RussellEbertHandball
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Great article in The Weekend Australian magazine about Paul Keating intervening in to save a piece of foreshore on Sydney Harbour at the Barangaroo site which was the old wharf area for container ships and passenger ships and turn the front part of the foreshore back a foreshore park. Even though he doesnt work for Lend Lease the developers or a state government agency or the Sydney City Council he somehow has used all his energies to intervene and shape the redevelopment. I just love the way Keating uses the language and these snippets from the 6 page article are a good example. There are more in the story.
The site is behind a paywall so you have to cut and paste a paragraph from below put into into a Google search in Chrome and then right click the story link and choose - Open link in incognito window.
It's Fun Being a Bastard - It took 15 years of rat cunning for Paul Keating to save a precious piece of Sydney. And he loved every minute of it.
....
If it took a little bastardry, bullying and rat cunning to get his way, well Hallelujah, because I can’t think of another political warrior with such a sophisticated aesthetic eye who is prepared to act as self-appointed guardian for the city skyline, his sword drawn against the standard bearers of wanton indifference determined to muck it up.
So he shrugged off the “petty snobbery” of architects; he stared down developers — “the nasties” out to make a buck; he accused a former chair of the Harbour Foreshore Authority of lacking any sensibility in his grasp for Treasury dollars; he yelled; he cajoled; he arm-wrestled five premiers and six planning ministers; he sledged Lord Mayor Clover Moore for kowtowing to “sandal-wearing, muesli-chewing, bike-riding pedestrians without any idea of the metropolitan fabric of the city or what Sydney would lose if Barangaroo were to fail”; he banished cruise ships from parking here. When Carnival Australia’s CEO Ann Sherry told him: “Paul, the trouble with you is you don’t go on cruises”, he replied, “Well, Ann, I don’t own a wheelchair.”
.......
I’d want him watching my back any day. Battle-scarred but never weary — “It’s fun being a bastard,” he concedes, recounting the “big fight” over the cruise ships when Carnival’s Ann Sherry and chair, Katie Lahey, came for tea at his office to protest moving their berth from Barangaroo to Balmain. “I said, ‘Look, don’t come here with bloody Hyacinth Bucket giving me the bullshit line about the cruise ships because I’m going to arseh*le the two of you to Balmain. You can get a taxi to Balmain to board a 10-day cruise to fill yourself full of grog … But no, you have to go from Barangaroo because otherwise it’s not a real cruise. Is that what you’re saying?’ ”
Sherry, who knew Keating from Canberra, where she ran the Office of the Status of Women, laughs now at this tickle-up and gives him one back. “Did he tell you that I said, ‘Why are you being so snobby? Most of our passengers come from the western suburbs. Isn’t that meant to be your heartland?’ And he replied, ‘Not any more,’ or words to that effect.”
.......
It's Fun Being a Bastard - It took 15 years of rat cunning for Paul Keating to save a precious piece of Sydney. And he loved every minute of it.
The ending 2 paragraphs put things in perspective
The site is behind a paywall so you have to cut and paste a paragraph from below put into into a Google search in Chrome and then right click the story link and choose - Open link in incognito window.
It's Fun Being a Bastard - It took 15 years of rat cunning for Paul Keating to save a precious piece of Sydney. And he loved every minute of it.
....
If it took a little bastardry, bullying and rat cunning to get his way, well Hallelujah, because I can’t think of another political warrior with such a sophisticated aesthetic eye who is prepared to act as self-appointed guardian for the city skyline, his sword drawn against the standard bearers of wanton indifference determined to muck it up.
So he shrugged off the “petty snobbery” of architects; he stared down developers — “the nasties” out to make a buck; he accused a former chair of the Harbour Foreshore Authority of lacking any sensibility in his grasp for Treasury dollars; he yelled; he cajoled; he arm-wrestled five premiers and six planning ministers; he sledged Lord Mayor Clover Moore for kowtowing to “sandal-wearing, muesli-chewing, bike-riding pedestrians without any idea of the metropolitan fabric of the city or what Sydney would lose if Barangaroo were to fail”; he banished cruise ships from parking here. When Carnival Australia’s CEO Ann Sherry told him: “Paul, the trouble with you is you don’t go on cruises”, he replied, “Well, Ann, I don’t own a wheelchair.”
.......
I’d want him watching my back any day. Battle-scarred but never weary — “It’s fun being a bastard,” he concedes, recounting the “big fight” over the cruise ships when Carnival’s Ann Sherry and chair, Katie Lahey, came for tea at his office to protest moving their berth from Barangaroo to Balmain. “I said, ‘Look, don’t come here with bloody Hyacinth Bucket giving me the bullshit line about the cruise ships because I’m going to arseh*le the two of you to Balmain. You can get a taxi to Balmain to board a 10-day cruise to fill yourself full of grog … But no, you have to go from Barangaroo because otherwise it’s not a real cruise. Is that what you’re saying?’ ”
Sherry, who knew Keating from Canberra, where she ran the Office of the Status of Women, laughs now at this tickle-up and gives him one back. “Did he tell you that I said, ‘Why are you being so snobby? Most of our passengers come from the western suburbs. Isn’t that meant to be your heartland?’ And he replied, ‘Not any more,’ or words to that effect.”
.......
It's Fun Being a Bastard - It took 15 years of rat cunning for Paul Keating to save a precious piece of Sydney. And he loved every minute of it.
The ending 2 paragraphs put things in perspective
.
