Opinion: ‘Everyone’s too busy protecting their own arses’ over Jetty Road works
Jetty Road traders are “trying to survive the perfect storm of construction, disruption, and dwindling trade” over the $40m Glenelg facelift. Lighthouse Insights chief Mark Raphael argues “everyone’s too busy protecting their own arses”.
I can’t help but feel frustrated, even a little disgruntled, by what’s been unfolding on Jetty Road over the past few months.
The ongoing upgrade works have somehow managed to make Beirut look organised, which is quite an urban-planning achievement. At this rate, I half-expect a delegation from Beirut in high vis to fly in and take notes.
What should have been a story of progress and renewal has instead become a lesson in how self-interest so often trumps decency.
It’s brought out the worst, when it could have been a moment for community and business leaders to guide with clarity, compassion, and honesty.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent time on the street talking with the traders, real people, not faceless national chains or shopfront names.
Many are trying to survive the perfect storm of construction, disruption, and dwindling trade. These are the people who open early, close late, and pour every ounce of energy into keeping their small businesses alive.
They’re the ones who greet locals by name, who sponsor the local footy club, who give a young local kid their first job. And right now, they’re hurting.
Yet from the outer, the advice rolls in. I’d guess that 99 per cent of expert commentators have never walked in their shoes.
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“Think how good it will be in the long term.”
“Retailers just need to suck it up and hang in there.”
“You don’t go broke that quickly”
Easy words when you’re not the one staring in empty stores, declining foot traffic, and bills piling up, all while trying to support a family.
Councils can absorb the loss. Landlords can wait for the rent or recoup it over time. But the independents live week to week. When sales fall, it’s their family dinner table that feels it.
It’s sleepless nights fearful of how they will make it through.
What disappoints me most is how preventable this all was. With empathy and genuine collaboration, the pain could have been shared and softened.
But that would have required each party – council, landlords and traders – to step outside their own agenda and see beyond spreadsheets and egos.
Instead, everyone’s too busy protecting their own arses.
It’s a story as old as time. The council protects its optics. The landlord protects their yield.
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The retailer tries to protect what little they have left. And somewhere in the middle, decency gets lost.
People don’t expect miracles. Most can handle tough times if they believe everyone’s in it together.
What breaks them isn’t hardship, it’s the silence and the spin. That creeping sense that those with power are too busy “workshopping narratives” to actually listen.
Fluffy press releases paint visionary utopic futures, but the people at the coalface aren’t looking for scripted clichés. They just want to be asked how it really is… though I suspect, no one’s dared to.
The truth is, all they want is to feel genuinely heard.
I can’t shake the thought that this isn’t just a Glenelg story, it’s a reflection of where we are as a society.
We talk endlessly about community and common good yet when the moment comes to show it, we retreat behind policies, property values, and self-interest.
Leadership, in its truest form, is about standing alongside those doing it tough, not above them.
It’s about taking on some of the pain, not passing it on. Nelson Mandela, Bill Hewett & Dave Packard, Jacinda Ardern, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Desmond Tutu, Fred Hollows, Indra Nooyi, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Rosa Parks are just some to take inspiration from.
Self-interest might protect your position for now, but it erodes the very trust that keeps communities and economies alive.
Both culturally and economically, trust is the real currency.
When self-interest trumps decency, we don’t just lose our way, we lose an opportunity to show those around us what it means to be better humans.
Mark Raphael is chief executive officer and founder of Lighthouse Insights, a data-driven platform providing commercial property insights, the organisation has launched a Precinct Barometer for Jetty Road, collecting sales, rent, foot traffic, and transaction data.
Jetty road construction works started as part of the Transforming Jetty Road Glenelg project in August this year.
