there is a good tree canopy right across this city, it shouldn’t just be the domain parts of the city but indeed everyone should have the benefit of having green space and trees in their suburb,” says Comrade Al. MEANWHILE, over the border in emerging Googong a householder was politely defending his own green space and shooing the media pack off a newly re-seeded lawn when Scott Morrison turned up in his street to use the Queanbeyan suburb as a backdrop to spruik $25,000 cash grants for residential construction.

“Sorry, mate,” shouts the resident. “That’s all good,” says the Prime Minister with a big thumbs up.

The HomeBuilder grants are for home improvements starting at $150,000 to engineer a tradie-led recovery for the building industry, but Labor has doubts.

“There aren’t too many battlers out there who have a lazy $150,000,” says Opposition

Leader Anthony Albanese.

The money might have been better directed to having the industry build accommodation for homeless people than use taxpayers’ cash on private projects, 2CC drive-time announcer Leon Delaney sagely suggested. The only consolation? The grant can’t go to swimming pools.

“SURELY the Shane Rattenbury calling for the resignation of the shadow minister for emergency services because she was picked up for a traffic offence is not the Shane Rattenbury, Minister for Justice and Corrective Services, who last year confessed to the possession and use of narcotics?

MDMA I think it was,” muses former Chief Minister Jon Stanhope in a withering comment to the news story on citynews.com.au “While I understand that that particular Shane believes that since he was at the time young and silly and that it was right that he not be prosecuted, I cannot believe he would apply to another politician a different standard than he would apply to himself.”

longer because someone cancelled) to get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from Deputy Commissioner Gaughan.

“He’s a pretty top guy; said all the right things, but seems like he’ll bring a bit of fun to the role,” she cheerfully reported back.

The clock-watching police media managers, who taped the interviews (to be used in evidence against us?), clearly have no idea about the vagaries of writing face-to-face profiles. By way of a comparison and a shameless excuse to skite, I had longer when I interviewed David Bowie!

But police chiefs these days don’t stay long in the job. Neil’s the fifth since 2010 (preceded by Roman Quaedvlieg, Rudi Lammers, Justine Saunders and Ray Johnson) and a far cry from the 16 years of service by the first Police chief Harold Jones. chief officer of the Commonwealth Police (ACT), Lt-Col Harold Edward Jones OBE, who served from 1927 to 1943 while simultaneously holding the positions of director of the Commonwealth Investigation Bureau and superintendent of the Peace Officer Guard.

MEANWHILE, one for Neil: what does it take to get the police to take some investigative action in this town, bemoans one major car dealership with a hostile ex-customer?

The angry man, already facing criminal charges for blatantly damaging cars on the lot, was allegedly caught, after hours, on security cameras hurling rocks over the fence and damaging another five for-sale vehicles.

Are plod on site sussing things out? Nope.

The apoplectic dealer principal is running across the ceiling with frustration.

A CIVIC-based chiropractor of my acquaintance, working hard to breathe life into his battered practice, but deprived of his office-working clientele says he has trouble recognising clients these days. It’s not his eyesight, it’s the trackie-dak, ugg-booted, working-from-homers, out of their suits and in town for a quick crack. “They’ve given up on their appearance,” he says. “They’re loving that the boss can’t see them.”

Ian Meikle is the “CityNews” editor.

He can be heard on the “CityNews Sunday Roast” 10am-noon on 2CC.

WE have a new ACT police chief in Neil Gaughan and he was paraded out, after much administrative rigmarole, for massmedia interviews. Like others, “CityNews” reporter Danielle Nohra was allocated a criminally short 20 minutes (we got a little

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NEWS / Canberra Homes Canberra

How Michael fought his way back from the gutter

By Danielle

NOHRA MICHAEL Smith, a formerly successful businessman, was left, broke, homeless and addicted to drugs, but now, a group home in Lyons has given him the help he needs.

After some false starts, the 54-yearold came across a Canberra Housing Canberra (CHC) group home, which is one of six CHC group homes in the ACT that offers affordable housing for people living with mental illness, people with disability and elderly residents.

