CANBERRA.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5246, 2 March 1928, Page 1

CANBERRA.

A “HOTBED OF SNOBBERY.”

PLANNED IN NIGHTMARE!

“Canberra is a 'hideous waste of public money ; a hotbed of class consciousness and snobbery, and it was planned in a nightmare,” Statements from one of the fiercest attacks yet launched on the Federal Capital by the' Victorian Minister for Forests, Mr Beckett.

“ The roads are a dizzy whirl of curves—a taxi-driver’s paradise,” he said. “ If Canberra ever has a big population—and. it will not,' because it has no trade or industry to sustain it —the streets will, be found to: be too narrow. .

“ Canberra has no future,” he declared. “ Population follows trade, and in Canberra there is no trade. Everywhere there is class of distinction. • ■

“ The workmen who are tihe backbone of the place are segregated into one corner and pushed into fourroomed hutches built of imported timber. Then there are the junior officers ; then the not-so-junior; then the curled darlings of the service—and betwecji them all. there is plenty to spare for the wind to blow and prevent contamination. The architecture of Canberra is dreadful.

The best hotel, the Hotel Canberra, is like a penitentiary, with dark, chill, corridors ini which one gropes to a celllikc room. The accommodation is about of- fourth class. Mr Beckett said 1 his object in going to Canberra was to see if the Forestry School could take a few more Victorian students. The school itself was an excresence, and was another example of the butting-in of the Federal Governments into a State sphere. Inspections of Canberra’s electric power ‘ and other plants were made by visiting delegates to the annual conference of the Australian Institute of Engineers.