Today, the great flood of Grenfell Street, a waste of $2.31 billion, sticks and stones at the footy and a bit more.
The Bus Lanes killed JFK
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall was out and about this week, feeding the media a line or two about the burst water main that flooded Grenfell Street causing “traffic chaos” (drink now, if you’re playing the media cliche game).
After several half-volleys outside off-stump, there came this long-hop from one of the gathered news-hounds: “Is it the bus lanes that are to blame for this, do you think?”
Even Marshall, whose brief is to kick the government, seemed taken aback: “Well. Look. Err. We’re yet to get some word from SA Water as to the cause of this latest burst water main.”
It’s safe to assume the cause wasn’t a few lines painted in white on the road surface.
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Rich and thwarted
The BRW Rich 200 list released this week is a cavalcade of interesting Aussies rolling in dough.
The expected South Australians are there – Rob and Simon Gerard (just slipping in at 198 and 199), Hugh McLachlan and family (159), Chris Thomas (157), Nick DiMauro (156), Yasser Shahin and family (102), and Con Makris and family (45).
While he’s not South Australian, we were more interested in the fella who came in at number 13 – Lang Walker – with an estimated fortune of $2.31 billion.
The Sydney-based property developer has had a long interest in South Australia but projects like the Bluestone estate in Mt Barker bear no real comparison in scope to his interstate projects (the biggest of which is the $1.3 billion Collins Square project in Docklands).
Walker, readers will recall, is the man who was locked in negotiations with the State Government for more than a year over proposals to redevelop the sad wasteland which is the Festival Centre Plaza.
The messy amalgam of Renewal SA, the Festival Centre, the Casino, various ministers’ offices, and the state infrastructure bureaucracy, failed to produce an acceptable result for the players.
So in the end, he’s building a car park.
With that much dough in Walker’s kick, couldn’t we have dreamed bigger?
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Picking on Crows
They don’t have much of a voice, but the state’s many hardcore SANFL fans are maintaining the rage about the AFL reserves teams foisted on their competition.
Big Adelaide Crows forward Taylor “Tex” Walker this week complained about nasty SANFL fans abusing the Crows reserve graders during last week’s game against North Adelaide.
Walker also told Triple M’s “Rush Hour” that the Roosters refused to invite the poor Crows boys into the club rooms for a traditional after match drink.
Someone should get those Crows lads some hot cocoa and a bandaid for their hurties.
Grand designs
As predicted in this column, former Integrated Design Commissioner and Committee for Adelaide CEO Tim Horton has left Adelaide to return to Sydney to take up a position as registrar of architects.
In his Government role, created by Mike Rann, he tried hard to bring excellent urban design to Adelaide but didn’t always find the political leadership or the bureaucracy receptive to his lateral ideas and methods.
Some of his IDC functions were eventually rolled into a new Office of Design and Architecture SA, which has – to put it kindly – a rather lower profile.
You won’t find any funding for ODASA in the budget – it’s now sunk deep into the bureaucracy of the Department for Planning, Transport and Infrastructure as part of a sexy function called “Land Use Planning”.
Meanwhile, the Committee for Adelaide is set to announce its new CEO (albeit with a slightly different title).
It’s likely to be a young fellow with strong political links. More news soon.
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