The Opera House by Peter Fitzsimons

Author:Peter Fitzsimons [FitzSimons, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

MALICE IN BLUNDERLAND

The Opera House could become the world’s foremost contemporary masterpiece if Utzon is given his head and if it is not spoilt by an attempt to squeeze it into the established patterns. What is required is that everybody, Public, Press and Politicians should want this to happen.1

Ove Arup, memo to Premier Heffron, 26 March 1963

Labor was in charge from the conception of an Opera House competition in 1956 to May 1965. This was nine years of sheer incompetence, great confusion and a total loss of control. To say that the whole project was in a state of suspended animation would be generous … To say that it was in a state of inanimate chaos would also be generous but closer to the truth. It was near disaster.2

Davis Hughes, ‘Twenty Years at the Sydney Opera House’, 1993

1 May 1965, Sydney, the symphony’s third movement

After 10 days of counting, the last prayers are uttered, the last curses are muttered and … the last ballots counted … the Coalition of the Liberal Party and Country Party wins the NSW election with a slim majority of 47 to 45, to form their first government in 24 years.

The newly crowned Premier, Robin Askin, is exultant.

‘We’re in the tart shop now, boys!’3 he is overheard to say to some of his fellow Ministers when the victory is announced.

In the words of The Daily Telegraph, ‘The message of this is that the majority of the people of this State have finally revolted against being pushed around by a Government grown arrogant and indifferent to public opinion. After 24 years they are saying: “We’ve had enough”.’4

(Which is quite possibly true. But certainly, helping fill their electoral sails is the fact that the ‘red terror’ sweeping the globe, even as Australian boys are being shipped off to Vietnam to stop it, has seen an overall swing towards both conservative press and politics.)

The first thing on the Coalition’s agenda is sorting out the Opera House mess.

Premier Askin, knowing he needs a no-nonsense hard nut to take over Public Works, the most politically contentious Ministry of the day, hands the job to the Country Party’s former leader and the member for Armidale, William Davis Hughes, a man looking for redemption – after that unfortunate matter of faking his academic credentials had nearly wrecked him.

From the first, it is recognised he will have his work cut out for him.

‘I have not yet seen the file on the Opera House,’ the newly installed Premier Askin quips to a journalist from the Herald, ‘but I wouldn’t be surprised if … the Minister for Public Works, Mr Davis Hughes, doesn’t turn up to Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting with it under his arm – if he can carry it; he might need a wheelbarrow.’5

For his part, Davis Hughes is sure he has the grit to take it on and resolves to take the Ministry in general and the Sydney Opera House, in particular, by the horns.

Of course, the choice of Davis Hughes in the Public Works role is not obvious to everyone, even in his own family.

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