Responding to Smithson: Govt’s blue-chip Housing Trust headache

You also need to look at the three units in Lyall Ave, Panorama and the adjoining two facing Goodwood Road. Just yesterday, two police cars and an ambulance attended. This is a common occurrence. – David 

Is Mike Smithson’s issue here with the government’s handling of troublesome tenants, with the tenants themselves, or that they’re in the leafy eastern suburbs?

Having lived in several areas across Adelaide with similar “notorious social housing” near my home and those of many friends, I’d be astonished if problems like Mike describes aren’t familiar to people living all across Adelaide. – Tony Dawkins

I read your article about the police callouts to the Gilberton Housing Trust premises with interest. I’d like to suggest that a broader net of assessment of the quality of Housing Trust premises and tenants is cast across the whole of metropolitan Adelaide.

I’m a home (mortgage!) owner in Christie Downs, a well-known suburb for commission housing. However, it also has just as many problems, like those reported in your article about Gilberton. Some streets feel unsafe to walk down, with rubbish and glass scattered everywhere (Coe Court, Genevieve Street, to name but a few). With so many young families in the area as the suburb slowly becomes gentrified, there are risks here, too.

In fact, many houses look empty or are boarded up in some way. Surely in a cost-of-living and housing crisis, homes should not sit empty and idle.

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I would be supportive of a full investigation into and reassessment of the Housing Trust scheme, and just wanted to share a few of my thoughts on the matter. – Sara Blake

And still this government refuses to deal with the 19,000 South Australians with unmet needs for psychosocial mental health supports. Better mental health support in the community may help with issues such as this, as well as the crisis in emergency departments, such as ramping and blockages in hospital beds. This government needs to do much better before the next state election. – Paul Creedon

The lustre of the Housing Trust began to dim under Labor governments. The unpleasant truth is this. In 2002, the first year of the Rann government, there were 49,543 public housing dwellings. By the end of the Weatherill government in 2018, this number dwindled to 35,850. A critical factor in this decline was the deliberate and accelerated “fire sale” of public housing. This was led by housing minister Weatherill, who, in 2007, initiated the sale of 8000 public housing dwellings over nine years to reduce state debt, as per SAHT’s Annual Reports in 2006/2007.

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Concomitantly, thousands of houses were also transferred to the community housing sector.

Over time, the reduced stock numbers and rigid government policy settings have made it very difficult for Trust staff to facilitate balanced environments in flat complexes, and there is also a reluctance to evict tenants into homelessness. – John Stringer

Responding to Hotel bandaid offered after record ramping high

If the state government is willing to outlay taxpayer funds for motel beds at Pullmans for hospital patients, why aren’t they using our taxpayer dollars to open up more hospital beds instead? – Janine Hurrell

I agree with the AMA. The hotel is the virtual ‘finger in the dike’ solution. – PA and E Keam

Responding to Did Telstra’s move to bring call centres back onshore really pay off?

Ignoring the fact that moving jobs offshore has already come back to bite us, AI is not the fix-all we think it is. This is because no matter how clever we think AI is, it simply cannot anticipate or solve every problem.

If companies truly cared about a better customer experience, they would invest in larger call centres that are able to handle the load. The emphasis should be on loyal customers, not shareholder returns. Unhappy customers eventually means unhappy shareholders. Cart before the horse and all that.

And I don’t agree that customers necessarily “want speed, empathy and a seamless digital experience”. With respect, that’s not the issue. I rather doubt customers care about “cost-effective, scalable delivery models”. Customers want a problem resolved – it’s a simple as that.

I recently changed my internet and mobile phone provider to Telstra due to (insert previous provider company name here) having a seriously flawed finance system, a reluctance to fix my problem or provide someone I could understand. The problem was resolved only after I made a complaint to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. – Lynn

Responding to If artists can’t ‘art’ any more, who will?

I just wanted to say that Steph’s article was absolutely brilliant and I cried with laughter.

Please say THANK YOU to Steph! – Dr Belinda MacGill

Responding to Councillor fears future govt park lands grabs

That TV comedy Utopia featured some darkly humorous scripts, and Adelaide is already delivering material for the next series. On Wednesday, August 13, the government’s YourSAy online newsletter emerged, calling for feedback about the cultural heritage repercussions of digging up the Park 1 North Adelaide Golf Course for Premier Malinauskas’s $50 million “upgrade”. It will create an elite, international LIV Golf precinct.

However, feedback can only be properly submitted by a “Traditional Owner or Other Aboriginal People or Organisations”. This means that more than a million other concerned South Australians are blocked from responding. Moreover, even an expert, such as cultural anthropologist Neale Draper, who knows the site well, can’t lodge his own objection.

The Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Kyam Maher, will, after August 21, authorise the go-ahead to bring in the earthmovers. He has to. No authorisation equals no new golf course project. His boss, Premier Malinauskas, has already publicly committed to it.

The consultation paperwork asks various questions. Perhaps the quirkiest is: “Will the project provide you with any direct or indirect benefits (eg, cultural, financial or personal?” The obvious answer for the indigenous respondents is no. They simply want this site to remain undisturbed. Moreover, if it goes ahead, any financial or personal benefit would instead flow to non-indigenous people – the big contractors, the builders, the rich international golfers, and LIV Golf’s board, bankrolled by the Saudi Arabian government. These are the people who are also blocked from responding, but if they could respond, they’d be too discreet to be seen to be salivating about a $50 million construction spree.

Referring again to Associate Professor Draper and his work, the 13 August YourSAy paperwork responds to the government’s recent discovery of a detailed study he delivered only two years ago to the Adelaide City Council. It leaves no doubt that digging up these park lands is deeply unwise. Curiously, Minister Maher’s August 13 YourSAy brief reveals that his “consultation information pack” had to be updated to include Neale Draper’s findings because it had only “recently become available”. Given that confession, it’s now obvious that the state cabinet had signed off on this project without conducting sufficient due diligence. Had ministers read the study, they might have warned the Premier not to drink the LIV Golf Kool-Aid in February, to steer clear of a very risky pre-election bog of embarrassing political quicksand. But it’s now too late. The Premier has teed off. If he slices into the trees, that will only trigger a secondary green uproar as voters comprehend ahead of the March 2026 state election the unavoidable loss of 600 big trees when the fences go up to allow the project to commence.

I can’t wait to see the Utopia episode. You couldn’t make this stuff up. – John Bridgland, North Adelaide