Some good news from the Reserve Bank of Australia - that’s not a thing you hear a lot. King Charles will not replace Queen Elizabeth II on the fiver; instead, indigenous motifs will be incorporated.

Back to the future from ‘66 when the introductory $1 note had the Queen on one side, indigenous graphics on the other, all in Dorothea McKellar’s wide-land brown. Gordon Andrews, the great industrial/graphic designer, gave an insightful rendering of the opposites in Australia's history. You can read notes about his other notes here.

The indigenous artwork is based on photographic prints made by Max Dupain of the Karal Kupka collection of bark paintings from Arnhem land. The key painting is by Malangi, who was paid a reproduction fee of $1000, risible then as now. If that’s how the RBA acted under the redoubtable ‘Nugget’ Coombs, what hope will the new aboriginal artists under the appropriately named Lowe. It would be far cheaper and more effective to use a dartboard or a chocolate wheel with rates on it. Remember, the RBA was made so tarot card readers look good.

I'm still angry at lazy journalists who misuse ‘architect’, and furious that they've faced no consequences. Using ‘architect’ is protected by the Architect's Registration Board in each state, there are serious consequences for misrepresentation. Have you noticed how frequently we now hear about ‘architects of the budget’ or the ‘architects of the election strategy’ or ‘architects of the RBA rate rise’.

Why not designer, developer, creator? I can almost tolerate its use in most circumstances, but ‘architects of Robodebt’? That’s a step too far when we now know, courtesy of the Robodebt inquiry, that it was masterminded by devious politicians and their lickspittle public servants. Not architects. Never architects.

The big thing for the AIA NSW Chapter in February was a forum about housing policy for the upcoming election. Co-sponsored at the Sheraton Grand by the Institutes of engineers, planners and landscape architects, attendees dined on three courses and heard from three parties, of course. It began with an eloquent presentation on housings five A’s by outgoing President Laura Cockburn: affordable, appropriate, agency, accessible and amenity. It's a pity that her excellent speech is not available online.

But it was downhill from there. Rob Stokes (LNP - left in the photo if not in politics) gave a rather long but jovial presentation, no doubt knowing he would be free of any consequences in less than two months. Rose Jackson and Paul Scully (next and obscured - Labor) had half the time, double the analysis. Next to them is Laura with the microphone, and out of shot is Cate Faehrmann from the Greens, with the best ideas and realistic numbers.

Each gave an analysis of the problems (yes, yes, we knnoooooww), but not a single decent solution was offered. Surprising since they were talking to a room full of architects who crave creativity. It was depressing to discover that no matter who gets elected on March the 25th housing will remain the forgotten, but all too crucial portfolio, unless the Greens hold the balance of power. Cate Faehrmann’s downcast expression throughout seemed as if she was resigned to their continued fate of the purity of impotence, but a hung parliament now seems quite possible given the lacklustre leaders. Hooray.

I have a thing about NIMBYs, and recently some other acronyms came to mind. Worse than Not in My Backyard NIMBYs are the Not Over There Either NOTEs. Combined we get Citizens Against Virtually Everything CAVE dwellers. All together they are a bunch of BANANAs, Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Perhaps readers let me know a few more usefully creative acronymic putdowns.

One last thing; we end with BOOKENDS: a brief review of two books; one past, one present on a similar topic. This week ‘fab-pre-fab’. House out of Factory by John Gloag and Grey Wornum is a detailed up-to-the-minute introduction to prefabricated manufacture - except it was published in in 1946, which you can tell from the dated font and old-style drawings. But in every other respect it could have been written any time in the last 50 years in the way it addresses the issues of the technology, manufacture, mechanisation, and building. More of the irrepressible John Gloag here.

Pre-Fab Living presages turning a corner, to be more about the quality that you can obtain through prefab, and the consequences for quality of life therein. Avi Friedman's approach acknowledges the technology has been the focus for so long, but moves beyond that to the intentions in the designs: the way the houses are meant to be lived in. There's no point in reading anything in between those books as far as I'm concerned, you only need the two: the original idea of a making a house in a factory and how we can live well in it when it's built.

More things next week. Tone Wheeler is an architect / the views expressed are his / contact at toneontuesday@gmail.com.

Tone Wheeler

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