Brisbane West BUG
Do you support suggestions to install a temporary shared path on one of the 6 traffic lanes of the Story Bridge while Brisbane City Council pulls its finger out to address the problems it has known about for 5 years or more and failed to act?
We do. And next Friday May 30th there is a March across the Story Bridge to show it. And do you know what? Council is trying to take the organisers to court, because “people’s right to freedom of movement would be excessively interfered with.”
So while it’s perfectly fine to close a bridge that thousands of people rely on for walking or riding across for months with no definitive timeframe for reopening, but occupying a lane for a march across the bridge “interferes with freedom of movement”.
We think the ongoing interference with people’s right to freedom of movement by not being able to walk or ride across the bridge is far more serious.
While that court action plays out, share this event with everyone you know.
This city is not the sole domain of cars. But, unbelievably, we need to fight for the right to walk.
Fri, 30 May at 08:00
March Across the Story Bridge
Scott St, Kangaroo Point QLD 4169, Australia
It’s a local council issue 3,600 km away. I would be deeply concerned if it was!
Not really sure why. The state originally owned it, but sold it to the council in 1947.
It was built on the cheap during the depression, with only a 100 year planned lifespan. So they’ve had a long time to develop a sinking fund to help do more significant maintenance or plan a rebuild. The specific issues we’re talking about now have been known since at least 2016, which is the date of the report that they released showing they knew about this issue.
Unfortunately, because of ideological opposition to good governance and an obsession with cutting rates bills (they very proudly spruik their below-inflation rates increases annually), they’re close to bankrupt, and haven’t planned for this at all.
The going theory at the moment is that their hope is to let it get to a crisis point, at which point they can use the crisis to strongarm the state or federal governments into funding the repair/replacement, or use the crisis as an excuse to sell tolling rights off to private business, since the BCC LNP are even more obviously corrupt than the Coalition is federally. And BCC has been continuously under full LNP control since 2008, and they’ve had the Lord Mayoralty (which is directly elected city-wide) since 2004. A run that started with the famous slash-and-burner Campbell Newman who went on to destroy the state’s public service in his one-term state government 2012–2015. Council elections being optional preferential instead of compulsory preferential like state and federal elections is part of the reason for this, since Greens and Labor voters sometimes split the vote. But another big part is how low-profile Council is: it results in a much stronger incumbency bias than other levels of government, where they can do pretty much whatever they want and get away with it, because nobody talks about the abuse of power or the shortsightedness.
Did you see what was front page news here yesterday? 😆
Ha! Yeah, I did see that. And ironically, I first saw it not in !perth, but in an international meme or shitposting community.