Commenting on the story: Court challenge to Rundle St tower rejection

The artist’s impression from the north aspect makes the tower look like a big middle-finger. How appropriate. – Mike Martens

Well done SCAP for rejecting this inappropriately scaled and dominating development proposal.  And well done Lucy Hood for supporting SCAP’s decision.  This is one of many proposals to test the height limits in the SA Planning and Design Code.  The Code sets a minimum building height of 27m and a maximum of 53m.  That is already significantly at odds with the character and built form of the area, which has a distinctive heritage character including numerous State and Locally listed places.  The Pelligra proposal is 67.8m, which is 25% over the maximum height.  And what is proposed?  4 bedroom luxury apartments, which will do nothing to address housing affordability or increase housing suitable for the largest growing demographic in our population – single person households.  For Future Urban’s to claim that the proposal ‘retains the low-rise appearance of the Rundle Street and East Terrace streetscapes by utilising the existing Local and State Heritage Places as a podium” is a nonsense.  It might not be visible from directly below but you will be able to see it from across the street, the Park Lands, and as far away as Belair.  The other examples of overdevelopment that they cite as precedent raise the question as to whether any variation to the maximum height stated in the Code should be allowed at all.  Its impact will be unavoidable.  If developers are going to continue to push the boundaries so flagrantly, perhaps this privilege should be removed from the planning system, providing certainty for the community, developers and regulators.  It would certainly save a lot of money in court appeals.

Commenting on the story: Strategy outlines ‘once in a generation’ chance to eliminate SA wild dog threat

There is no mention in your article about the devastation to emu, kangaroo and other native animal populations caused by the Dog Fence that crosses their migration paths. I’ve seen pictures of hundreds of emus piled up against that fence.

Dingoes should be protected, not eliminated. – Sue Britt

Commenting on the story: SA Attorney-General calls Voice swing to ‘Yes’

If our local Attorney-Gneral believes there is a swing towards the Yes campaign in The Voice referendum, I fear for the state’s population.

From all my broad and diverse community interaction, I feel a consistent swing to the No side. With Maher’s anecdotal “observation”, one wonders what else the minister is misreading when it comes to serving the community in government. – Eldert Hoebee

Attorney-General Kyam Maher has no need of a special race-based voice to be inserted Into the Constitution. He is part of the rapidly growing Aboriginal middle class living in towns and cities and doing as well as other Australians (in his case better than most).

It is the 20 per cent of Indigenous people living in remote localities doing poorly, and a targeted approach is needed to get their children a good education so that they will be free to choose whether or not to join the wider society, just as Aboriginal elite leaders have done, or to live in a remote region suffering from a lack of services such as health, education, good housing and jobs due to their remoteness, as well as the social dysfunction of high rates of drug use and domestic violence.

Warren Mundine speaking at the No campaign event this week said “Noel Pearson does not need the voice. Marcia Langton does not need the voice. Megan Davis does not need the voice”.  Well-to-do elite Indigenous people do not need privileged access to public servants and government ministers. The proposed voice is a power grab which is  very unlikely to help struggling Indigenous families in remote settlements, with voice activists being more interested in treaty, reparations and one-side “truth telling”.

It should be noted that Indigenous incarceration rates rose strongly after Australia dumped its previous policy of integration in favour of ‘self determination’. – Evonne Moore