If Canberra’s skyline icon became a den of cards and Dior, it would be no more unusual than our only nationally significant event being a raging car and mullet fest.

Nor would it be worse than the status quo. For the last five years Telstra Tower has been a carpark for sex and meth.

The ACT Government and Telstra signed a heads of agreement in July, proposing to reopen the tower by the end of next year. Telstra promises a “cafe, retail space and observation deck” (ie, opening the door to the balcony) while Chief Minister Andrew Barr last year hinted at ziplines.

However, Barr once hinted at an ice rink in Tuggeranong and the return of the Birdman Rally.

There was talk of reopening Telstra Tower as a Ngunnawal ‘cultural tourism centre’, but there were issues from the start. Some have suggested a telecommunications museum – two words that should never go together.

Region ran a community poll some years ago asking readers what they thought Telstra Tower should be, and hundreds said a nightclub. But until a new baron or baroness of sly grog arises, or until we get the proposed Central Planner of the Nighttime Economy, the nightclubbing business remains in the gutter.

Has the bottom fallen out of the casino-resort business?

Equity empire Blackstone is wrangling the Crown brand into new glory with a glittering suite of hospitality offerings. Star struggles after dirty-money scandals, but when I glided through the Brisbane precinct recently, fountains and Veuve trickling, it felt as defiantly glam as beleaguered Princess Margaret.

However, casinos play second fiddle while pokies are everywhere in Australia’s community hubs. The ACT’s Minister for Gambling Reform, Dr Marisa Paterson, would love to see pokies banned on academic grounds, but the government, for various reasons, would not.

A phase-out is underway.

And I am not here to preach that such a phase-out will end meat raffles and community sport, or conversely that it will lead to fewer home wreckages on the rocks of an old, old vice.

I am here to say that the vice, in place of some others, should be welcomed at a Night on Black Mountain.

The glittering Black Mountain Resort would welcome not only social gamblers but also name-brand diners, sneaker speculators and owners of flourishing pallet businesses on a trip to wow trophy gfs/bfs. The resort would add an expanded ground floor, a revolving fine-dining restaurant by a celebrity chef, and an open-air piazza with flames shooting into the night sky. A turquoise-lit lagoon, heated to 35 degrees in winter.

What the revolving view could be. Photo: AI.

During Summernats, cashy bogans would stay at the Black Mountain Resort, with prices dancing around $1200 a night and piles of Eastern rock lobster. Rumours would swirl that Anika Wells was spotted there during Sitting Week.

I am not asking you to love the idea.

I’m not even asking you to prefer it to a revolving telecommunications museum: ‘This is the Overland Telegraph. This is Telecom. This is John Howard privatising part of Telstra. This is fibre to the node. Exit to the Gift Store.’

But I hurl the idea into the mix.