Commenting on the stories: Twin towers set to soar above heritage-listed hotel and  Adelaide’s towering tensions

We have the appearance of government and management when in fact it’s a free-for-all. There is no coherent plan to what gets built and where, and no sense of any limits at all.

That 106 meters in a 43 metre zone is not “seriously at variance” typifies the lawlessness of the planning regime and the rubbery language that enables it.

Planning and vision and the hard work of previous generations have made Adelaide beautiful, but this natural advantage is being destroyed by a chaotic planning regime. Mature and advanced cities around the world long ago realised that high rise building are neither good nor bad, but simply needed to be organised into zones.

Whilst we are slowly coming to this awakening the cohesiveness of our city is being destroyed before our eyes. – Robert Farnan

Stephanie Johnston’s article is a good summary of the planning chaos now being visited on the City of Adelaide.

What appears to be a ‘trashing of rules’ is in fact a simple manifestation of new policy created by Labor’s planning minister, John Rau, in March 2012. His ministerial development plan amendment opened the doors to the high-rise obscenities we are now seeing mushrooming across the city.

His amendment to the Adelaide (City) Development Plan has made possible the outrage that the State Commission Assessment Panel recently approved for 88 O’Connell Street, North Adelaide. It was approved the day before that Plan became redundant, replaced by a new Planning Code. The Code adopts many of the flaws of the past, and goes further in opening opportunities for developers who aren’t interested in limits pursuing ‘orderly planning’.

The inmates are now in charge of the (planners’) asylum. It has never been easy to withstand developer pressures, and the ‘twin towers’ example illustrates that the city is now in the firm grip of the barbarians, who will trash what’s left of the city’s streetscapes.

Remember, Labor started this, and the Liberals are happy to keep it going. Both parties will be asking for your vote next March. How will you reward them? – John Bridgland

It is concerning to me that what was uniquely Adelaide (Col William Light’s ‘planning’) is now being overshadowed by a lack of planning.

Adelaide can do better than this. Lessons of the use of light, ie New York’s skyline and other examples of good planning are available from around the word. Please Adelaide, use this knowledge and experience to create something spectacular. – Sam Davies

Surely time to scrap SCAP. Bring back balance of interests and real rights for representations.

Jettison fuzzy fallacious ‘anything goes up rules’ that diminish rationality and liveability.

No problem with development that respects context and contributes character and creativity, but since the so-called ‘expert changes’ several years ago, planning has lost any semblance of sense, proportionately and locality. Col. Light must be spinning in his grave. – Elbert Brooks

Commenting on the story: ‘Exercise in spin’: Housing advocates slam eligibility changes

A policy announcement that reduces an impossible backlog by barely 5% but plays to the neo-lib symphony of “Welfare Rorts”.

Of course, that’s what you do when you have no real vision for sympathy for a genuine social housing policy, which needs a revolution not another round of mealy-mouthed poli-spin.

It’s difficult to believe that these people are the political grandchildren of Tom Playford, who gave us the Housing Trust and provided tens of thousands of working class people with well-built, affordable rental accommodation (such as I grew up in) and later built well-designed, small but good quality houses for sale at moderate prices and low interest rates (our first home was one).

But then, housing policies such as existed then don’t serve the interests of property developers and investors; and the people who would benefit from a genuine social housing policy are invisible and of little account to the people running this state. – Harry Dewar

In relation to decreasing the need for social housing by redefining need. The singles threshold will be decreased from $1023.36 to $715.05, couples from $1338.24 to $1112.30.

Makes sense. At present, if a couple spends $250/week on rent – a luxury home surely – it leaves between them $338.24/month for every other expense of staying alive: food, power, internet, water, clothing, transport, haircuts, health, dentist, optometrist etc. How could people with such vast discretionary spending power be justified in asking for housing help? – Cathy Chua

Commenting on the story: Cash for jabs not ruled out by vaccine rollout chief

As usual, our PM has gone off ‘half cocked’. PM Howard introduced immunisation payments to those mums who got family payments in an attempt to increase the countries ‘milestone’ immunisation rates, which at the time were low.

The programme went for over ten years and was successful, it pulled up the childhood immunisation rates to comparable levels with other OECD countries.

Sure we also must have a sufficient doses of  vaccine to meet the demand ( something the Fed Govt should have done), but it’s also a good incentive for some who might be not committed to the idea to get them over the line. – Helen Chadwick

Commenting on the story: The final Showdown countdown

Actually, when you look at the “Montries miracle goal” frame by frame (Showdown 35), the ball actually bounced across the point line before skewing around to the goal line. Oh! Where was the goal review? – Fred Driver