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Property bosses hit back at Old Adelaide sledge

Property tycoon Theo Maras says it would be a “bloody joke” to call him part of “Old Adelaide”, as city property owners today hit back at Jay Weatherill’s critique.

Oct 30, 2015, updated Oct 30, 2015

The Premier railed against city conservatism as the battle over food trucks escalated, after the council this week moved to limit the number of vendors operating at any one time.

“It’s just Old Adelaide making a resurgence,” Weatherill told ABC891 yesterday, saying the blockade threatened to stifle “vibrancy and excitement in the city”.

A group of property owners this week lobbied the council on behalf of their tenants, the so-called “bricks and mortar vendors” who argue the food trucks have an unfair advantage in a crowded market.

Maras told InDaily he was not among the lobbyists, but nonetheless took umbrage at the blanket criticism of CBD commercial owners.

“I don’t consider myself to be Old Adelaide at all…in fact, I’m a migrant and I’ve made two bob in this town,” he said.

“If he was trying to refer to us, he needs to get a dictionary…(we’re) working class people who’ve worked hard to get ahead.

“I don’t consider myself Old Adelaide, and I don’t consider myself Old Money.”

He did however take exception to the ongoing furore, with the State Government threatening to intervene and overturn council’s crackdown. It’s expected Labor will back a private member’s motion by backbencher Chris Picton on the issue, but the bill is yet to be introduced to parliament.

“I think it’s the greatest joke of all time and I can’t believe that state politics has stooped to an all-time low…I can only describe it as Rome is Burning and the State Government is fiddling,” said Maras.

“We have anti-competitive laws in this state like you wouldn’t believe, we’re so far behind the eight-ball in the unemployment stakes and our business confidence is the seventh in Australia…and here we have the Premier making comment about 10 or 20 food trucks which do not do anything other than cause absolute chaos and take away the confidence from people to really invest in businesses in this state.

“I think it’s a joke.”

Theo Maras.

He said the Premier’s intervention in the food truck debate was “nothing short of a smokescreen” that “belittles those who are putting cold hard cash on the line to make small business work”.

Lawyer Greg Griffin lobbied council on behalf of several city property owners including Polites, Karidis and Makris.

“I was representing the owners of the bricks and mortar businesses,” he told InDaily.

“I was speaking on behalf of a conglomerate of property owners in the city…and I can assure you there are young people who are very heavily involved in each of those businesses, younger than the so-called entrepreneurs who buy a $5000 van and park it in the city.”

He said the debate was “not a question of Old Adelaide…it’s a question of an Adelaide that continues to invest in the Adelaide market”.

“This is bordering on nonsense,” he said of the Premier’s comments.

“These six or seven property groups continue to invest in the city of Adelaide, and what the Premier didn’t have the benefit of seeing or hearing were the submissions of bricks-and-mortar tenants, all of whom are finding it very difficult to pay their rent, and all of whom see significant and relatable drops in their take every time they get a van parked 50 or 30 metres away from their shop.”

He said many business owners “get to work between 5.30am and 6am and suddenly between 12pm and 2pm there’s a van sitting there cannibalising their trade”.

“So the so-called Old Adelaide, they’re not defending themselves – they’re defending their tenants.”

He said it wasn’t a question of lowering rent because over the past decade city rental had not kept pace with state and local government charges, which had “increased by 150 to 170 per cent, particularly in food halls”.

“None of those are going south,” he said.

Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said the Liberals were “interested in the fact that Jay Weatherill is taking such an active interest in the Local Government jurisdiction”.

He said such an intervention “wouldn’t be our natural inclination but we need to see the detail of what the Government’s proposing”.

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