Advertisement

Your views: on KI development, council factions and tackling family dysfunction

Today, readers comment on Kangaroo Island development, the decline of independent voices on Adelaide City Council, and the high rate of disability among children in state care.

Jun 26, 2019, updated Jun 26, 2019

Talking about KI development

Commenting on the Opinion piece: Paper cuts: Saving Kangaroo Island from tiny steps towards destruction

I hope InDaily provide balance to the very one-sided article on KI by Kathie Stove.

 A one-sided, totally “green left “ piece is in direct contrast to the silent majority view of Islanders.

 Kathie is well known for extreme views of the left persuasion. – Michael Pengilly

I am a great supporter of InDaily and generally read every issue and most articles.

Today I am appalled at the biased and unbalanced article … written by a self-proclaimed fairy at the bottom of the garden.

I have been a ratepayer on the island for over 30 years. – Peter Hood

Editor’s note: The piece was labelled “Opinion” and, as such, represented the views of the author. We accept opinion pieces from a diverse range of people in the community – activists, politicians, experts in various fields, community workers and others.

I commend Kathie Stove for her genuine account of the huge effort required when ordinary people take a stand against destructive developments like those happening on Kangaroo Island.

Reams of documentation need to be read and absorbed in order to write a meaningful submission during public consultation, only to find that the majority view expressed in submissions is likely to be rejected by the government-appointed decision body, SCAP, with the development subsequently approved by the Minister.

 That the Kangaroo Island Golf Resort was approved when only five out of 780 submissions were in favour of it reminded me that only four out of 800 submissions were in favour of developing Cheltenham Park Racecourse’s legislatively proclaimed open space.

Unfortunately, the only thing the government takes seriously is a legal challenge.

I hope the KI community will stay the distance. If it can help, the precedent set by the Cheltenham Park Residents Association as to “locus standi” – justification to take legal action – is in Supreme Court judgment [2010] SASC 93. – Carol Faulkner

Independents’ day is over

Commenting on the story: The numbers have it: how bloc voting splits Adelaide City Council

Team Adelaide led by Deputy Lord Mayor Abiad has the default power, and Stephanie Richards’ analysis provides a persuasive case demonstrating the team’s power in the council chamber.

Having this power, why has the team attempted to ‘gag’ councillors who wish to discuss issues they intend to bring to the chamber, ahead of discussions in council?

My take on this is that the Liberal team … has the preponderance of power in the chamber but not outside it.

Councillors Martin, Moran and Simms are experienced in fronting media and well able to engage the electorate through media. Councillor Donovan is also increasingly showing that she is able to connect with her constituents directly and through media.

Team Adelaide, on the other hand, apart from the Deputy Lord Mayor, are far less likely to reach an audience through media – and that dents the team’s ambitions.

Not content with having the bulk of the power in the chamber, they demonstrate that they want to curtail their opponent’s power to communicate.

Councillors Donovan, Martin, Moran (often) and Simms initiate motions which look to the future of the City of Adelaide. They have moved motions which aim to reduce the city’s contribution to climate change and to mitigate the effects. Team Adelaide resists.

These four councillors move motions which aim to change the way the city works and looks and which elevates the place of people in the city. Team Adelaide resists.

While the four have supported all pro-business motions, they have a bigger basket of city environmental, social and planning issues to activate.

Liberal Team Adelaide has a narrower, more conservative agenda. They have media savvy and less to broadcast.

In the city at least, the days of a bunch of local independents voting according to their own values is over.

For those of us who have businesses and who live in the city and who care about a broad range of environmental, social and planning issues, sometime down the track we will need to get Labor, the Greens and more city residents organised in the arts of city politics. – Peter Lumb

Work with the families

Commenting on the story: Disability rate among children in state care a”travesty”

I worked in a local Centrelink office in Southern  Adelaide for 30 years.

There was a small proportion of families who were always “over represented” when it came to needing much more help than was provided.

These high-dysfunctional families were not “bad’ people. Many had “generational” disabilities and due to a lack of funding the help was always way too late and often took the form of removing the children, as the parents just were incapable of parenting.

ASD, intellectual disabilities, depression, behavioural and developmental delays were common.

If these families were identified right at the beginning and provided with ongoing one on one multi-disciplinary support, which is expensive, it would cut down on the cost, both personal and dollar-wise, for the next generation .

One of the things that could be looked at would be assisting families to limit children to “the norm”, ie two or three children. Many of these families had far more children than that.

Nothing they didn’t want to do, but just making it easy to access preventative, free contraception – something that often is not at the top of priorities in such dysfunctional households.

I’ve spoken to  many of the mothers in such families over the years, and in many cases it’s not that they wanted large families, its just that pregnancies “just happened”  rather that just not happening, as no long-term contraception was used. 

Closing down SHINE SA in the north and southern suburbs certainly won’t make the problem easier for these families either. Helen Chadwick

Want to comment?

Send us an email, making it clear which story you’re commenting on and including your full name (required for publication) and phone number (only for verification purposes). Please put “Reader views” in the subject.

We’ll publish the best comments in a regular “Reader Views” post. Your comments can be brief, or we can accept up to 350 words, or thereabouts.

InDaily has changed the way we receive comments. Go here for an explanation.

Local News Matters
Advertisement
Copyright © 2024 InDaily.
All rights reserved.