Margot Giblin Citizen Reporter
At the Council meeting argument for a ‘whatsitsname’ was presented as facing reality better than any objection. The inference was made by more than one speaker that inability to handle a crematorium in your suburb meant you were being unrealistic, and further, in denial of your own mortality.
NORTH HOBART BURNING
Hobart City Council
Open Council Meeting
Monday 27th November 2006
5pm
Aldermen
Present: Lord Mayor Rob Valentine, Deputy Lord Mayor Eva Ruzicka,
Jeff Briscoe, Peter Sexton, Ron Christie, Phil Cocker, Helen Burnet,
John Freeman, Eric Hayes, Marti Zucco
Apologies Darlene Haig
Leave of Absence Lyn Archer
‘To be honest it’s one of those items we never want to see come before us’, said Alderman Ron Christie at the Development and Environmental Services meeting on Monday 20th November. But there it was, and there it was again, a week later.
‘And there it will be one day, for every person in this room’, said Alderman John Freeman when it came before the Open Council meeting.
Death, and should there be a crematorium in North Hobart?
The applicant, B.Turnbull wants to add a crematorium to the funeral home already established at 71 Letitia St.
At the earlier committee meeting Aldermen Briscoe (chair) Christie, Haig and Ruzicka listened to objections and to the applicant as well as considering written submissions and the Council officers’ report.
Objections included:
coffee roasting in Battery point wasn’t accepted so why should this be in North Hobart?
the burning of human bodies is not appropriate within the area in question
concern for the psychological effect, especially on children, in the neighbourhood.
The representor speaking for many in the area said the proposal did not fit with the Council’s own aims to increase ‘a cosmopolitan, outdoor style of living in North Hobart and the Glebe’. He said that outdoor entertainment, a barbecue for instance, became an unpleasant idea if you considered the questions guests might ask about the visible smoke plume from the crematorium.
The applicant, Mr Barry Turnbull, bracketed his spoken submission with a Dickensian sensibility, opening with ’Death is the Last Taboo’ and closing with ‘The Needs of the Grieving Public’.
He said he was surprised there were so few objections — only 67. He talked of distances — the closest home to the proposed crematorium being as far away as the Franklin Square fountain from where he now sat.
He spoke of the inconvenience and stress involved if both the deceased person and the mourners had to move from Ryde St. to Cornelian Bay 2 km away. Some families don’t like ’Mum and Dad on the road between service and committal’ and other drivers are often ‘impatient with slow moving hearses’.
As for the effect on children, an (unnamed) South Australian psychologist states that any reasonable person will get over it, said Mr. Turnbull.
Will it smell? What is the chance of accidents?
The language was often frank. Reality got a good airing. Questions were asked by councillors.
Will it smell? What is the chance of accidents?
No it won’t and no chance. Pacemakers are removed from cadavers prior to incineration to prevent explosions.
The officers’ report gave the application ticks on everything bar use, saying the proposal wouldn’t further the rehabilitation of the Precinct as an inner city residential area, and has the potential to encourage the expansion of commercial and industrial uses at the expense of potential infill housing.
On balance, they said the proposal is considered unacceptable and refusal was recommended.
Which brings us to the open Council meeting a week later.
The suggestion that death is the last unmentionable and therefore gets in the way of rational thought was carried over to this full council meeting. Here the motion that came from the committee meeting was to take the officers’ advice and refuse the application.
One alderman, in the very act of arguing that emotion could cloud clarity of vision, proved the point.
Zucco, seemingly caught in an eternal game of ‘Round and round the garden, went the teddy bear’ was unable to remember or dare to utter the end-line that would get him out of there.
Bluffly assuring others that they needed to confront reality, put ‘what goes on in there’ out of their minds and resolve what should be a planning, not an emotional decision, Zucco found himself quite unable to say the word for the proposed structure, settling for a ‘whatsaname’.
A concerned member of the public, feeling that even this was getting too close for comfort interjected forcefully that’ it’ shouldn’t be discussed at all, ‘it’s a terrible thing to talk about.’ Valentine in trying to shush her, called her ma’am which led to her choice of a better topic —The Queen — on which she had a bit to say.
When debate was back on track …
Cocker and Valentine did try to point out that it wasn’t emotion as much as clear advice from Council planning officers in relation to the intended future rehabilitation of North Hobart to residential use and away from light industry that swayed them. Along with Ruzicka and Burnet, they were outvoted 6-4.
So, at the Development meeting cadavers and pacemakers, barbecues and smoke plumes were named and discussed. At the end of this debate, and on the grounds of future use in the suburb, refusal of the crematorium was recommended although the tribunal was flagged as a likely outcome.
At the Council meeting argument for a ‘whatsitsname’ was presented as facing reality better than any objection. The inference was made by more than one speaker that inability to handle a crematorium in your suburb meant you were being unrealistic, and further, in denial of your own mortality.
It’s possible that these distinctly emotional arguments contributed to the decision being made on other than purely planning criteria, despite the councillors stated best intentions.
