No Eternity in Ruddock or Shelley

Arthur Stace started writing Eternity graffiti after hearing a sermon which preached that Sydney-siders should emblazon the streets of the city with the message of God's eternity. From the 1930's until the 1970's, Stace chalked the word in beautiful letters across the sidewalks of the town at night. It came to mean Sydney's hope, wonder, resilience, beauty and perpetuity. This alcoholic and homeless man's work was rewarded on New Year's Eve in the year 2000 when the Sydney Harbour Bridge lit up with what had become a meme.

Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock has banned the game "Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure". The convenor of the board, Maureen Shelley, claimed her decision to ban the game was;

the first time we have refused classification for a computer game because it promotes crime

ie graffiti. Government has no place making these decisions. Ruddock and Shelley are authoritarian fools.

From Sydney's internal hope, to Canberra's reflexive authoritarianism. If Stace were alive today, he would not be able to practice his wonderful handiwork on his computer before leaving chalked messages across the city. The former is now deemed anti-social, while the latter was celebrated in a prominent display of fireworks when Australia progressed into the twenty-first century.

Fencing The Polis

Republicanism is the political science expression of liberalism. As with democracy, they require the osmosis of interaction, deliberation, competition, discourse and openness for them to have any public legitimacy. When the polis is fenced and the arms of the state oversee - it ceases to be the political republic and instead becomes the state's exclusive executive garden. The polis is temporarily drained until the state leaves and the urbanites come back.

Photo from Sydney Daily Photo: Wrapping democracy in a 3m high fence

As Gary Sauer-Thompson noted urban space and urbanity are important concepts of freedom. Walling off the polis with fences, snipers, helicopters and police who delete photos from cameras is a state-led intrusion into that freedom.

At federation the national government was given a political playground of its own; called Canberra. No level of politics, even international, is worth the intrusion into Sydney's cosmopolitanism.

The politicians can have their meetings in Canberra and if they don't like that, they can set up a tent in a sheep paddock outside Tidbinbilla and stock it with local wine. They can wear Akubras and indulge in unintentional mockery of the larrikin myth.

cam: Why would you scar Darling Harbour like that?

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