The
variety of extreme opinions about the real intent of the City of Melbourne for
QVM’s future is mirrored around the world as people mysteriously pick unlikely
explanations for a variety of events.
The picture here shows a night event in Californian skies recently which understandably
drew a lot of interest and caused Elon Musk to sarcastically tweet that it
could be “a nuclear alien UFO from North Korea”. We can assume he was sick of
irrational opinions dogging politics and technological innovations in recent
times.
In
fact the vision was of Musk’s Space X Falcon 9 rocket launch which was
delivering 24 satellites into earth orbit. Of all the explanations for the
night event that was the most likely but not nearly as exciting as the threat
of aliens, nuclear warheads, or attack by North Korea.
Some
6 years ago the City of Melbourne declared that it was going to invest up to
$250m in the Queen Victoria Market to ensure that it didn’t track the decline of
many overseas markets. After years of taking income from the market it was
decided that the market needed investment in basics like power, running water,
and logistical support. Essentially it needed to be brought up to scratch so
that it could be relevant to Melbourne’s landscape for another 140 years. The
city even changed the status of the market to guarantee public use for
perpetuity and launched a campaign for World Heritage listing. That was a
perfectly reasonable and likely intent for a city that wanted to keep a
traditional open air market as part of its city landscape.
But
that likely explanation didn’t stop the sceptics from announcing that the City
had other intentions. They wanted to “destroy” our market, “grab” its land for
other purposes, “sanitise” its offer, and even “get rid of” all its traders.
Despite the City’s extremely high credentials for City planning and activation,
the sceptics questioned their intent.
Elon
Musk tweeted on Christmas Eve - “So strange that people often believe things
inversely proportionate to the evidence. Given a set of possible explanations,
why pick the extremely unlikely one!?” It is curious that extreme explanations
gather so much traction although much of it can be put down to those who
believe that the only real news is whatever they want others to believe. It can
pay to be sceptical but maybe it needs to be directed at the intent of the
sceptics rather than, in the case of QVM, the more likely explanation, of
protecting a city landmark.