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Brimbank Labor's oldest platform

News that former City of Brimbank mayor Charlie Apap has been convicted for indecent assault puts the spotlight once again on some of the more unsavoury history of the ALP in Melbourne's western suburbs, as a number of press reports show.

Labor Party identity Apap, 70 is known locally as a rent collector. He was found guilty in the Sunshine magistrate's court of putting his hand down the back of a 20 year old mother's jeans and underwear while collecting her rent.

Adding insult to injury, as the Leader reports "The landlord made a subsequent application for lost rent money due to the tenant giving insufficient notice before vacating the premises".

Apap is no stranger to the court, having previously been involved in a dispute over unpaid printing bills for Labor candidates at a Brimbank council election. At the last election five councillors did not declare any contributions to their electoral campaigns.

One of the councillors, Ken Capar, subsequently got into hot water at a New Zealand conference while on a council-funded junket for the Keilor Cemetery Trust. According to reports Capar remained drunk for the full three days of the conference, and was unfortunate enough on his return to wake up and see the headline "I was drunk" plastered on the front pages.

According to the local Star newspaper two women reported alleged sexual advances by Cr Capar. The story continues

"Cr Capar admitted being intoxicated on Thursday 10 October during the last day of the conference but in a letter to the Keilor Cemetery Trust he objected to allegations which included making inappropriate sexual advances to female and male delegates."

To cap it off hotel security staff later found him in possession of certain items that had been reported missing by other delegates.

Sexual harassment and theft by a councillor would not normally be rewarded. Capar resigned from the Cemetery Trust in disgrace but remains a sitting Brimbank councillor, no doubt grateful for the complexities of trans-Tasman litigation.

Chairwoman of the Trust at the time was Brimbank's Deputy Mayor Kathryn Eriksson, forced to endure the full three days of Capar's ratepayer-funded extravagance. With talk of police charges however she defended her colleague and in doing so submitted herself to public humiliation, saying

"It's a disgrace that we (the trust and council) can't communicate between ourselves. To have people turn around and say that we're going on junkets just because of one person behaved inappropriately, I find it really sad."

Indeed it is. Even more sadly Deputy Mayor Eriksson is also known as the wife of former Labor Minister Andrew Theophanous who became the first sitting member of parliament to be gaoled for bribery, conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth and corruption.

Evidence submitted at his trial alleged that in rorting the immigration system he wasn't just seeking money, but also sexual gratification. An NCA tape recording has him saying "Maybe next week or towards the end of the week we might have a meeting, you know, see if I like her."

Channel 9's Sunday program quotes Theophanous from the secret recordings soliciting sexual favours. "…and she is prepared to have some times with me but keep her mouth shut completely then we will do it for $100 for a year." [A discount from the standard illegal fee he was asking for from clients].

Theophanous is still seen at Brimbank Council meetings, where he occasionally bumps into his close factional ally Hakki Suleyman. Suleyman is father of Brimbank councillor Natalie Suleyman; he runs the local migrant resource centre and in his spare time works as electoral officer for Planning Minister Justin Madden.

Suleyman was the subject of a formal complaint to the council in 2005, describing his behaviour toward a woman at a council meeting as "angry, rude, confrontational and abusive" to the point where she had to ask the CEO for protection and to be escorted to her car.

A number of metropolitan papers report an alleged assault by Suleyman on a woman handing out leaflets in the street. According to the Age

"He was pulling me and I was shaking back and forth at the force. I just saw his face and I thought, 'He's going to hit me'. I then started to panic and I screamed at the top of my voice, 'You leave me alone.' And he backed off."

The Herald Sun report of the incident mentions welts and cuts left by Suleyman on the victim's arm while "A day later, his son Mehmet Suleyman, who worked for former police minister Andre Haermeyer, allegedly attacked a young man with a screwdriver -- an incident police are now investigating." The report also mentions a fist fight between the younger Suleyman and Brimbank councillor Sam Tabban, but that's another story. Stay tuned for that one.

