Commenting on the story: Focus on close contact as Stevens looks to extend emergency powers

We can’t make a decision now as Dr Spurrier is on leave. What?

Well, get her back from leave or organise a secure Zoom conference. Seriously? South Australians have been an enormously patient and compliant lot over the past two years of this pandemic. That patience is fast running out or has run out.

Voters  are sick and tired of the directions and rule by a largely anonymous committee. The tired old mantra trotted out at a moments notice; ‘We are following  the expert health advice’ is truly running thin.

Why is that expert medical advice is always different to that of the other states? We are all aware an election is fast approaching, but really. People want the government they elected to do its job and take a modicum of responsibility for its actions instead of hiding behind unelected  bureaucrats.

Dan Andrews saw the writing on the wall and returned emergency powers to the parliament. It’s time this happened in the one of the world’s biggest nanny states. – Gilbert Aitken

Commenting on the opinion piece: Ignore population growth advocates who can’t answer this simple question

My compliments to David Washington for questioning the rationale behind SA business leader’s calls for Adelaide population growth.

Businesses with vested interests in population growth, typically in property development, always demand further population growth. But that does not mean it is in the best interests of the city or the State’s economy. Growth brings opportunities, but it also brings costs, and the first does not always outweigh the second.

Adelaide certainly does need better transport solutions if it is to be able to accommodate two million people. In fact, not all the infrastructure to accommodate a population of 1.5 million people has yet been built. Missing items include the AdeLink tram lines, busways, a Mt Barker BRT, and a network or protected bikeways.

South Australia has already invested over $3 billion in the North South Corridor road project and there is no evidence reported it has altered overall commuting times. When finished it will connect long closed factory sites, and make little difference to accessibility for most of the city.

But even all those transport infrastructure gaps filled would not be sufficient for Adelaide to comfortably house two million people with current quality of life intact. The overwhelming evidence is that population grows as employment grows. Pretending you can have one without the other is a recipe for poverty. Many long promised sources of Adelaide job growth, notably naval shipbuilding, remain unfulfilled almost a decade after their first being promised.

And even if we have both the jobs, and the supporting infrastructure to accommodate two million people, that leaves perhaps the most crucial item of all – housing. Adelaide’s housing market is now overheated, due to demand exceeding supply. Prices are being bidded to unsustainable levels, with no policy solution proposed. Do we want our younger generations to be locked out of the housing market, as they mostly are in Sydney and Melbourne? I hope not.

There are opportunities too. CBD office owners’ dreams that everyone will delete Zoom and work five days in the week in the city are wishful thinking. Why not house two birds with one policy by converting vacant office space to residential apartments? More CBD residents would benefit city retailers, and reduce transport needs. Most great cities have significant city residential populations. Making the city centre more walkable than driveable would also incentivise an increase in activity level.

But as the author correctly says, there is no evidence of a plan to connect the opportunity to the aspiration. – Scott Elaurant

I completely agree with the sentiments of David in his article. We need long term and bold thinking to address the worsening transport situation in Adeliade and the lack of connection with the regions. We need to acknowledge that we the people of Adelaide and SA have been short changed for years on infrastructure investment and we need to have everyone banging on the doors that need to be banged to demand more investment in our city until it occurs.

The thing that I’ve never quite understood of both the people in Adelaide and the people who run this place is the thinking that ‘we are just a small city – a big country town’ and that ‘what we have is good enough and doesn’t need fixing’. Compare us to a European city of the same size and then consider whether those statements actually stack up. Our city’s infrastructure has a long way to go to provide residents of Adelaide and the regions with anything like the sort of lifestyle the residents of European cities of the same size enjoy.

The fact is that we are a city of 1.3m and growing; perhaps not as fast as other cities, but the fact is that we’re still getting bigger and the strain on the state’s infrastructure is already plain for everyone to see. Have you driven down North East Rd lately? Notice that it carries much more traffic than it did even five years ago and that cutting in and driving a small way takes much longer than it did not so long ago? Lower NE Rd? Probably worse!

The South Eastern Freeway – how can anyone possibly believe that a single road is the sole answer to the massive area that is the Adelaide Hills. So instead of investing in something long-term like expensive passenger rail, let’s just put more buses on to clog the road up even more.

Out my way – out west – we have a train line that I am very thankful for, the Grange line. But even the Grange line runs on trains built in the 80s (40 years ago), on diesel – yep, and it’s 2022! This is insane when you think about it; old clunkers running on a single track burning huge amounts of a polluting substance because there has been no significant investment in the line for years (upgrading train stops doesn’t count).

And yet we, the local residents, wonder if we should complain because if we do, the threat the line could be shut down always looms. And then there was the old Labor plan AdeLink that would seek to convert it to light rail rather than retaining heavy rail, electrifying it or converting it to something more enviro friendly like hydrogen (I hear we are going to be making a lot of that stuff in years to come, right here in SA).

I know the intention of AdeLink was to bring light rail to West Lakes – an excellent idea – but why must that be at the expense of a heavy rail line that’s already in place and just needs to be upgraded? Cheaper perhaps, but short-term thinking maybe? There’s a lot to say for the saying ‘build it once, build it well’…

I know the naysayers will probably point to the fact that I even have a train line to use and say that I should shut up and be grateful for it. Respectfully, the point I’m trying to make here is that we don’t just need to upgrade what we have, but we need to invest significantly in also expanding our public transport infrastructure – and not just by introducing more buses to our already overcrowded roads.

I completely agree that we need an integrated transport plan that drives continuous investment in much needed transport infrastructure. – Anthony Palmieri