Just last week, more than 45,000 people signed the “Stop the Chop” petition against felling Adelaide’s parkland trees. On this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, Jeremy Cordeaux reported that the government’s answer was to announce another 400 trees for the axe, and he could scarcely believe it.
Another Four Hundred Trees
The plan, Jeremy explained, is to cut down a further 400 trees to accommodate a MotoGP-style motorcycle race through the city. Added to earlier removals, that takes the total, in his telling, to well over 1,000 trees felled.
Coming days after a record petition against exactly this, the decision struck Jeremy as almost wilful. I believe the Premier here has lost touch, he said, catching himself before he said lost his mind. For an event most of the state, and particularly the city, does not want, the scale of the felling seemed to him wildly out of proportion.
$96 Million For Three Days
Then came the cost. The race, Jeremy said, carries a price tag of $96 million for three days of fun, and he was quick to add the caveat that such figures never stay put. It will not be $96 million, he predicted; it will be plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, the way these events always balloon beyond their headline number.
Set beside a government that pleads poverty on health rebates and pensioners, $96 million and rising for a three-day motorcycle race was, to Jeremy, a striking statement of priorities, and the trees were paying part of the price.
The Contradiction
What Jeremy found hardest to stomach was the hypocrisy. This is a government, he noted, that will happily talk about the environment, about trees supporting clean air, about the natural world, and then cut down more than a thousand of them for a sporting event.
Trees, he stressed, are part of what makes Australia, and this city in particular, special. To lecture the public about the environment while felling significant trees for a race most people do not want was, in his view, a contradiction too glaring to ignore.
An Astute Politician, Behaving Stupidly
The puzzle, for Jeremy, was that it came from Peter Malinauskas, whom he regards as one of the country’s shrewdest politicians. I can’t believe such an astute politician would be so stupid, he said. That is what made the misjudgement so glaring: not that a tin-eared leader had blundered, but that a skilled one had.
Jeremy’s message echoed his warning of a week earlier. A record petition, more than a thousand trees, and a $96 million race the public did not ask for add up to exactly the kind of issue that hardens into a lasting grievance. Read the room, he urged once more, before the damage is done.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