Michael says he’s hit the jackpot with his studio bedroom but it’s taken him some time to get there, saying his undoing started around the time his mum, who had advanced Parkinson’s, died in 2007.

At the time Michael was running his own media consultancy business in Canberra but ended up having to move back to Victoria to look after his mum.

Her sickness took a huge toll and when she died, he says, it was like losing an arm or a leg.

Staying in Victoria, Michael, who

INDEX Arts & Entertainment 23-25 Canberra Matters 14 Crossword 27 Dining & Wine 25 Garden 27 Horoscopes 26 News 3-15 Politics 8 Seven Days 4 Wine 25

had let go of his business, for the first time found it hard to find a job, being told he was overqualified by potential employers.

“I found myself, really without any money,” he says.

“There was a time where I hadn’t eaten for several days. I had borrowed a lot of money from family and friends and after six months I still couldn’t pay them back.”

Michael never thought he would be someone to end up in a position where he couldn’t afford food. He was successful in his career, he was the media adviser for three World Congresses, did a 12-month mission with the Australian Red Cross as its emergency services adviser, was a journalist for 10 years, including five years at London’s Old Bailey Criminal Court, he was the manager of the media unit at the Victorian Education Department in 1994, and was the media adviser for Education Minister Don Hayward. In 1996 he became the media adviser to the then federal Education and Employment Minister David Kemp.

“I was the media adviser to the Minister for Employment in the Howard government and then there I was in the unemployment line at Centrelink,” he says.

“I didn’t want to sign on to Centrelink because I kept thinking something will come up, and then, after

Michael Smith… “I felt humiliated and ashamed as if I was a failure. How could the media adviser to the Employment Minister be on Centrelink?” Photo: Danielle Nohra eight months of thinking something will come up, went to Centrelink.

“I felt humiliated and ashamed as if I was a failure. How could the media adviser to the Employment Minister be on Centrelink? But I got so desperate.”

While Michael waited for Centrelink, he says he was forced to go to the Salvation Army to get food vouchers.

“That was one of the lowest points

for me,” he says. “It was really hard for me to swallow my pride.”

He ended up getting a three-hour shift at a cafe, at $20 an hour, and says he was putting everything he could into his house to stop it from being repossessed.

During those hard years, Michael also turned to meth and alcohol to cope.

But the absolute lowest point for Michael was when he was drunk and unconscious in a gutter in Castlemaine.

It was a taxi driver that Michael says pulled over and saved him. It was also the wake up call that Michael needed, and after he sold his house, cleared his debt and tried to get back on his feet.

A few years ago Michael moved back to Canberra but found it hard to get rental accommodation.

“I was paying $300 a week in O’Malley [in a shared home],” he says.

That was when he came across the Canberra Homes Canberra advertisement, which he applied for and got approved.

“I didn’t think I’d get it. I fell down on the floor and started crying because I realised I had a roof over my head at a base I could afford,” says Michael, who is now studying a personal training diploma at CIT and is a Weight Watchers coach.

“I hit the jackpot. I know how much it costs, I know I have to go out and earn enough money to pay that bill every fortnight.

“I’ve got a foundation here and I can start building again. I was in the abyss for so long.

“There were a number of false starts but I haven’t touched alcohol for over a year now because that could lead to three and three can lead to five.”

Since 1993: Volume 26, Number 23

Canberra’s new chief police officer, Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan. Photo: Holly Treadaway. Story Page 12.

Well written, well read

Ph 02 6189 0777 Fax 02 6189 0778 9b/189 Flemington Rd, Mitchell 2911

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Ian Meikle, 9b/189 Flemington Road, Mitchell.

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PAUL COSTIGAN / MAYBE BEING POLITE FIGHTING CHANGE IS A MISTAKE Pork barrelling begins as Libs fight for air

MICHAEL MOORE

Barr sullies recovery with pokie politics

JON STANHOPE

Coe wants to paint the town green with trees

IAN MEIKLE

JUNE 11, 2020

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DANIELLE NOHRA discovers new police chief NEIL GAUGHAN’s priorities include room for a little fun

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