Responding to Axe falls on festival after twenty years

The same day Peter Malinauskas celebrated another Gather Round, Adelaide learned that the 2026 OzAsia Festival will be its last.

The symbolism is brutal. OzAsia was created here, connected Australian and Asian artists, attracted audiences exceeding 200,000 and won a Creative Australia Asia Pacific Arts Award as recently as 2024. Gather Round is an externally owned AFL product for which South Australia rents attention.

Keeping OzAsia’s dumpling market and lanterns while abolishing the festival risks reducing Asia to food and decoration. Scattered “year-round programming” cannot replace a nationally recognised institution with its own artistic leadership, identity and international relationships.

The Guitar Festival has gone. Writers’ Week was wrecked. OzAsia is next, while public money and political enthusiasm flow freely to football, golf and motor racing.

This is not hostility to sport. It is opposition to a government transforming South Australia from the Festival State into an Events State and replacing institutions we created with spectacles we purchase.

Soon “The Festival State” on our number plates will read less like a description than an epitaph. – Stewart Sweeney

Adelaide once had the chutzpah to call itself Australia’s cultural capital.

There is cash for bike races, car races, golf tournaments and sporting spectacles, while Writers’ Week is cut back, OzAsia disappears, and serious cultural and intellectual pursuits have disappeared with them.

Forty years ago, Adelaide laughed at Brisbane. Today, Brisbane has international cultural ambition because it is a can-do state, while Adelaide increasingly defines itself by the next race.

A great city stimulates the mind. We do not have the rub of the green; instead, there is the nagging feeling of the State Bank all over again.

The government should be embarrassed that a city once renowned for ideas, literature and culture is now an intellectual backwater.

A lot of tech people value culture, and we cannot attract them, or their startups, with our present ambitions.

Brisbane must be laughing, and San Francisco Bay is a long way away.

The joke is on us, Adelaide. – Philip Hopkins

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Responding to Swans sexual assault allegations spurs SA newsreader to revisit her own experience

Kelly, thanks for being so vulnerable and telling us about your experience. I am sure it will help those victims of this type of pack mentality and abusive behaviour. The AFL needs to stand up, call it out and stop this abuse. – Louise Cameron

Responding to Long-term SA Labor minister joins calls for MotoGP move

I have had considerable respect for your publication over a considerable number of years.

You do not do yourself any favours in the credibility stakes with the headline you used for the latest MotoGP report.

It was classic clickbait, beat-up, BS.

You would well be aware of the significance of opposition to the MotoGP project from a serving minister as to opposition expressed by a former minister.

In these days of a decline in the number of reputable media outlets and a lowering of journalistic standards, please resist the temptation of joining the beat-up merchants. – Mike Drewer

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Responding to Plans for thousands of new homes and high-rises for city suburb

I think this redevelopment perfectly captures the “business as usual” nature of the Maulinauskus government.

Areas like West Lakes and Port Adelaide are the most vulnerable to rising tides and the increasing frequency of waves breaking over the wrack line during storms.

It is inevitable that these regions will be inundated with water without significant investment in coastal defences, but that is less flashy and runs the inevitable problem of all long-term investments; Facebook groups whinging about the cost and how we do not even need it (as we saw with the desalination plant).

People are scared of the word adaptation on all sides of the argument: climate change deniers just see it as a waste of money, the government sees it as an admittance of failure, and other elements want the focus to remain on mitigation.

We cannot outrun our own climate, with two degrees Celsius of warming locked in from decades of inadequacy; whether we like it or not, the climate does not care about our sensibilities.

The justification that this will house workers ignores the clear orientation towards high-income luxury accommodation.

South Australia has less public housing today than in the 70s; the Housing Trust’s waitlist just grows and grows – this is not a development for workers, it is a show pony. There is no denying from the growing homeless camps in the park lands that South Australian workers are feeling the brunt of a recession in everything but name. – Timothy Pickering

Responding to ‘Jumping the gun’: Date set to start MotoGP track build

Where are all these people when virgin Australian bush is being destroyed at the altar of climate change? As long as it is not in my backyard, eh! Hypocrisy! – Brenton Howell

Responding to One Nation calls for SA schools investigation after protest

No need for an investigation – these young people will have to live under the decisions made by the present lot of politicians, governments now and into the future, the next Federal Election, so they need to stand up for their rights.

One Nation is a climate change denier – One Nation is the one that should be investigated and held to account. – Lynn Graham

Good on Mr Bernardi for being the grown up by demonstrating to the younger generation how to object to something you do not like without resorting to unfounded accusations and denigration of others …

*sarcasm font* – Russell Withers

Cory Bernardi is correct in his analysis of the protest and the way the students are being used and brainwashed by the Marxist socialist activists. It is disturbing that young people are so ignorant of what is happening that they make statements as we have seen at this protest. It is sad that they do not understand what a real Nazi is or what they stand for, but choose to label anyone whom they consider not of their thinking a Nazi, just like they have done to One Nation – Malcolm Eglinton

It is part of a student’s role to call out injustice and to protest. In previous years, students protested against the war in Vietnam and in support of Aboriginal rights.