The press reports taken together paint the ALP in the west as a party of misfits and sexual predators using intimidation in the exercise of their power: the power of the rent collector over the young tenant, the power of the drunken councillor, the power to grant or deny a visa, and the power of sheer physical force.

Suleyman daughter Natalie shares with Charlie Apap the dubious distinction of being a former mayor of Brimbank council. Along with her current duties as councillor, she works as electoral officer for the now-discredited former Police Minister and MP Andre Haermeyer. For a time she worked alongside convicted criminal Craig Otte in the same office.

Haermeyer came to prominence again more recently when the Herald Sun reported police sources alleging he tried to influence the outcome of a rape investigation by using his influence over "top cop" Noel Ashby.

Ashby for his part said it was appropriate to keep Mr Haermeyer "informed" because Mr Haermeyer had a professional relationship with the woman. Perhaps you can work that one out.

The story makes allegations about the role of the Victorian ombudsman in the case and concludes by stating the obvious - there is no crime and corruption commission in Victoria capable of investigating the misdeeds of our elected representatives.

And don't they know it.

When Victor Lustig, the notorious confidence trickster, sold the Eiffel Tower to a gullible Parisian scrap metal merchant, Andre Poisson, in 1925 Lustig immediately caught the first train to Vienna. It was obvious that as Poisson began his preparations to dismantle the massive steel structure he would have undoubtedly become aware that he had been had. Poisson however preferred not to make his complaint known to the police because he had also paid a bribe to Lustig so as to secure the deal - what we might call the preferred tender. Lustig forever confident of his abilities did return to Paris a bit later and tried the same scam on another six scrap dealers. This time it seems one or two of them were somewhat more reputable - or perhaps less gullible than the hapless Poisson and the police were informed of the scam. Lustig managed to escape capture and fled to America. Lustig's charm and glib cunning was such there were no shortage of people who succumbed to his various deceptions, even managing to scam Al Capone out of $5,000.

However, that's another story.

To many it would seem incomprehensible that such a famous iconic landmark could be reduced to scrap but in 1925 the Eiffel Tower was in a state of disrepair, it was also leaving an enormous black hole in Paris municipal budget. Of course they would never demolish it, but there was a public perception by many that it might well have been financially prudent to remove this eyesore - call it fiscal responsibility. Besides the structure was only built for the Paris Exposition as a temporary structure in 1889.

The thought of Paris without the Eiffel Tower would be unimaginable - like Pisa without its leaning tower. Agra without the Taj Mahal, The Golden Gate Bridge, Sydney without its Opera House. Such man made wonders as they are often referred to give a place a certain focal point that makes them unique. They become icons of our civilisation.

Other places have more provincial wonders specific to a country that are more inclined to be national icons, for example in Australia places like the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Dog on the Tuckerbox and numerous other examples from the imposing to the more eclectic give us a sense of ourselves, of our own times and places, even though at times one might be a bit let down when they happen to come across it in their travels. The Big Golden Guitar - all 12 metres of it in Tamworth, NSW might fail to excite some people. Then again the steel framed fibreglass structure is only an adjunct, to Tamworth's famous Country Music Festival which attracts over 50 thousand visitors in January each year. Yet a lot of places don't need ostentatious landmarks to announce their worthiness. Look at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz which is up there with Tamworth and is acclaimed by many to be Australia's foremost jazz festival.

