Political FIFO workers have a responsibility to the locals, too. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
In one of the more startling political backflips of recent times, Liberal leader Peter Dutton walked back plans to end working from home in the public service.
It took courage for the Liberals to admit they’d got it wrong, and only time (and the voters) will tell if they’ll stick the landing or end up flat on the electoral mat.
But mostly unremarked in the national conversation was Mr Dutton’s caveat that the mandatory office return was only ever intended to affect Canberra public servants.
Did that make the whole plan OK, then? Don’t Canberra public servants have families to juggle or mortgages to pay like everyone else? Or perhaps we all have two heads?
Mr Dutton’s declaration that he wouldn’t live at the Lodge if he became Prime Minister, preferring a harbourside mansion in Sydney to an admittedly slightly poky 1920s house on a major arterial road, was equally popular in the ACT.
It was a long way from Sir Robert Menzies’ intention to “build up Canberra as a capital in the eyes and minds of the Australian people”, and I presume local Liberal candidates had no option but to sigh deeply and trudge on to the next round of door knocking.
But the comments trod a well-worn path of sneering references from Federal politicians who are dog-whistling to the voters back home.
It’s a zero-sum game for them. Canberra has been thoroughly committed to the Labor Party for decades (although that’s getting a nudge with the advent of Senator Pocock) and there’s nothing at stake.
So why not earn brownie points with your own constituents by rolling your eyes at this public service paradise where everyone leaves work at 4 pm?
And show me the politician who enhanced their popularity by ensuring Canberra gets its fair share of the infrastructure spend, the pork barrel or whatever else is on offer. It’s unlikely parliamentary offices have whiteboards covered with voter bribes for the 26oo postcodes.
Some time ago at a post-budget breakfast, I asked a politician in government what they had specifically advocated for on our behalf.
The answer was (and I’m not kidding) improvements to the Kings Highway, presumably the two or three kilometres of it before it crosses the border into NSW. A finger-waving lecture from the stage on how “commentators like you are what’s wrong with this country” accompanied this gem.
National capitals ought to be a source of national pride. Are the citizens of Paris, London, Beijing and Delhi constantly told their home is boring, irrelevant and a universally shared joke?
Equally, the people who live in Canberra ought to be treated with the same decency and dignity as voters everywhere else in Australia. In the century since Federation, it’s been too easy to take a cheap shot at us, a temptation that’s only worsened as fewer and fewer political FIFO workers spend any time here beyond the Parliamentary triangle.
This election, I’d suggest politicians of all stripes would do well to remember they’re representing us all. They could, perhaps, remind their party colleagues that slinging off at the Canberra community is unnecessary and unfair, and we’re over it.
In the end, the slogan on the novelty mugs says it all: Canberra thinks you’re boring too.
Genevieve Jacobs is the CEO of Hands Across Canberra, the ACT’s community foundation.
