FROM UNDERNEATH THE WIZARD'S HAT - MAGICAL THINKING IN THE NT
Developing the north is tough to explain for a politician. So the NT Country Liberal Government has focused on providing some real world examples instead. One of the best examples has been ‘Nightcliff Island’, the plan to lease 98 hectares of ocean to Darwin-based developer Halikos Group so that they could build an island out to sea on which houses would be built. This would be a political win for the Liberal party because it would ease Darwin’s housing shortage.
This is a magical thought and Darwin is probably the capital of magical thinking in Australia. Whereas the project could have been rejected as a trashy, tacky and expensive development that does very little to address housing shortage concerns, Darwinians were actually pretty hot for the idea.
Jacqueline Marie probably best represented the mood when she said on the NT News Facebook page, “Wow that’s bloody awesome!”
Other comments were similarly supportive.
Ben: “We need more shopping centres”
Jacqui: “We honestly need this in our territory. There is nothing to do as for fun and I think this is the perfect thing!”
Both Aaron and Clayton thought the project might offer some nice fishing opportunities. “That’s effing awesome more fishing,” commented Aaron.
Although the project had unqualified support from Darwin’s magical thinking community it also had detractors, who had probably come from somewhere else.
“Why not build some more AFFORDABLE housing for territorians who actually need it before wasting money on something that is so unnecessary,” wrote Jess, who was not thinking magically at all. A community of such unmagical types even protested against the proposed Nightcliff Island development.
Unfortunately, sometimes magical thinking comes across insurmountable material factors. In this case it was mud.
As the then acting Planning Minister John Elferink explained in January of 2014, “The Halikos group is simply scratching a rock to go and have a look if a proposal is viable”.
I think what he meant by that is that they were hoping to find a rock bottom at the site and that would mean that the project was viable.
What they found, however, was mud. “They tell me what they’ve found with this technical drilling is mud. And more mud. And more mud. And more mud.” said the NT’s Planning Minister Dave Tollner in March of this year.
The project was dead. But not willing to bow out quietly, Dave Tollner offered some typically magical comments in closing:
"I honestly think we should have a state of emergency over this thing, because it might come as a surprise but Captain Hook is turning up and he's actually bought that 14-storey building on Nightcliff Island and he's preparing to put rocket turrets along it and he's going to bomb the people of Nightcliff," Mr Tollner said.
"I got a phone call last night on my magic telephone from Peter Pan, and he had Tinker Bell there with him, they're visiting the Member for Nightcliff's house tonight."
He went on to say that there were plans for a “unicorn breeding facility” on the island.
‘The realists may have won this battle’, Tollner seemed to be saying, ‘but I’m the greatest magical thinker in the Territory’.
He could very well be right.
From Underneath the Wizard's Hat is written by a true blue magical thinker of the Territory.
