Club Troppo

A friend of mine, and a great contributor to Australian public policy, Mike Waller, a man who sketched out Australian competition policy on a single page and fed it up the line as an FAS in PM&C in the late 80s (or perhaps it was 1990), has wrenched himself from the policy scene (though not entirely, as he keeps his hand in with consulting and other occasional gigs) and joined a few others in setting up a company which will initially import Baufritz homes and which will ultimately build quite a lot of them here.

Baufritz homes are about the most ecologically fine habitation one can buy. Extremely energy efficient, made without nasty emissions, emulsions and things like that, they are exceptionally comfy. They are also quite pricey, but what do you expect for comfort?

One of the things that excites Mike is the fact that Australian homes are still built according to the craft model, with people turning up on site and building the house. There’s more prefabrication in units (with the efficiency gains having been captured and then some by the unions), but in houses there should be a lot more factory pre-fabrication with the ultimate building resembling a barn raising. This can reduce cost, and improve the quality and efficiency of houses.

Houses will initially be largely imported from Germany but will be progressively displaced by Australian production as scale rises. So drop into the new site of MGW Homes and let MGW know if you’re interested in buying one.

The Lodge in Canberra, the official residence of the Prime Minister will be closed for repairs for the next 18 months. Several figures, including Jeff Kennett, former NCDC head Tony Powell and Andrew Carr of the Lowy Institute deem this an exercise in turd polishing. A new, architecturally inspired and inspiring building should be built. They argue that we should view this not just as a house for a politician, but a building that plays an important role in Australia’s Governance and diplomacy.

Indeed, by the accounts of others (unaccountably I am yet to be invited to dinner) very little can be said in favour of the existing building. A building that sets itself on fire during functions, or leaks in the meals of visiting dignitaries or merely gives them asbestosis would probably have a negative. The semiotics of the Neo-Georgian styling aren’t the best. A bastard child of a foreign style awkwardly transplanted to an Australia that ill suits it.

But what kind of architecture would be useful in showing off Australia to the world in a way that works in our interests? Surely not something grand or flashy. Any tin pot dictatorship can, and does do that. It doesn’t seem to impress anyone. A more sensible option would be mixing indigenous styles with clever environmental design. A showpiece of knowhow instead of power.

But I’d be really tempted by a display of ostentatious humility. The major reason the ostensibly temporary Lodge has never been replaced is a fear that the public would never accept the expenditure on a politician’s house. The cost would be negligible compared to  government expenditure over the lifetime of the new building (likely many generations), but this reluctance is also a strong symbol of the power Australians have over their government representatives. Elsewhere in the Westminster tradition the dingy and dirty dwelling on Downing Street is a similar symbol.

Maybe this humility can be used in diplomacy, and as an advertisement for democracy. . I tend to think that over the long run democratic government is better at providing stability and prosperity, and that peace and prosperity abroad is good for Australia. The best way to promote democracy is demonstration. Any building would only have a minor effect on the dignitaries themselves given they will already know enough about Australia, but it might have an effect on the public abroad .I’ll note two stories from China. It might be only one of many relationships we need to manage, but it’s important. The first is the goodwill received by the new US ambassador to the PRC merely by purchasing his own coffee – something implausible for senior CCP figures. The second is this description of Australia by race car driver and world’s most popular blogger Han Han in which he describes government buildings here as indistinguishable from public toilets. Like every other “criticism” of Australia in the article, it is actually a criticism of the fuss, power and expenditure of Chinese governments. Australian humility in  government buildings makes it look good compared to a government that struggles not to appear plutocratic and remote. Any goodwill garnered might pay off in diplomacy.

Having a building that leaks, spews asbestos and may catch fire may be too extreme a way of showcasing this modesty, even if it’s effective. But modest aesthetics should be put into the design brief for any replacement. We could end up with a mansion that showcases the best in energy and water efficiency technology, but one that looks like a cottage.

From the General Achievement Test for the Victorian Certificate of Education sat today.

The image of the Australian outback on the next page was painted by Russell Drysdale.

Pamela Bell described the painting in the following terms.

Man reading a Paper is one of the most surreal of Drysdale’s paintings of the early 1940s. For the first time, Drysdale incorporated pieces of corrugated iron and a windmill, motifs which at times appear abstract. A sense of ambiguity is heightened by the suggestion of actions taking place in an internal rather than external environment. Instead of sitting in a lounge chair reading a paper, the mail figure rests on a tree stump, with his jacket hung on the nearest branch. The subject’s indifference to the strange scene around him only heightens the viewer’s feeling of unease.

Bell sees the painting as

1. eerie
2. tragic
3. tranquil
4. celebratory

The seated figure in the painting seems

1. at home in the landscape
2. a victim of the landscape
3. alienated from the landscape
4. the destroyer of the landscape (Continued)

Dunera Boy Erwin Fabian, about whom I’ve written at least twice before is at it again – which is to say he has another exhibition on. He’s in his mid-nineties now and still working away every day in his North Melbourne studio (which is an old tin shed). I went to the opening the other day and tried to put something up here before I went, however I was unable to get any good graphics.  There are still no good graphics of the exhibition on the relevant site, but to the right is a graphic of a sculpture of an earlier exhibition.

You should pop along if you can make it to Collingwood. I think the sculptures are some of the best of his that I’ve seen.

One point I’ve not raised before is that Erwin’s sculptures have always been priced at such stratospheric levels that I’ve never really been tempted to buy any – ever – though we had a small one in our house which he gave to us a long time ago.

