Today, Adelaide loses a visionary, Geoff Brock flip-flops rather conveniently, and Isobel Redmond performs a reverse pike with twist.
Brain drain
The founding CEO of the Committee for Adelaide, Tim Horton, is leaving the Athens of the South.
Horton, the former Integrated Design Commissioner, has been a passionate supporter of his adopted home town – and it says something that he’s pulling up stumps.
He’s leaving town gracefully and quietly – he’s not slamming the door as he leaves.
This has been his style: he could have said plenty after the IDC was dumped – but he has kept his own counsel.
His new gig – announced in Sydney this morning – is Registrar of the NSW Architects Registration Board.
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Another one bites the dust.
The Member for Flip-Flop
Geoff Brock, the independent Member for Frome who allowed Labor to form power, has shown himself to be an arch-pragmatist.
And that’s probably being generous.
During the state election campaign, he happily distributed a choice scare letter from the Housing Trust Tenants Association which warned constituents that they might be booted out of their trust homes if the evil Liberals ever gained power.
Liberal candidate Kendall Jackson certainly believes the letter damaged her chances.
Fast forward to yesterday and what do we know?
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Brock joined with fellow independent Martin Hamilton-Smith and the Liberals to pass a motion condemning the HTTA’s tactics during the election campaign, handing Labor a rare defeat on the floor of the house.
We wonder: behind the friendly uncle, home-spun image, is there a tiny Graham “Whatever it Takes” Richardson wanting to get out?
Or is Brocky feeling guilty about distributing the letter?
Redmond’s reputational regurgitator
Where to begin with Isobel Redmond, who allowed her corruption smear against mild-mannered Electoral Commissioner Kay Mousley to live on for two weeks before repudiating it yesterday (while, it must be said, the entire state’s attention was focused on the King William Street siege)?
Actually, we know exactly where to begin – and it’s back in the days when she was Opposition Leader and pushing for a South Australian ICAC.
Redmond frustrated the hard-ball players in her party when she went for a soft attack on Labor’s secretive ICAC-lite.
Rather than attack the Government for the punishing secrecy of its model, Redmond instead questioned the resources being devoted to the corruption-fighting body. Not exactly a headline grabber.
Why did she go easy?
Simple – because she actually had a conviction about protecting innocent people from having their reputations besmirched.
In fact, her failed ICAC Bill of 2008 put some limits on the capacity of the ICAC to conduct public inquiries.
Under her proposed legislation, the Commission was explicitly required to consider “any risk of undue prejudice to a person’s reputation”.
Meanwhile, politicians are free to use Parliament to say anything they want, about anyone, with little consequence.
Perhaps Isobel and the rest of them should spare us any more lectures about the quality of democracy.
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