Your Views: Letters to the Editor
This week, InDaily readers respond to SA’s dire new homelessness record and dumped cars in the northern suburbs.
Responding to Mayor joins Premier in $200m spending promise for Mount Barker
While it’s great to see new infrastructure proposed for Mount Barker, it’s critical that other growing Hills communities are well connected and provided with improved services. Public transport is one issue most Hill’s dwellers will have an opinion on, yet besides bus service upgrades to the main Mount Barker to Adelaide CBD corridor, the State Government has failed to fund virtually any bus service improvements in the Hills.
The Onkaparinga Valley towns of Balhannah, Oakbank, Woodside and Lobethal have no bus service at all on weekends. This is a catchment of well over 10,000 people who have no way to access social, educational and employment activities on weekends via public transport. Over the last 12 months, I have raised my concerns about this with the local MP Dan Cregan, former Transport Minister Koutsantonis and the current Transport Minister, Emily Bourke MLC.
Funding for an Onkaparinga Valley weekend service could easily come about if the government were to remove the wasteful duplication where two buses tail each other every hour each weekday between 9 am and 3 pm from Verdun to Mount Barker and return, further adding to congestion in Hahndorf’s main street. Bourke hasn’t replied to my correspondence sent 10 weeks ago, flagging this concern.
I think the State Government needs to be reminded that fancy brochures and big dollars sometimes aren’t needed to solve issues that impact South Australians. If the Transport Ministry simply listened to the ideas of locals, no doubt we would have a much better public transport system in South Australia! – Joel Taggart
Responding to ‘Devastated’: Blackwood community reeling after memorial trees hacked down
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I’m devastated, and what are politicians going to do? Absolutely nothing.
Both publicly say what people want to hear, and both have a record of themselves destroying park lands, trees and legislating against public protest.
The current “mob of gonzos” claim concern about Adelaide’s shrinking tree canopy on one hand, while planning to axe another 585 more park land trees on the other.
Adelaide is losing 75,000 trees a year. Tree-removal laws must be tightened if we want our cities to be liveable and green.
If you value trees, urban ecology or Adelaide park lands, a vote for Labor is as good as driving the bulldozer and swinging the axe. – Richard Webb
Responding Northern suburbs labelled a ‘junkyard’ as dumped cars line roads
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I know they try to find the original owner, and also, they give out warnings. Unregistered cars should be towed away, and registered cars should also be fined, given a month or be towed away, if the owner cannot be responsible. Council takes enough for council rates, and the police should take away unregistered cars. Not only is it unsightly, but it can be a danger to the community – e.g., fire, vandalism, etc. If you drive around in an unregistered car, you get fined, so the car is still on a public road – it’s just not moving. One of these departments should take action – we pay taxes and council tax. We don’t need our homes looking like a dumping ground. – Dorothy Vanson
Responding to Dire new record for homelessness service as SA loses ‘collective voice’
This is indeed an avoidable tragedy. The only state! I read today that the state is to make mega money from copper mining.
Isn’t it ironic that we focus on the money the government is making, but hardly on the money that is being distributed to our people?
We are lucky we have beaches for South Australians to swim in. If they only knew whether it was safe to swim in, on a weekly basis, at each metropolitan beach.
We build swimming pools instead of teaching people to swim at sea – be taught at school about rips, etc.
Save the pool fund money and spend it on the poor and needy. – Geoffrey Smith
Responding to Wave of algal bloom flare-ups in Yorke Peninsula and KI
I live in Marion Bay and can’t take my dog to the beach because she has a severe allergic reaction to the algae and has been on tablets for months. Even if the water looks clear, she goes swimming, and all her fur falls out. So, the algal bloom is not over – they just don’t report it until after the election. It’s still here and still happening. I would not eat anything that came out of that sludge pit. – Joanne Barrand