The sculptures at the exhibition range from $95,000 to 35,000 and none had sold at the end of the opening. Perhaps Erwin has ready buyers in London and Germany, where he was born and where he also exhibits.

HT Three Quarks, I enjoyed this wander around the James Bond genre. How can we take such pleasure from such bad movies. It’s a mystery. I liked the essay and don’t dismiss the author’s principal explanation which is Freudian fantasy for boys. But I’m in the demographic he’s writing for – someone who grew up with Bond and the Beatles, so nostalgia is also part of it.

Once I was in some regional town for several nights – not sure what I was doing there – but I went to a James Bond double each night. I came to love the formula. The previous job gets finished up at the beginning of the movie (though this feature emerged later, enabling a big action sequence to begin the movie), bond is given the assignment, part thriller part mystery.  He then wanders right into the wolf’s lair. Usually he goes and talks with the most meglomaniacal baddie in the world, has a game of golf or poker with them. Then he wanders into their lair, sneaks around. Somehow no-one shoots him and with a barely maintained straight face starts pulling apart the machinery which, until he wanders into the lair was destined for world domination. I never much went for the sex which somehow isn’t sexy.  It was this beguiling and beautiful fantasy world.

Anyway, I wonder what other Troppodillians make of Bond. Oh and the best Bond? Well there’s no question.  You’re looking at him just up to your left.

Yesterday in the post I received a copy of CAB: Collaborative Auto Biography, a series of short anecdotes and stories from residents of Cabramatta rendered as comics by Matt Huynh – a project intended in a large part to show stories about the area that don’t involve heroin.

I ordered the book mainly because I wanted to see mainly what comics were being made about the Australian experience (a way of procrastinating away from scripting my own comic) and I was struck by a couple of little things and one major thing.

I was a little dissapointed that the comics fell into the trap many autobiographical indie comics do (and their is a surfeit of this genre) where all events and situations are described in captioned narration, leaving artwork as a merely compliment and neglecting the medium itself. This is a bugbear for someone as fiercely formalist towards comics as me [fn1]. That said, the project is using the words of others so it may have been inescapable. Perhaps Huynh’s other work which I am yet to get to is not so (in the interview above he does echo a phrase of Scott McCloud’s, who is more formalist than I’ll ever be).

I did like the way the artwork, whilst distinctive, still had genetic traits I associated with Australian illustration rather than aping American indie conventions. Sometimes parts of an image would remind me of the children’s illustrator Craig Smith,  a similarity that had greater significance than I thought.

Because what struck me the most is that the stories resonated with an Australia I knew far more than most Australian art ever has. Not because of any particular brilliance, but merely because most Australian art, if it was dealing with an Australia that existed at all, it wasn’t one which I knew, or which I grew up in. (Continued)

I have just returned from a two week holiday in Vietnam expectedly with a wide range of observations with which to tire friends and relatives. There are a few though that relate heavily to economics and the sociology of markets and capitalism which are probably more of interest to a Troppodillian audience (and can thus mask my self indulgence). So here’s a handful of minor ones with another longer one Vietnamese capitalism and sympathy in a day or two.

There is an almost universal tendency for buildings to be very narrow and very tall (3 metres at most wide, and four stories at least tall). I am told that this is due to land tax that is levied based on footprint. The unintended effect of this regulation in many urban environments is to create an atmosphere as appealing to me as the sprawl caused by regulation here and in the US in unappealing. The extensive street level commerce (there is still an astounding lack of real commerical real estate) also contributes. 10 points to both Adam Smith and Jane Jacobs. On the other hand when there is a lonely slim tower emerging from a rice paddy like the last fang of a geriatric tiger, the effect is mainly bemusing.

What is not appealing is the unruly and disturbing masses of powerlines, many of which trail loose wires and are used by vendors to suspend goods and equipment. I was also told the majority of the wiring is dead, and when wiring died it was replaced without removing the old wire. This is a sort of accelerating public goods problem. The more people fail to contribute by removing their old wire, the more costly it becomes for others to find their own old wire and contribute by removing it. The example in the photo is far far far from the worst example we saw.

Walking in Hanoi traffic is a wonderful lesson in the efficacy of simple informal rules followed universally. The wide boulevards of Saigon, which also had traffic lights, were far less pedestrian friendly, despite having navigable footpaths.  (Continued)

They don’t get much better than this. HT Three Quarks

Well for the umpteeth time, WordPress has spat out the ‘embedding’ code I put into it.  But this link is fabulous.

PS – I find on reviewing the site that it seems to have ‘embedded’ when all I posted was the link – too complicated for me – but enjoy.

The Sydney Morning Herald has been trumpeting a study they supported by on the future of Sydney’s public transport and urban structure. Beneath the being overly pleased with themselves, with we’re above petty politics harrumphing there is a genuine effort to talk about the policy issues in depth. That’s a big relief compared to the usual scandal mongering and whinging vox pops that we usually get from the media on the issue.

A major theme in the study is differing potential models for future development. One is a European model, which is described as a web of transport routes and urban centres across the metro area, which is officially the current plan. The other is an East Asian model which is described as a small number of dense urban centres from which public transport spokes extend, each covered by a spine of high rise residential developments and with land prices that rise exponentially with their access to these centres. The report reckons that we’re headed to the latter, which is A Bad Thing.

I am not convinced this is solely a issue of government policy though. A large part is due to decisions made by companies on where to provide jobs, and subsequently where the transport infrastructure is forced to be built to relieve what is already there. More specifically it’s about where the management of these companies decide to site their operations, particularly compared to what you might expect firms to do. I think this is partially an issue of corporate governance.
(Continued)