Sometimes manufacturing a sense of place with second rate attractions - embellished by spin seems the solution to defining a place. This modus operandi seems to have permeated the Albury Wodonga psyche. It's been going on for years. Borderline can remember the Ettamogah Wildlife Sanctuary, once promoted as one of Albury Wodonga's premier tourist attractions. One could almost say that was when the rot set in all those years ago. The memory of the then proprietor, Heidi Peck, giving some local schoolchildren a bit of a tour. When near a small dam the children came across some scattered bones which Mrs Peck explained that they belonged to large prehistoric wombats that once inhabited the area. The fact that this bit of forensic paleontology on Mrs Peck's behalf without any scientific basis didn't matter much to the assembled children. They believed her. She knew full well that it was a bit of spin on her behalf but you have to get customers through the doors. She also knew her market as it were because really who would know the difference? After all to the untrained eye an oxen's shinbone might well pass for a similar skeletal feature of any number of prehistoric creatures. One got the feeling that if Mr's Peck's financial situation had been more conducive to her imagination the whole 20 acres could have been a veritable treasure-trove of ancient species - littered with every prehistoric creature God ever gave breath to, but it was not to be. She did try a mechanical type bunyip as well but that was prone to mechanical failure and the authenticity of its appearance failed to impress. Most said that it didn't look like a bunyip at all begging Mrs Peck's rebuke - 'so you've seen a bunyip have you? As ill health forced her into retirement she feared for the future. I'm sure that on her deathbed if someone had made a suggestion of flinging her skeletal remains over the sanctuary fence to the public announcement that an antipodean 'missing link' had been found, she would have been more than agreeable. Just as long as it got few more customers through the gate.

You can only go so far with manufactured attractions, to revitalise an area, give it a sense of place and purpose - and bring in the customers; the shopkeepers and the tourists. Look at the Dockland's Ferris Wheel which was to have given new life to the desolate western end of the dockland's precinct in Melbourne.

Borderline in this instance has preferred to present an abbreviated timeline that seems to be indicative of such an attempt at manufacturing a sense of place that went horribly wrong.

December 19, 2002: Premier Steve Bracks said yesterday the $40 million Southern Star wheel, 100 metres in diameter, would attract a million visitors in its first year. (The Age).

March 30,2005: A giant ferris wheel planned for Melbourne's Docklands will not be ready in time for the Commonwealth Games. VicUrban says construction will not be finished until late 2006.(ABC News).

October 12, 2008: The long-awaited opening of the Southern Star Observation Wheel is likely to occur during Melbourne Cup week - and there will be a ceremony to mark the occasion.(Walking Melbourne).

November 27 2008: The 120m tall Southern Star Observation Wheel was to have opened tomorrow at Docklands. But forecast weekend storms and delays in getting parts from overseas have delayed the launch until next week. (The HeraldSun).

February 2, 2009: The $100 million giant ferris wheel will remain closed indefinitely after shutting down on Friday as the company awaits a report into damage caused by last week's record heatwave. (The Age)

June 16, 2009: The cabins on Melbourne's giant ferris wheel will be removed as work continues to fix structural problems caused by a heat wave. (The Age).

December 27, 2009: Most of Dockland's massive ferris wheel has been sold for scrap and it is being rebuilt from scratch to a new design, leaving the struggling precinct without a centrepiece for at least another 10 months... (The Age). …It was going to draw 1.5 million tourists to the barren western end of the Docklands, and save the hundreds of businesses there… (The Age) … The precinct owner, ING Real Estate Developments, has insisted those involved in building the wheel, including consulting engineers Arup, steel builder Alfasi and construction consultant Hansen Yuncken, sign confidentiality agreements to prevent them from commenting publicly… (The Age).

December 29, 2009: ...You only need to read the spin emerging from the debacle surrounding the massive ferris wheel at Melbourne's Docklands, which is now being sold for scrap after the discovery of cracks, to know that the capacity of the spinners to spin is endless. Everything is fine, it's no one's fault and the wheel will be back better than ever, you'll see… (Alan Kohler, Business Spectator).

Undoubtedly, there was a lot riding on the Southern Star Observation Wheel and the wheel was to be the epicenter of what was supposedly to be the commercial transformation of what was seen as a 'struggling precinct'. It didn't happen like that confidentiality clauses and the spin doctors working overtime have seen to it that it's only a temporary 'hickup'. Some sceptics are suggesting that despite the metal fatigue the cost of the ride was too high (about $30) and the view as one tourist said 'was nothing much to write home about'. One can only speculate that if the metal fatigue had not eventuated would have the ferris wheel died a slow death through lack of custom? Just another white elephant.

