This Day Tonight: A city without a heart?

Shot of moving van driving down a country road

PETER, PAUL AND MARY

# All my bags are packed # I'm ready to go # I'm standing here outside your door… #

REPORTER

Once every hour, somebody new moves to Canberra. They join a population that's the best-paid, best-educated, best-housed in Australia. If it's a really a lucky country, this surely is the luckiest city. But, asks the critics, does it have a soul?

PETER, PAUL AND MARY

# Already I'm so lonesome # I could cry. #

Close-up shot of fountains in front of Old Parliament House

WOMAN

I'll go to Sydney, I'd go to Melbourne, I'll go anywhere — almost — to get away from Canberra.

WOMAN 2

In Canberra you just exist all week and then you go up to Sydney where all the life is, because there's just more feeling in Sydney.

Shot of National Library of Australia

MAN

It's success for the planners but maybe not for the people. Only the other weekend I was down in Sydney and some people saw my 'ACT' plate and they said 'Oh, you're the chosen people'. Well, little did they know I was fleeing the Promised Land.

Shot of the Australian War Memorial at Canberra

WOMAN 1

I feel as though I don't belong and I feel as though I'm intruding if I do try to partake in something. And I'd just rather give up and not try.

Shot of Canberra from a lookout point overlooking Lake Burley Griffin and the city centre

REPORTER

Amid the wide roads, the big parks, the expensive monuments, a few voices of disillusion. And a few warning signs to back them up. According to one expert, Canberra may have a higher incidence of mild to moderate mental disorder than other capital city. The figures available indicate its attempted suicide rate may be as high, if not higher, than elsewhere. All the more dismaying in a city where everything's been laid on for the comfort of the citizen, right down to a ten cent-gas jet so that you don't have to get your hands dirty, barbecuing.

Shot of reporter switching gas barbecue on

MAN

I think the biggest problem is the rapid change of the human environment, the high growth rate and the high mobility rate of the city. People are changing at four or five times the rate that they're used to in other cities in Australia. I think this is a fairly heavy burden for a number of people. Though many others, of course, find it most stimulating.

REPORTER

One of the complaints we've heard very frequently is that everything is just too well laid-on, too much is given and there's not enough of the human element in the planning here.

MAN

Um, this may have been so with town planning in the far past, but certainly the town planners nowadays, particularly in Canberra, are coming together very much with both the community and with experts in social and emotional matters to talk about their planning at an early stage. This has happened recently with the early planning of Tuggeranong.

REPORTER

But do you think there is some truth in the proposition that if something is too neat, too clean, too nice that it doesn't become or doesn't seem to be human to people?

MAN

Um, I don't know about the neatness and cleanliness so much as perhaps I think the people live in a place ought to as far as possible take as much part in the planning of that place. And this is now being thought more of here.

REPORTER

Every city has its knockers but Canberra seems to have more than most. Hard to make friends, they say. Hard to keep them once you've made them. 55% of the workforce is Government-employed which means a constant turnover of residents. One in six have been here less than two years. The public servants are blamed for bringing to the city a virulent form of social snobbery where a Grade 5 may snub a Grade 4 he meets at a party.

Shot of man in diner

MAN IN DINER

In my opinion, there's too many public servants always talking about their job in Canberra, and they're always crawling for a higher job. In fact, it has caste system based on public service status and this detracts from it, it creates an artificial society, in my opinion. Certain people stick in a group together. Not that I'm complaining all that much, but the point is that it does happen, you see, and some people that are new here are left out of groups and they don't know anyone, and this can cause some of the problem.