Last week Jeremy Cordeaux told South Australia’s Premier he had misread the room over the felling of Adelaide’s parkland trees. On this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, the public returned its own verdict, and it was emphatic: more than 45,000 signatures on what Jeremy believes may be the largest petition ever handed to the state parliament.
Book After Book Up The Steps
The image stayed with Jeremy. The petition, titled “Stop the Chop,” was so large it had to be carried in volume after volume, book after book after book, delivered up the steps of Parliament House. More than 45,000 people had signed it.
To Jeremy, the sheer scale was the story. This was no fringe complaint or handful of activists. It was, in his estimation, possibly the biggest petition in the state’s history, an unmistakable measure of how deeply people feel about the trees the government wants to cut down for sport and events.
Trees Of Significance
Part of what makes the issue so charged, Jeremy explained, is the trees themselves. Some took hundreds of years to grow. Many are, in the formal sense, trees of significance, protected precisely because they cannot simply be replaced.
That raised a legal question he pressed hard. There is a Tree Preservation Act. There is a Parklands Preservation Act. The government, he argued, cannot simply ignore them or ride roughshod over the law because an event is planned. Whether it thinks it can tough this out, he said, remains to be seen.
People Power
For Jeremy, the petition demonstrated something he returns to often: people power is quite something. When 45,000 citizens take the trouble to sign, and their names are carried in books up the parliamentary steps, that is democracy asserting itself between elections.
Labor, he argued, can behave as though it is a law unto itself, but it must understand there is a price to be paid in the court of public opinion for such behaviour. Governments depend on winning elections and the popular vote, and a petition of this size is a warning about exactly that.
How Many Will You Offend?
Jeremy’s question to the Premier was pointed and practical. How many people, he asked, do you want to offend? A government that presses on against 45,000 signatures, against significant trees, and arguably against its own preservation laws, is picking a fight it may not need and may not win.
His message was that it is not too late to listen. A petition of this magnitude is a gift to a government wise enough to read it, a clear statement of where the public stands. Ignore it, Jeremy warned, and the price will be paid where it hurts a government most, at the ballot box.
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.
