Yes, we can stop now and we must

“W

e can’t stop now” was a recent utterance about Shepparton’s then proposed new art museum and interestingly an idiom that echoes around the world about how we live and consume.



An artist's impression of what
is proposed at Victoria Park
Lake in Shepparton.

The briefest of searches will illustrate, without any serious contradiction, that we are on the wrong path and it is imperative that we “stop now”.

A new art museum for Shepparton is a wonderful idea, but in locking the city monetarily into particular pathway, it also locks us out from tackling ideas and projects; ideas and projects essential for a city braced to confront the challenges of the 21st Century.

Rather than single major projects such as the art museum that appeal to our better-selves, we should be looking at and investing in what might be termed the “fine grain” of our community.

True, the proposed art museum, as it is envisaged, will have multiply applications, but in a broad sense it will have relatively narrow uses and the overall cost to the community will preclude the creation and development of alternative community assets the future will demand.

It is undeniable that the world has already passed what is colloquially known as “peak oil" and so the collapse of this energy resource marks the end of private transport and so the need for all levels of government to invest immediately and heavily in public transit systems.

Beyond that, those same authorities, and in this case the City of Greater Shepparton, need to legislate and act to create communities that can be easily and conveniently traversed by human powered transport, on foot or by bicycle.

Even though a walk through any of Shepparton’s supermarkets suggest otherwise, finding food will become increasingly challenging and so our council should be planning and creating community gardens throughout Shepparton, Mooroopna and all other centres within the municipality.

The push to improve Melbourne/Shepparton rail services warrants applause, but the real urgency is to refresh, rebuild and recreate the wonderful rail network of earlier this century that laced Victoria together, including the Goulburn Valley.

If Shepparton is to prosper in the coming decades it needs to find another way and not depend on exhausted energy-rich ideas of the 20th Century for a conflation of 21st Century difficulties, among them climate change, makes what once worked, redundant.

That “other way” is not about building stand-alone art museums, rather building a resilience that takes its cues from a simpler life that demands less of earth’s finite resources, encourages us to share those same resources, and reduce our demands on the carbon-rich energy that further disrupts earth’s climate system.

“We can’t stop now” philosophy is clearly wrong, we can stop, and we must stop as the security of future generations rests with us understanding the need to change direction.

Trapped in a vacuum of imagination

Shepparton is trapped in a vacuum of imagination.

Worse than that, we have so enthusiastically pursued what it is we already understand and are comfortable with, that we now find ourselves stumbling about in a blind canyon.

What the Goulburn Valley needs is imaginative leaders; those who understand the choices that confront not just people here, but society generally.

The history of conflict; conflicts whose costs are measured in millions of lives, serious disruption to many of those left alive and a financial cost beyond measurement, is simply a matter of poor choice and the failure to imagine that there was, and is, a better way.

Shepparton faces challenges which are simply a microcosm of the malign difficulties presently facing the world and the challenges they present can be eased, or avoided completely, by making the right choices.

The City of Greater Shepparton council has set out to “Make Shepparton Greater” listing commerce, health, justice and transport, both road and rail, projects as priorities on which both it and the community should focus.

The enthusiasm and excitement about this idea is to be applauded, but with restraint for although the projects are of themselves worthy they contribute little to building a Shepparton that will endure the unfolding differences ahead.

Rather than building on what exists, all of us, from the council down, should be stepping back, learning about how the world is going to unfold and understanding that the creation of a resilient Greater Shepparton, one able to withstand the inevitable shocks spinning off from energy depletion, and food and water shortages arising from a damaged climate, demands imagination.

What do we do?

Rather than constantly expanding our boundaries, we should imagine ways of moving people toward the centre of the city, making walking and cycling nor only easier, but preferable because it is both quicker and cheaper; we need to develop a public transit system, not only within the city itself, but one that links-up all the towns and villages that make up the Greater City; we need a complex mosaic of community vegetable gardens throughout the city; frequent (monthly?) programs should be aimed at helping people understand why we need to embrace resilience and within that begin to talk about the importance of sharing.

We don’t forget, however, about the health or justice aspects of Making Shepparton Greater, but we make them part of city whose maintenance is less energy-intensive.

We have a choice – we can follow the energy-intensive business as usual trajectory or we can use imaginative thoughtful ways of living that will see us break the business as usual mould; consider and implement renewable energy and in contemplating sustainability, build a resilient community and, in doing so, “Make Shepparton Greater”.