By Carolyn Hutchins
MELBOURNE — "You're so selfish to let us race our motor cars in the park for only four days a year", whine Premier Jeff Kennett and Grand Prix Corporation chief Ron Walker. Let me remind you what happens at Albert Park the rest of the year.
At the beginning of summer, the trucks start to roll into the park bearing temporary work sheds, tonnes of metal scaffolding, tents, corporate boxes and a mass of infrastructure to support it all.
The park becomes a dangerous place for children as cars and trucks traverse the park, damaging the grass and increasing the dust. Forlorn, unshaded play equipment becomes even more isolated as scaffolding rises around the area which the community worked so hard to achieve.
Security guards are employed, and because there is little for them to do they follow, accost and question people in the park, photograph them, note down car number plates, provoke Save Albert Park members attending the protest vigil and generally create a hostile atmosphere.
By the end of summer, Ron's fantasy is in place and the fences go up and the gates are locked to protect it. The people whose park it is are finally and totally excluded.
Dismantling after the race will take most of autumn, and then the park is left with grass that has died, damaged ovals, the earth gouged from underneath the grandstands and boxes and a cost of millions to try to repair the damage.
Sports clubs endeavour to resume their matches. Parents, fearful of injuries from broken glass, metal and other rubbish remaining in the dirt, reluctantly allow their children back on the grounds, conscious there is nowhere else for them to play their team games.
This public space has been stolen to provide the venue for a private car race bankrolled by the Victorian taxpayer. Why is this government so determined to run this event in a manner which overrides all political, social, environmental and legal safeguards?
Why, when well-run and profitable public facilities are being privatised at fire-sale prices, does the government pour millions of taxpayers' dollars into shoring up this event for private business?
It has been admitted that ticket sales are down from last year. An accurate crowd count was made on the Friday by Save Albert Park members, who counted 38,986 people attending. (The Grand Prix Corporation claims that 66,000 attended.) It would appear that the Grand Prix is far from being the success the premier has claimed.
Kennett and Walker vilify those who question their decision to take over the park for motor racing, and apparently foster and relish the growing intolerance and division in our community. Men like this do more harm to a community than good. It is imperative that people continue to stand and steadily resist this government. Its crass commercialisation of Victoria's parks can be stopped, the folly of motor racing in a park acknowledged and the event removed.
[Abridged from a speech to a protest rally at Albert Park on March 9, the final day of the Grand Prix. Carolyn Hutchins is a spokesperson for the Save Albert Park group.]