Duke’s Views On Canberra Incense

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30741, 4 May 1965, Page 17

Duke’s Views On Canberra Incense

(N Z PA.-Rcuter—Copyright) CANBERRA, May 3.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s statement on the 8.8. C. that Canberra, Australia’s capital, “lacks soul,” has stirred up a hornet’s nest in Canberra.

A member of Parliament said he thought the Duke had not been in Canberra long enough to determine whether it had a soul. In his interview, the Duke said specially-built cities like Canberra had tremendous advantages from an administrative point of view.

“But I think any com-pletely-planned structure of that kind is always going to miss something of the human cussedness which makes a town worth living in,” he said. “And 1 think one of the difficulties with .all these, like Washington and Ottawa to a certain extent, they lack . . . I don’t know how one would describe it . . . they lack soul.”

Mr J. Fraser, the Federal member for the Australian Capital Territory, disputed the Duke’s claim.

“I would have thought he was unable to spend sufficient time in Canberra or to meet enough people to determine whether Canberra

has a soul,” he said. “Canberra lacks the long lines of tenements and slums of cities like London, and perhaps these are where a ‘soul’ is developed. “But I am certain most people in Canberra regard it as a marvellous place to live,” said Mr Fraser, a Labour member. Mr J. H. Pead, the chairman of the A.C.T. Advisory Council, the elected body which advises the Minister for the Interior, said the Duke's claim was “not new.” “This council has often hammered that to make a city live, it takes people—not monuments of metal,” he said.

“The Duke’s point is prob-

ably well taken. By giving people more responsibility and more say in their city, we could go some way toward giving it the things it lacks,” said Mr Pead in an obvious reference to the council's attempts to become autonomous;

“There is a tendency in Canberra to spend a little too much on monuments of metal and not enough on providing homes and other amenities for people,” he said. Mrs Anne Dalgarno, a member of the Advisory Council, said the Duke's statement was “most peculiar.” “There is certainly no lack of what the Duke chooses to call ‘human cussedness* in Canberra,” she said.