Page 4243 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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Many people state that Canberra was designed and built around the motor car. That is something that I heard Peter Harrison vehemently deny on many occasions. He claimed that, if the plan was followed appropriately and if the discrete town centres contained the appropriate employment, flexibility existed for either private transport or public transport. In fact, most recently, I heard him say that one of the first steps in going to public transport in the ACT would be for governments to make the decision to remove all cars from their own people; all SES officers would have their cars and their car spaces removed and the same would apply, of course, to us.
That was part of his vision. He was able to see that public transport can work but there is a price to pay. If people want to make that decision, then those who make it should also be prepared to wear the results.
Peter Harrison was a man of principle. The principle upon which he operated was neatly set by the Chief Executive Officer of the National Capital Planning Authority, Lyndsay Neilson, on the Pru Goward show on Wednesday, 31 October, when he stated that Mr Harrison was a man who worked from basic principles and the main basic principle that he worked from was what happened to suit the battler who lived in the suburbs. I think that that is the measure of the man.
He had a strong adherence to the principles on which he was based and he clearly demonstrated the strength of his feeling about losing to the profit of a very few what he perceived as a city of beauty and convenience. When he perceived that happening he returned his insignia of the Order of Australia that he had been awarded and he resigned from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. A few years ago he felt that there may have been a way to reverse the situation and he became a member of the Residents Rally. When he resigned from the Residents Rally, disgusted by what had happened, he wrote a letter to at least one, but I think all three, of the members that were left. I would urge them to go back and read those letters again.
Mr Harrison was opposed to the overdevelopment of Civic but at the same time he was very much pro development. He always saw the role of development. The difference is that he saw the role of development as planning driven rather than planning as development driven.
The transport problems and environmental problems caused by the overdevelopment of Civic caused him a great deal of anguish. He sought balanced development and he continued to spend the last days of his life fighting for that and working many long hours from his study in Booroondara Street in Reid.
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