Page 1519 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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power of the council, primarily due to the fact that its recommendations were usually ignored by the federal government, a criticism that still has some resonance today.
As a result of this frustration, in 1966 Alan announced he was forming the True Whig Party. He called on voters to write his or his party’s names on the ACT ballot papers in the 1966 election. Hearing that many voters had done so, he decided that he would actually stand for the ACT Advisory Council in 1967. In Alan’s true satirical style, he ran on a joke platform, promising “to do nothing”. Interestingly, one of the few election promises he did make, however, was to build service stations on Mugga Way. He was subsequently elected, getting the third highest primary vote behind the Labor and Liberal parties. At the subsequent election in 1970, he was re-elected with around 21 per cent of the vote. It is worth noting that he attracted more support than the Liberal candidates on that occasion.
Alan became seriously involved in politics when he stood for the Australia Party as its candidate in the 1970 by-election for the seat of Canberra. He gained the highest vote of any Australia Party candidate in any election, winning 18 per cent of the vote, but was eliminated from the count in a final distribution of preferences. He stood again for the Australia Party for the seat in the 1972 federal election and would later lead a team of members of the party contesting seats on the Advisory Council. After standing down from politics, he joined the National Capital Development Commission and became its director of public information. After its abolition in 1989 he transferred in the same position to its successor, the National Capital Planning Authority.
During his time with the NCDC he was involved with a number of local history and heritage projects, a passion that shone through in both his literary and bureaucratic careers. For many years he was a member and a chair of the ACT’s Historic Sites and Building Committee, now the ACT Heritage Council, that had been established at his initiative to protect historic homesteads and buildings at a time of rapid expansion of Canberra into the surrounding rural areas.
The committee prevented the development of a suburb within the Lanyon Homestead site and recommended the acquisition and management of Calthorpes House in Mugga Way as a home museum. As members have also noted, he was also a foundation member and chairman of the ACT region branch of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and played an active role in the debate about Australia becoming a republic. In 1998 he was the organisation’s primary candidate in the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention but lost on a final distribution of preferences. However, he nevertheless attended the convention as an alternative delegate and media officer for the ACM and a number of independent delegates.
Throughout his rich life, Alan was passionate about issues that related to the development of Canberra and was often critical of the change that was taking place within the capital as a result of perceived lack of quality planning and little interest and support from the federal government in the national capital’s development. As late as February this year, he wrote an article on the destruction of Canberra as a garden city concept and as a well planned capital. He was critical of the decline of the National Capital Authority as a proactive body created to protect and enhance the
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