Trying to stifle students’ protests is simply un-Australian. – Aiden Leahy

Responding to Thousands of SA students from nearly fifty schools walk out over One Nation

I congratulate the students staking a stand. They have received a lot of flak, particularly from Pauline Hanson and Cory Bernardi, who believe they are the only ones who can make a protest – “fire the liar” comes to mind – and expect their followers to pay for this.

The young people who are protesting are the future of our nation. I am glad they can see that this “One Nation” political party is not in their best interests. A monoculture is not what Australia wants, and racism must be stopped – I believe we are better than this. All power to them, keep it up.

Hanson and Bernard believe high school students are not entitled to an opinion. How wrong they are. I think these students/young people are more politically engaged than I was at their age. I wish I had been, and maybe people like Hanson and Bernardi would not be the force they believe they are, making the types of statements that they are and getting away with it. We all deserve better. – Di Martin

Responding to Premier takes a swing at ‘cultural elitism’ in park lands debate

Malinauskas said that “the distinction between us and you is that we believe the park lands are there for people to be able to enjoy the natural environment”.

The problem is that our premier does not understand that building a racetrack, creating noise, greenhouse gas emissions and scaring wildlife – are not a ‘natural environment’. It’s hard to argue with someone who doesn’t get it. – Stephen Morris

It is not “cultural elitism” to seek protection for the park lands. It is not, as Premier Malinauskas asserts, an attempt to specify how the park lands are used – it is a wish to retain the park lands and not see them disappear through incremental “developments”.

Cheap shots, Premier, merely indicate that you do not understand the issue, or respect ordinary South Australians’ attempts to preserve a valued heritage. – Jane Edwards

“Cultural elitism”? What’s more egalitarian than a park? Enough with the “doublethink” Premier and call it what it is; the destruction of public space for profit. – Michaela Andreyev

So now the Premier is trying to create a class war. No, Sir Peter, it is not the people who enjoy motorsport who are the problem. Everyone is welcome in the park lands.

But I believe you are actively destroying this free, open, green space, replacing it with tarmac and infrastructure for months and fencing it off for the exclusive use of people who enjoy motorsport. To paraphrase your words from a couple of days ago at West Lakes – this is terrible policy in the absolutely wrong place. – Nick Patrick

Responding to Israeli clearing of Aus aid worker’s death ‘insulting’

Close the embassy. We need to make a big, bold statement as the deaths continue every day. – Ian Mcintosh

Regardless of whatever Israel does, it will always be in the wrong in the eyes of some. I just wish Senator Wong would put the same effort in reprimanding Iran, Sudan, Syria, Burma, Communist China, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and so on. – Peter Jackson

Responding to O-Bahn gridlock fears as MotoGP petition hits parliament

As one who campaigned against the O-Bahn extension through Rymill Park, we were not campaigning against the O-Bahn “tunnel”.

What was announced as a tunnel under the park lands was nothing of the sort. What was originally proposed was a four-lane dual carriage highway bisecting Rymill Park from just inside the Dequetteville/Rundle corner to the Grenfell/East Terrace corner.

A tunnel under the park lands would have drawn no protest whatsoever. The government then, as now, was loose with truth (putting it mildly).

That campaign, back in 2015, succeeded in achieving a compromise – what was done was far less destructive than what was proposed.

Unfortunately, with the MotoGP there is no compromise possible. The only way to reduce the destruction of the park lands is not to have it at all.

Of course, destruction of the park lands is only one of the problems. Another is traffic gridlock, as the article pointed out. Since the Grand Prix road closures, the population and therefore traffic have increased substantially (by almost 50 per cent since 1985) and back then North Terrace did not have trams, so now it offers only two-thirds the traffic access.

But perhaps the biggest problem is the noise – the MotoGP’s own website says MotoGP bikes make up to 130 decibels of noise – and that is only one bike, let alone 20 of them at once. Safe Work Australia’s website says humans can only be exposed to 130 decibels for 0.9 seconds before risking permanent damage (that is right, less than one second, let alone a three-day event).

This could be the most irresponsible thing any government has ever done. They are breaking the golden rule to “do no harm”, and yet somehow, they seem proud of it.

I am not and never have been a member of the Park Lands Association or any political party. – Andrew Robertson

Responding to The Stats Guy: It sounds weird but Australia urgently needs a plan for 56m people

This is profound nonsense. We may be a large country, but we have a fragile ecology and limited resources, notably water. We need fewer people, not more, if we are to preserve our natural environment and meet our international commitments with respect to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In drought years, we can only feed 30 million people, so going over that figure presents dangers in that we may not be able to feed everyone if we cannot import food. Right now, the world faces the possibility of food insecurity because closure of the Strait of Hormuz has reduced fertiliser supplies by a third, and there is a looming super El Niño which is likely to render drought conditions across the continent. Over and above that, climate change will reduce yields in coming years.

Yes, more people may initially increase total economic growth, but there is no guarantee that it will increase per capita wealth. Indeed, more people is likely to reduce our overall quality of life, even if there is more economic activity. Infrastructure is unlikely to keep up with rapid population growth, and that means even more expensive housing and services. – Jenny Goldie