Former prime minister Paul Keating is once again stirring up a storm with his outspoken views on architecture.

At a book launch in Melbourne yesterday the former Labor leader labelled Canberra “a great mistake” and said that Melbourne or Sydney should have been the nation’s capital.

“One can conduct a proper life [in Melbourne],” he said. “Going to Chinese restaurants in Manuka, it’s got limitations.”

Launching Building a Free Australia: Places of Democracy, a book detailing the places and people that played an important part in Australian political history, Keating condemned the “great conceit of modernism”.

But he also went on to grumble about the Victorian attitude to heritage, saying of the garden state’s architecture: “I used to call it Whorehouse Rococo or Bordello Baroque”.

The “heritage mafia” was creating a fiction by pretending that poorly designed buildings should become important “by sheer dint of age”, he said.

Has Keating said too much about architecture?

Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Robert Doyle responded to Keating’s claims, telling 3AW that “unlike the prime minister, I haven’t made a close inspection of the architecture of brothels”.

The Lord Mayor switched from defending Melbourne architecture to slating Sydney, calling the Harbour Bridge an “ugly water crossing”.

Keating was joined by another former prime minister Malcolm Fraser who also chipped in to describe Canberra’s Parliament House as “grand beyond belief”. The building divided politicians from the public they are meant to serve, he said.

The book, by acclaimed historian John Hirst and published by the Australian Heritage Council, looks at both the obvious and unconventional sites of political history. The study takes in houses of parliament, Sydney’s Court House, Hobart’s Government House, Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building and the site of Henry Parkes’ Federation speech, the Tenterfield’s School of Arts, as well as lesser known places like pubs, hotels, theatres and public parks.

Historical sites from each state and territory are featured, along with stories and images celebrating the role these places played in Australia’s democracy. Six of the ‘places of democracy’ are included in Australia’s National Heritage List due to their outstanding value to the nation.

Gemma Battenbough

Keating-slams-heritage-as-whorehouse-Rococo--1736094703.png

Let’s connect!