Albury has struggles with it's own particular white elephants - lemons call it what you will. P.S Cumberoona was a paddlesteamer launched in 1987. The original Cumberoona was built in 1866 for carting grain and wool up and down the Murray. When it was launched (with great difficulty) the good ship rapidly fell far short of expectations. Now it doesn't go anywhere - not that it went that much anyhow. What with the river dropping in summer and other factors. The other is the Uiver which has a more esoteric focus of Albury's sense of place, both as a artefact and as a moment in time. In 1934 the Uiver, a DC2 made a forced landing in Albury after it got lost in a storm during the 1934 London to Melbourne Air Race. (For a more comprehensive aspect of the story follow this link http://www.abc.net.au/goulburnmurray/features/uiver/
It's a great yarn. It was a momentous occasion in aviation history anywhere. In 1979 a DC3 was bought so it could be restored as a replica of the Uiver. Artefact and memory fused. While the romance of the occasion has never seemed to wane the DC3 has never been restored. Like the Cumberoona it has been a political football.

Bonegilla Migrant Camp: Block 19 is Wodonga's Big Pineapple and could be a national and international draw card - or so the Mayor of Wodonga recently said. Block 19 was to be a defining aspect of Wodonga's sense of place - a position it held, more or less with other monuments and memories across the border in Albury. The trouble is all three are problematical in how they have been interpreted - and sold to the public.

Close to $3 million dollars has been spent restoring Bonegilla Migrant Camp, one of the defining places in Australia's post WWII history where over 300,000 migrants stayed for various amounts of time before gradually dispersing all over the country. It closed in 1971. Block 19 is a faithfully restored exterior of part of the camp. The original Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre must have been a massive undertaking judging by the remnant that remains namely Block 19. Originally it had 24 accommodation blocks and associated amenities spread over 130 hectares. It wouldn't have been a comfortable place, cold in winter, hot as hell in summer. The meals were Australian cuisine - if you could call it that. Arthur Calwell as Minister for Immigration in the post-war Chifley Government was very keen on it although Asians weren't invited. The trip from the parts that brought them mainly from Europe was not a particularly enlightening experience to some.

…but the ten-hour train and bus journeys were a nightmare for many: "They put us on a train which was very old-fashioned. They had placed some benches in the carriages. When we looked out of the window, the landscape seemed dry with dead sheep, dead cows and dead trees everywhere. We thought what on earth made us do this because in Holland, in those films they showed on information nights, we saw green fields and beautiful houses. Everything we saw on those films looked like a beautiful dream…" (Herman and Geesje Blom, arr 1958)
Bonegilla: Where The Waters Meet, The Dutch Migrant Experience in Australia. Compiled and edited by Dirk and Marijke Eysbertse.

Obviously spin was part of the migrant experience as well. However, the first arrivals, the displaced from the Second World War probably weren't bothered by dead things too much, many having endured human misery almost beyond imagination.

So there it sits, Block 19. To the casual observer it looks like a post-war army camp. Closer inspection inside the buildings is an ordinary affair - a lot of the buildings, inner walls have holes the size of which in one particular instant you could fit a Kangaroo through. Never mind the mouse holes.

There is an interactive display, it is called an interpretation centre. The audio/visual display works when it detects visitors. It's a rather minimalist interactive display at best with a sign telling that souvenirs of Bonegilla can be bought down the road at some shop. And that's it. Block 19 was placed on the National Heritage list in 2008 along with the Sydney Opera House, the MCG and Great Barrier Reef amongst other notable landmarks in Australia. Considering the vast amounts of money poured into the place visiting Block 19 it is not an edifying experience - its historical placement is presented as mere architectural edifice like those Western towns built on Hollywood film lots. There are no few artifacts to give some meaning to the countless souls that passed though the camp. The whole place seems like nothing more than a collection of restored padlocked tin sheds. The 'interactive' centre entirely automated is an interesting piece of architecture, but the reality is just as superficial as the restored facade of Block 19. Just like the facades of those made for film towns. So the Wodonga Council wants to put more money into the place yet why hasn't anyone thought to ask the visitors who go there what they make of it - what their expectations of such a place is. To the second and third generations from the original migrants that Borderline spoke to on the day it visited Bonegilla it simply didn't connect. One particular woman now in her eighties who actually stopped there in the 1960's seemed unenthusiastic about the whole thing. "Everything from the outside seems brand new - in those days it was noisy - people all over. All the different languages. The boredom... All the children running around. Now it looks like some flying saucer has come down and taken everything away including it's soul."

