IN the ever-escalating debate over religion versus atheism there is one often overlooked piece of evidence that definitively proves there is no God.
Its name is Canberra.
Indeed, it should be a source of pride for non-believing Australians that our national capital is itself proof that there is no supreme being. Were anybody watching over us there is no way they would allow such a place to exist.
There are, of course, possible arguments against this.
One is that a forward-thinking and all-knowing deity has created a horrendously unbearable gulag in which to imprison public servants.
But if He intended to keep the rest of society safe from them why did He allow Al Gore to invent the internet?
Another is that God created Canberra to remind Sydneysiders to stop whinging about where they live. But then why did He make it look so much like St Leonards?
A third is that He deliberately located Canberra in such a miserable inhospitable place that no right-thinking person would ever go there of their own free will. But then He invented the Budget lock-up.
And so once a year busloads of journalists, lobbyists, economists and commentators (all right, I am loosening the definition of "right-thinking person" here) travel in procession down the Federal Highway to be greeted by the finest skyline that 1970s architecture has to offer.
Budget Day is to political nerds what Christmas Day is to children, although in this year's case it was the equivalent of gathering around the Christmas tree to find that Santa had come down the chimney in the middle of the night and taken all the presents back.
(Obviously the exception is disabled kids, who will get heaps of stuff, which is truly excellent, but that ruins my analogy so let's move on.)
It should be stressed here that the Budget lock-up is not all bad. For example there are no windows and nobody is allowed to go outside, so at least one is spared from having to look at Canberra itself.
And of course it is an actual lock-up, which means that my colleagues have to hang out with me for at least six hours (although they would probably see that as less of a benefit than I do).
Then, at 7.30pm when the doors open, we are set free into the Canberra night to experience all the joys our capital has to offer, such as freezing to death in a gutter and engaging with the city's surprisingly well-educated homeless population.
It is also on the streets of Canberra that one experiences its most exquisitely unique quality, which is an absolute ban on having a beer and a cigarette at the same time.
Again, it must be stressed that smoking is a terrible habit that causes death. There is nothing to recommend it. In a perfect world all smoking would be banned.
But Canberra doesn't ban smoking outright, it just bans you from doing it with a beer in your hand, which is of course the depraved and ostracised smoker's last remaining pleasure.
In other words you're allowed to smoke, you're just not allowed to enjoy it.
This in many ways summarises the Canberra ethos. Not content with telling people how to live, it must also tell them how to die.
Fortunately when one visits Canberra this is not such an unappealing option. There are only so many cube-shaped buildings and circle-shaped intersections one can encounter before the thought of chronic traffic congestion and sky-high property prices becomes strangely appealing.
But the official position on smoking and drinking offers no such luxury. Indeed there are many bouncers aggressively deployed throughout the capital to ensure that while you can continue to asphyxiate yourself on its frosted streets, you cannot do so in any context in which you might go out happily.
Indeed, the doormen are great ambassadors for the ACT, whose primary message in this centenary year is "f ... off" (or, to be more specific, "f ... off four metres away) which compared to Canberra's natural attractions is the most enticing thing about the place.
And yet after the drive down with a great friend, and the subsequent sending pictures to said friend of my commando runs to the street with cigarette and beer in hand, and the bus chase through Civic that followed (an entirely unrelated matter that I will vigorously deny in court), and the constant threat of ejection from a venue that I was already outside of, I found myself collapsed in the bed of my eco-friendly, carbon-neutral, energy-saving and entirely smoke-free hotel thinking that I had somehow had a pretty good time.
The next day, while at a standstill in crippling traffic on the M5 in Campbelltown, my friend and I high-fived each other to celebrate that we were finally back in civilisation. Only 50km and three more hours to go.
Maybe there is a God after all.
blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/joehildebrand
Twitter: @Joe_Hildebrand
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