Robert Doyle's collapsing kingdom

While poking about in the shed last month in hope of finding the perfect nut, bolt and spring washer to repair a broken scissors, a receipt from 1978 came to light amidst the cobwebs. It was for a Victa motor mower, the sum a quite staggering  $379, purchased by the machine’s original owner from McEwan’s in Bourke Street, the hardware emporium that was a Melbourne institution until it went out of business in 1993, when the chain and its flagship were purchased by Bunnings.  Passed to the Professor via a Springvale garage sale for a much more reasonable $30 in 2006, the mower came with the original receipt, which the elderly former owner had taped to the handle. Thirty five years after being unpacked, the lusty four-stroke still does a fine job of cutting the grass.

What brings this to mind is a story in today’s Age recounting the travails of the developers who purchased the McEwan’s building, just up the Bourke street hill from the Mall outside Myer. Their tenants went broke for want of passing traffic and the former emporium, which was supposed to become a chic, three-storey bazaar, is empty and covered with graffiti. Reporter Chris Vedelago also quotes a 2010 judgment in a case brought against the then-landlord by a disenchanted tenant: “‘There was virtually no pedestrian activity, either by reason of customers coming to deal with businesses in the Foundry,’ as it was re-named, ‘or by reason of the so-called 'ant trail' [a new retail thoroughfare created between Bourke and Little Collins streets],' the judge found.”

While the Age report goes on to note that the site’s future is in doubt, the opportunity to suggest a fresh use was missed, despite an obvious and compelling alternative.

Why not re-christen it The Lord Mayor Robert Doyle Institute For Really Stuffing The CBD?

For those not blessed to live in Victoria, know that Doyle was the former leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party while Labor premiers Bracks and Brumby were feather-bedding union mates in projects that ranged from the still-unused $12 billion desalination plant to the re-development of the MCG. A preposterous figure, he would rise in the Legislative Assembly to make a point, be dismissed as a pompous featherhead by the governments of the day and melt meekly back into his seat, a gelatinous pool of spineless irrelevance topped by an empty skull and an inflated sense of self-worth. If he showed any life at all it was when there was a bit of a sort in the public gallery and he craned his neck to take in the spectacle. Doyle was such a lousy leader of the Opposition that his replacement, the hapless and hopeless Ted Baillieu, constituted an actual improvement.

After failing in Spring Street he found his niche at the Town Hall, much as the more problematic lumps sometimes lodge in the S-bend, where his only worthwhile achievement has been to turn loose police on the Occupists in the City Square, and even that took him four weeks to authorise. Other than that, he has been a very good Labor/Greens mayor, which is certainly not what voters had a right to expect when they voted for a Liberal.

LaTrobe Street has been converted under his leadership from a broad and free-flowing thoroughfare to a single lane of cars. The rest has been given to bicycles, as you would expect to happen with a CINO (conservative in name only) mayor at the city’s helm. Worse than that, parking fees have been hiked, hiked again and then hiked some more. Once upon a time, all of Melbourne looked to the CBD for its first-order shopping needs. Now only an idiot ventures into the CBD if there is alternative source of the desired good or service – the former McEwan’s building being the  proof of that. For decades the store thrived. Now it is empty and ugly, with no hope of ever again hearing the tinkle of money in a merchant’s till.

It should take a lot to ruin a city, but Doyle demonstrates -- and the CBD's plethora of empty shops prove it -- that even a man of the most meagre talents can achieve that end.  

Cairo on the Yarra

A minor medical matter obliged a rare visit on Thursday to Melbourne’s CBD, otherwise known as Lord Mayor Robert Doyle’s sandpit and folly. Doyle (above), once state Opposition leader, formerly aspired to run all of Victoria. That he now presides over the Town Hall, still many levels above his competence, provides one of the few reasons, the very few, to rejoice that the former Labor regimes of Bracks and Brumby kept the Coalition out of power for so long. How useless is Doyle? Well, his former Spring Street colleagues deemed Ted Baillieu an improvement.

First, public parking was impossible to find, obliging the expenditure of some $60 for a little more than two hours’ stay in a multi-storey lot. That’s the way to get visitors into the CBD, Mr Mayor!

Second, the beggars. Opportuned three times for small change, The Professor began to think fondly of Mumbai, where it is entirely acceptable to give alms-seekers a good shove and a quick back-hander.

Third, there was a down-at-heel feel to what should be the bustling, vibrant centre of an otherwise wonderful megalopolis. Shops were empty, the footpaths thinly populated – so much so that the legions of ticket-writing Brown Bombers may well have represented the largest single employment category north of The Clocks.

After the medico had a good poke around, the Bunyipmobile’s escape from Doyleland was reduced to a crawl along Collins Street, now shrunk to a single lane by mega tram stops. This has happened because Doyle, like too many other Victorian Liberals, thinks public transport is morally uplifting.

Then the journey stopped altogether and stayed stopped for at least 40 minutes.

The Sons of the Prophet, all weird beards and tea cosies, had thrown down their prayer mats in Market Street to raise awareness of the Muslim Brotherhood’s plight in far off Egypt. Now it is true that Doyle cannot be blamed when the Seventh Century’s ambassadors feel the urge to tap foreheads on tram tracks, but he must be faulted for not preparing an appropriate response to spontaneous agglomerations of public nuisances.

A good mayor, a solid mayor, would long ago have invited an armed delegation of Cairo policemen to demonstrate for our local officers the best way to deal with those who impede traffic. When Muslim ratbags are shooting other Muslim ratbags they are less likely to be killing anyone else, so what’s not to like about that approach to traffic management? Instead, the Professor sat there, and sat there, and sat there some more, as did several thousand other Doyle-afflicted unfortunates, until the worshippers headed off to their Centrelink appointments.

Doyle should join them. If there is one man in Melbourne who deserves to be unemployed it is Robert Doyle.

UPDATE. From today's Australian:

Hundreds of Australian Egyptians gathered in Sydney earlier this week to protest against the killings in Egypt, and there were further, smaller protests in Melbourne and Sydney yesterday.

Australian Egyptians, some of whom declined to be named for fear of reprisals, yesterday told The Australian there were dozens of Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers in Australia, who receive political and financial support from the organisation overseas.

"They call them 'sleeping cells'. They don't tell you who they are. Once they get the message that they are requested to do something, then they become active," said one community leader, Victor Bassily.

The secretary of the Australian Egyptian Council Forum, Mr Bassily said the predominantly Christian local community should "stand as one" after recent violence in which several churches have been burned.

These attacks have allegedly been carried out by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, although the organisation publicly rejects the use of force.

Another Muslim, Australian, Egyptian community leader said there were dozens of Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers across the country, including what he also described as sleeper cells. "They are being paid by the Brotherhood within Egypt, they are being supported by them . . . They have divided the community over here. We have a lot of fights with them," said the man, who asked not to be named.

Security sources said the crisis in Egypt risked provoking tension within the local community, similar to that caused by the conflict in Syria, which has been linked to violence between Sydney's Sunni and Shia populations.

Another Australian Egyptian community leader, Mohammed Helal, yesterday said those who criticised the Muslim Brotherhood were "hateful to Muslims".

"I know a lot of people from the Muslim Brotherhood here in Australia, they are decent people, peaceful people," he said.

"There are offshoots from any community that are hateful . . . and these people are there, but the majority are peaceful."

A NSW police spokesman said "while (we) won't specifically identify individuals or groups who might be of interest to us, we do monitor . . . a range of groups".

"It must be remembered that we target criminals and not particular communities."