PS Cumberoona: When Albury proudly launched the Cumberoona it was to connect Albury to the river again. Once before rail the Murray-Darling contained many inland ports with numerous paddle-steamers and riverboats plying their trade up and down the river. Yet there was something missing - like Bonegilla - no sense of place - no sense of adventure. It was just there. Trips of any length could only be made downstream because of the Union Bridge. The Albury City Council kept pouring money into it because they didn't know how to market the Cumberoona because unlike Echuca they had turned their back on the river. Of course you can always lay the blame on someone or something and stop the haemorrhaging of ratepayers' funds once and for all. Most people thought that you build a replica of a paddlesteamer and that's enough. We have embraced the river again. Townsfolk and tourist alike will flock to this new attraction. Put in a nice little garden to decorate its moorings, and that was basically it. Except when the river was too low. Then everything came to an abrupt halt. No contingency plans. God forbid just open the bar and let people just sit in it and have a drink. Then again all those years similar boats were left high and dry because of low water levels. That was all part of it. What about Albury's experience when people lived on the river. Steamers being loaded and unloaded. People coming and going. That was part of the experience of living on the river. The river experience was forgotten and building a replica of a paddle-steamer was never quite enough to introduce us or others to the river experience.

Of course no-one asked these questions because that was the Albury way - just like the Uiver. That it was a significant, historical aspect of Albury has never been questioned - then when they thought they would restore a DC3 when in fact the original Uiver was a DC2 was only a minor consideration. What was important was having two separate branches of the same story - the artefact, and the story - and fused into one. Giving it a sense of context. Then it all went terribly wrong as council rivalries and budget depleted. There was continuous disagreement of how the Uiver should be preserved as the aircraft sat out at Albury Airport, exposed and gradually disintegrating through lack of care. Albury City Council never to the task of being able to patch the two aspects - artefact and into one cohesive meaning. Various options were suggested like cutting the front bit off and having it coming through a wall suitably garnished in cloud and sky or whatever - then in desperation they tried to flog it for scrap. Solution (so far) - get a muralist.

...One wall is now a stunning trompe l'oeil mural, designed to trick the eye and create a sense of extra depth behind the café wall… explains the publicity blurb on the Albury City Council website. The artist Marc Spijkerbosch waxes lyrically over his efforts - 'I really enjoyed the notion that using the trompe l'oeil genre we could bring the Uiver event to life," Marc says. "This is more than just a window into the past. It's a threshold that the viewer can cross over and engage more closely with the people and atmosphere of the event.'

'It's just after 5.00 am and dawn's break reveals the Uiver bogged down at the racecourse, just beyond the café,' Marc says in an earlier paragraph.

'Key players from the Uiver rescue are depicted enjoying a well-deserved coffee, conversing, musing and reading the Border Morning Mail newspaper.'

Must be a bit of poetic license here. The plane had flown from the other side of the world in the last leg of the 1934 London to Melbourne Commemorative Air Race, their plane is bogged - what about the expense - and the key players are having a well deserved-coffee, conversing, musing and reading the Border Morning Mail! One would have thought they would be out checking the plane after all it landed at night so one would have thought the last thing they had on their minds at first light was sitting around having a well deserved coffee, conversing, musing and reading the Border Morning Mail. They would have been out there kicking tyres - doing all those things you would do in such circumstances.

Then again a sense of occasion like a sense of place is subject to various interpretations. Monuments and memories are distilled according to committees and panels. Agendas metamorphose into self righteousness and enmity. Compromise ascends into mediocrity.
In the end monuments and memories become confused and unintelligible. We all move on with a clear conscience that we gave it our best shot. That it wasn't good enough, wasn't their fault.

If you had a spare hour or two, however, they could damn well tell you whose fault it was though.