Your Views: Letters to the Editor
This week, InDaily readers respond to the State Government’s park lands grab and an artist’s response to his work being ripped down at an anti-immigration rally.
Responding to State Government makes largest Adelaide park lands grab since 1837
I totally agree that the park lands should remain untouched. When we purchased a block of land in the western suburbs, there was a lot of free land around, and our children grew up with plenty of space to explore and wander. Now it is becoming bumper-to-bumper housing without the old-fashioned big back yard, and sometimes only a small patch in front of the house. We need to conserve the parks, not open them up for development, for the sake of our children and future generations. – Jennifer Turelli
In reply to the article about the government’s park lands grab, it is worth making a few additional observations about this project:
Firstly, there has been a golf course in the park lands since 1892. It is the oldest golf course on its original site in Australia.
Secondly, per square metre, it provides more recreation to the people of Adelaide than any other part of the park lands, thereby delivering on Light’s vision better than anywhere else.
Thirdly, most of the trees on the golf course have been planted by the golf course over many decades to enhance the environment and enjoyment of the game.
Fourthly, the project is about improving and enhancing the golf course that is already there to the benefit of all South Australians … mentally, environmentally and financially for generations to come. – Peter Joy
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The recent article on the Adelaide park lands misrepresents the reality of what is occurring at the North Adelaide golf course. No one is “seizing” or “privatising” hectares of green space. The golf course has existed for decades, is already part of the park lands, and is used daily by thousands of South Australians.
The alarmist claims being promoted by the Adelaide Park Lands Association ignore a simple truth: the park lands belong to all South Australians, not just members of one lobby group. There is a large, silent majority who welcome sensible improvements that make these areas more accessible and enjoyable for the broader community.
The Adelaide Park Lands Association also conveniently overlooks that new park lands are being created through projects such as the redevelopment of the Adelaide Aquatic Centre, the construction of the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
Or that more than five hectares of park lands were created when the old SA Water depot site was decommissioned.
The park lands must remain a shared resource, not hijacked by the narrow interests of one group seeking to dictate who belongs and who doesn’t. – Cameron Ogden
Responding to Artist vows Banksy-style blitz after angry anti-migration mob rips down Adelaide art
It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant some people can be.
Those posters showed people who had migrated to Australia many years ago and made a positive contribution to our society. And Adelaide is now a better place for their lives.
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Free speech is all very well, but it does mean accepting the views of others, not tearing down everything that differs from one’s own.
I do hope Peter Drew is not put off by such ignorant actions. – Rosemary Miller
Responding to Smithson: Libs AI debacle as Kouts lands Treasury driver’s seat
Mike Smithson states that reliance on Artificial Intelligence to do the work for him is understandable, but not the sensible way to push a “rigid political agenda”.
How is this understandable?
What is this “rigid political agenda” that remains unstated?
What is the sensible way? – Matt Thorne
Responding to Mali slams Trump climate change ‘con job’ claims
When Donald Trump stood at the UN and dismissed climate change as the “greatest con job ever,” Peter Malinauskas wasted no time calling him out. On ABC Radio the Premier declared, “I don’t think you’re human if you don’t get really worried about what’s happening,” pointing to marine life washing up by the tonne on South Australian beaches.
It was an easy win. Trump’s rhetoric is so extreme, so detached from science, that any premier with a microphone can score points by condemning it. But back home in South Australia, Malinauskas’s own record raises the more uncomfortable question: is he any different in practice?
Behind the Premier’s climate talk lies a government strategy built on concrete, carbon and contradictions.
- Festival Plaza and the skyline of towers: Instead of safeguarding Parliament’s heritage and leading on sustainable city form, his government cheers on Walker’s skyscraper and a parade of high-rise projects that pump out embodied carbon while baking Adelaide in more heat.
- Santos and fossil fuels: Malinauskas has positioned himself as Santos’s political champion, pressing for Narrabri and doubling down on gas as the state’s “transition fuel”, even as the science shows no room for new fossil projects.
- The Big Build and growth-at-all-costs: Motorways, stadiums, and towers are trumpeted as proof of “nation-building,” while the climate and ecological costs are quietly buried under job figures and artists’ impressions.
- LIV Golf and greenwash spectacle: A Saudi-backed sports circus on the Park Lands, water-guzzling, carbon-heavy, and reputationally toxic, is dressed up as global prestige rather than questioned as climate folly.
Malinauskas is right that future generations will ask what leaders did when faced with the climate crisis. But the test isn’t whether they denounced Trump. The test is whether they confronted the same denialism in subtler, shinier forms at home, the myth that we can keep pouring concrete, expanding fossil fuels, and chasing endless growth while claiming to be on “the right side of history”.
Trump’s denial is easy to attack. Harder is looking in the mirror. – Stewart Sweeney
I notice our premier was quick to blame the algal bloom on climate change, without any hard evidence, but said nothing about why it took his government months to act and mitigate the disaster. And why South Australia, of all places, is suffering such a severe case of it. If it were climate change, why isn’t it happening everywhere? Perhaps he is trying to shift focus away from his government’s botched handling of the issue. Must be an election in the wind. – Dan Schmidt
