Your Views: Letters to the Editor
Responding to: Tammy Franks ‘engaged in misconduct’, claims Greens SA
Having heard Ms Franks on TV, and now having read the explanation in InDaily, I am disappointed that the party needed to go to print. The matter should have (in my opinion) been left at her statement, but involving the media, things will surely be blown up, negotiations will be public, with the end result damaging the Greens, which they don’t need after this election. – Anne Smith
Responding to: Is culture Adelaide’s greatest asset?
By all accounts, Adelaide is rich in culture — socially, artistically, politically and civically. But culture is not just museums and music. It is a city’s shared instincts: how it plans, builds, governs, learns and adapts. On paper, Adelaide should be leading Australia in innovation. In reality, it risks becoming a cautionary tale of wasted cultural capital.
Karaffa and Organ are right: Adelaide’s cultural profile should be a magnet for innovation and investment. But we are behaving like a city that has forgotten what made it special. Instead of leveraging our long-term planning ethos, we are selling our skyline to the highest bidder. Instead of building on our egalitarian roots, we are reproducing a monoculture of luxury apartments and globalised rental housing.
Too often, Adelaide’s economic pitch has been: “We’re cheaper than Sydney and Melbourne”. But cheapness is not a vision. It is a race to the bottom.
If Adelaide is different, let it be intelligently different. Let’s stop mimicking the skyline of Brisbane or Melbourne. Let’s build the future as if it belongs to us, not just to investors.
Because if culture really is our greatest asset, then the greatest failure would be to leave it unused. – Stewart Sweeney
Responding to: Major parties barely fend off independent challengers
Counting is still continuing in this year’s Federal election. Everywhere, there are comments to the effect that the Coalition lost heavily; but is that really correct?
Yes, they have a greatly reduced number of seats, but according to the ABC‘s official election page at 12.44pm on May 12, with 83.7 per cent of votes counted, Labor has 34.7 per cent of first preferences and the Coalition 32.2 per cent. Is that really such a great difference?
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What has come into play here is something that nobody seems prepared to mention, let alone discuss. We do not have “first past the post” voting for reasons which are said to be fair and reasonable. That is not the problem. The problem is that we have compulsory rather than elective preferential voting. If we had elective preferential voting, Labor may still have won, but the results may have been very different. They would certainly have been a more accurate reflection of what the electorate actually wanted.
It is time we had a serious discussion about the way we vote, if only so people understand how preferences work or do not work. – KM Gunn
Responding to: Lunch Hour: May’s Dumplings
The best dumplings in Adelaide! – Paul Montesi
