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 MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA On The Move
1.00 pm Looking older and softer than ever, two 30ish football fans made their regular journey to Optus Oval in Princes Park. Rob Williams and I have watched our team go from good to great and all the way down to dreadful over a large number of years now. We arrived at Princes Park with quiet confidence. Sure, our beloved Carlton hadn't been playing the type of high quality football we have come to expect of a team with 16 premierships in 101 years. Sure, they were next to the cellar and on the way down. But our visitors that day were Port Adelaide. The new kids on the block -- an old, established South Australian club that had only last year made the giant leap to the Australian Football League. Today, we would give Port Adelaide a lesson in tradition. With a home town crowd here at the place where Carlton have played since the 1880s, we could not lose. I took my place in the brand new Legends Stand, in a seat that cost me $200 for nine home games. Looking around the ground, slowly filling with the familiar navy blue colours, the fans sensed something big. Today would be the day we announced ourselves as a force in 1998 after all. The Robert Heatley Stand, a venerable institution at the west end of this park since the 1930s, would roar with the noise of goal after goal as the mighty Blues crushed another helpless opponent like they always used to when I was a kid.
2.10 - 4.40 pm Eventually the players entered the sanctuary of the rooms to a stunned silence from the crowd. The very few Adelaide people who had made the journey were ecstatic. We tried to ignore them. It's amazing how happy 200 people can appear when they are surrounded by 20,000 really depressed people. It could have been worse. Where I was sitting was directly above a place that used to be known as The Shed. There you would stand, huddled against the cold, with a thousand other fools who liked slipping on wet gravel as they watched the football. Inevitably, someone would walk past and spill a beer on you by mistake. Or their meat pie. And on days like this, when things went badly wrong, the fighting would start. We love our football in Melbourne, but we hate to lose. A few miles south of where The Shed used to live is a large open pile of mud, metal and concrete. You can only see it if you peek through a cyclone wire fence, and it looks nothing like the bold, colourful artist's impressions we have seen on television for the last three years, but this is the place where the sporting capital of Australia is making a serious run at becoming the corporate entertainment capital, too. This is the brave new world of Australian sport. This is the Docklands Stadium. Construction of the $400 million (Australian) stadium is well underway, we are told, and is due to be completed in late 1999. It will seat 52,000 people. Football broadcaster Channel 7 is so impressed they are moving their studios to the site. So they should -- between Channel 7 and the Australian Football League, they need only pay 40% of the building price to be granted total control of the site. The Victorian government has taken care of the rest, and thrown in the land for free. English firm Lobb designed the Docklands Stadium, assuring us that it is the perfect example of a Fourth Generation Stadium. No-one seems to have a clear idea what this means. It may relate to the digital tv in the back of everyone's seat. It could be the retractable roof. Possibly it is the $35 minimum admission price for any event. My bet is the corporate dining area. Another point that remains unclear is exactly why we need the Docklands Stadium at all. We have two much larger facilities, which work perfectly well. The Melbourne Cricket Ground has been hosting international sport since 1877, holds 100,000, and is the most popular landmark in the whole city of Melbourne. Waverley Park holds 75,000 and serves the southeast of the city, which no other facility can claim to do. Of course, neither of these holds 6,000 corporate patrons in the lap of luxury while they discuss mergers, acquisitions, social notes and occasionally glance at some sporting event which happens to be taking place nearby. I guess that's why they're not Fourth Generation Stadia. It's all part of a change in the face of this city, and indeed the country. The first wave in a tide of neo-conservatism in Australia was the election of Jeff Kennett and his Liberal Party in 1992. Since that day, Victoria, and Melbourne in particular, has become obsessed with its image as a state "On The Move," as Victoria's slogan reads. (A slogan it shares with Mussolini's Italy.) Melbourne seems to be about major events and big new buildings and slick efficient economic rationalism, and not about people any more. One of the best places to see this is on a tram.
4.45 pm One of the joys of catching the Swanston Street tram is the chance to have a chat to the tram conductor. Who won? Who played well? How do you feel about the finals this year? Tram conductors have always been known as the most amazingly friendly, helpful group of people you could wish to meet. A cultural icon to the people of Melbourne. A secure and steady line of work for those who may be having trouble finding a job elsewhere, or for new immigrants. The friendly face of the city. At least, that's how it was. The cold, grey ticket machine wouldn't talk about the football. In fact, it wouldn't even sell me a ticket. It's part of a fabulous new system called MetCard. MetCard has two primary features: first, the system is totally unreliable; and second, it involves people as little as possible. That's why every tram conductor in Melbourne was sacked in the same week earlier this year. Every last one. Gone. Forever. The obvious effect of making the entire public transport system unfriendly and difficult will be less people using the system. But the cunning Liberals have thought of this, and planned another fabulous innovation: Citylink, the answer to everyone's prayers. Everyone with a car and an open wallet, that is. Connecting the giant southeastern freeway to the western half of the city, this vast underground tunnel is being paid for by private enterprise. So far so good. But private enterprise -- in this case a special company called Transurban (created especially for the job) and builder Baulderstone Hornibrook -- must make their money back somehow. When Citylink opens, sometime in the next three years, every car registered in Victoria will be fitted with a transponder. Every time someone travels on a major freeway and passes a special detector, their car will incur a charge. Bills will be sent to motorists monthly. Those who prefer to avoid the major freeways have already found other arterial roads cut off, narrowed, or shut down altogether. We are faced with a choice between the all new friendly facelessness of public transport, or unregulated private charges for using the only roads available. Victoria -- On The Move.
5.10 pm Crown is a piece of Melbourne that doesn't belong. It's really part of Las Vegas. From the backlit fountains that flow in time with neo-classical elevator music to the franchised Official All Planet Warner Star Brothers Hollywood Shop and Cafe section, it's completely alien to me. Melbourne was never like America before. On the few occasions I have visited the place and seen the emotionless masses allowing their life force to drain out through the neon signed one armed bandits, I have wondered just why this place is so popular. The smiling, winning faces from the tv ads seem a distant dream indeed. Maybe other people wonder too -- it's not as popular as the government thought it would be. Development company Hudson Conway gladly signed a contract stipulating harsh penalty clauses if the planned schedule was not rigidly adhered to. Among items on the schedule were two hotel towers -- one of which presently stands in splendid isolation. The second was to have been completed by July 1, 1998. Work has not yet begun, as there is no longer a projected demand. Hudson Conway should, therefore, be paying $45,000 a day to the Victorian government in fines. This seems to me to be an ideal source of revenue to pay for, say, the re-employment of some tram conductors. Strangely, the government has forgiven the company this debt until January 2003. A $74 million windfall. The sporting capital wants to become the corporate welfare capital.
7.30 pm 
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