Grand court house proposal assualts good sense

I

deas reminiscent of the energy-rich 20^th Century and appealing to and warming egos are embedded in a plan to build a large, glamourous and centralized court in Shepparton.

The grand new court house proposed
 for Shepparton - energy scarcity
and information abundance
makes it already obsolete.

Cutting to the chase, it is simply the wrong thing to do.

Shepparton people frequently lament the centralization of government and health facilities in Melbourne, and a few major regional centres, and now, in a Goulburn Valley sense, we are doing the same thing.

Centralization of services was good sense in the energy rich and information poor 20^th Century, but the circumstances have reversed; we now have an overabundance of information and a scarcity of energy.

Living in what is colloquially known as the “information age” and the officially deemed “Anthropocene” – an era in which humans are now the major influence on the earth’s biosphere – leaves us no option but to design our lives around those two facts.

Rather than taking the people to where the infrastructure is, we should be taking the infrastructure, which now is frequently little more than information, to where the people are.

So instead of spending richly on creating a soon to be impractical 20^th Century piece of infrastructure, we need to understand how the disruptive information technology works and take the until now court house-bound law processes to the people.

The modern court house need be nought more than a mobile, compact team of people, armed with a barrage of technology around which the information age has been built, and through that take what is a virtual court house to the people.

True, the virtual court house idea is not ideal but even a cursory look at world events, with just a hint of understanding, illustrates that Shepparton will not be afforded exemption from the unfolding rigours facing humanity, such as resource scarcity and a seriously disrupted climate, and so maintenance of our civil society might need some less than ideal ideas.

It seems that the concepts upon which the last century were built have infiltrated our being to such an extent that we can no longer think beyond the horizon and our subsequent sclerotic thinking prohibits us from imagining that there might be another way; a better way of doing things that allows us to take off the blinkers that so limit our view and subsequently our perceptions.

What is proposed is unquestionably impressive, but for those of us interested in creating a community that is both sustainable and resilient, and ready to withstand the unsettling and difficult decades ahead, it assaults good sense.

Shepparton should be applauded for its ambitious endeavours in providing the city with a grand new art museum and now an equally grand court house, but considering the needs that our different future will demand, both are inappropriate.