Community Alliance SA protects own backyard

Who knows what evil lies in the hearts of Adelaide property developers? Community Alliance SA do.

This Boomer army of 'heritage huggers' is marching under the banner of 'uber sustainability'. Lay down your arms Progress, surrender your virtue Democracy, forget about buying that new apartment kids, because the Alliance will brook no resistance.

These bourgeois vigilantes are reactionary NIMBY nay-sayers. They are warriors of pension day. They are seething that building flats and apartments close to the city will drop the value of their property prices.

The Alliance's strike weapon is 'sustainability'. This term is now so over used that it can be applied to any context. Would you like some sustainability with your steak? Is that person sustainable? I want a sustainable haircut. Ditto quality. Quality was emptied of all meaning when it entered the lexicon of human resources.

Community Alliance SA want to save Adelaide and its verdant hills from development, end specific planning projects in the CBD, cut population and demand that they be consulted on all property development applications.

While one supports the desire to keep the wilderness pristine and protect wildlife sanctuaries, this suburban 'reconstruction' of the environmental movement is little more than 'green-washed' self-interest. For example, if we built a mental hospital in their suburb, the Alliance would call it unsustainable. A youth or immigrant detention centre would lack accountability. A women's shelter would suffer from a lack of transparency.

They have hijacked the language of the environmental movement and used it as a reactionary battering ram. This is not only a South Australian issue but an Australia-wide issue.

I would politely suggest that the Greens and environmentalists over the last five or six years have watched with growing unease as the environmental message has been parroted, not argued; worn like a fashion rather than something that came from the conviction of understanding.

Planning development proposals in South Australia are the domain of Councils but they can be overturned by the Planning Minister on appeal. This does seem odd but then again, left to Councils, nothing would get done - which is what the Alliance want. Its default position is the same as my black Labrador's – whine and do nothing.

The Alliance has made a classic error in the definition and interpretation of the term 'consultation'. All good democratic governments hold public consultation processes. In some cases the opinions of individuals and special interest groups are so insightful that they are woven into legislation. The error is to assume that special interest groups have the right or authority to expect their opinions to be acted upon by a government.

According to the Australian Industry Group's Australian States Outlook (2013), economic activity fell sharply in South Australia in the September (2012) quarter with state final demand falling by 3.2 per cent. This was largely due to a fall in residential and non-residential building activity, which fell by 11.7 per cent and 9.2 per cent per annum respectively.

It would be unfair to blame the Alliance for the parlous state of SA's construction industry, as there are global factors at play. But the obstructionist tactics of a few, who seek media attention for confected conflict stories, is a factor in why some developers have put Adelaide in the 'too hard' basket. SA currently has a record $14 billion debt, young people are fleeing to Melbourne and Sydney, and the state has one of the worse unemployment and under employment levels in Australia.

One wonders what young people think of this obstructionism. Affordable accommodation close to the city is hard to come by. If Adelaide is to reinvent itself as a vibrant place to live instead of a large retirement village, it will need the vision of the young in or near the CBD to create exciting communities.

The anti-population stance of the Alliance is very odd. In South Australia the SA birth rate is 1.7 children per female (less than replacement) and currently attracts only about 10,000 people a year from interstate and overseas. In fact, during the 2008/09 financial year, 26,300 people moved interstate, with those aged 20-39 making up half of this figure. If population growth is the blood pressure of capital, then South Australia's has fallen through the floor as migration bottoms out and births decline. The graph below shows how meager South Australia's inward population flow is.

3412.0 Migration, Australia, 2010-11

While I generally eschew citing media reports, I will make this one exception as it details comprehensively and accurately what is happening to world population. The anti-population parties are sowing the seeds of dissention and enmity amongst community groups, right at the time population growth is slowing.

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/what-happens-when-half-the-world-stops-making-babies/573/

The Alliance has been infiltrated by agents provocateurs from the Stop Population Growth Now and the Stable Population Party who are peddling fear. They want to meddle in women's reproductive rights, slash the immigrant intake, boot out international students, evict the Kiwis while returning Australia to trade protectionism. It is bizarre that Community Alliance SA has aligned itself with economic illiterates who want to reduce the number of people in the community. It takes the community out of Community Alliance SA.

There was a meeting organized recently by the Alliance at the Norwood Town Hall in the leafy eastern suburbs of Adelaide. About 300 people attended, most in their late 50s, 60s and early 70s. It was a regulation bun fight with the audience yelling they wanted more consultation on developments, more transparency of process, more accountability, less population growth and of course more sustainability.

For a few, this is democracy at work. For others, it's a post retirement crusade with the blind fanaticism of people who believe (in some cases, rightly), that they have not been listened to. Hell hath no fury like as Adelaide eastern suburbs rate-payer whose opinions have been ignored or in the parlance 'not actioned'.

One would like to think the Alliance represents a backlash against the more rapacious effects of globalism and they are hell bent on fostering grass roots businesses, farmer's markets, advocating small plot communal farming, closing the gap on Indigenous health, petitioning for more local doctors and midwives or new methods to harvest rainwater.

But no. They are worried about their own property prices and are using environmental slogans to camouflage their real motives.

It's a bitter medicine for older folk, who in the main, have gotten everything they wanted handed to them on a plate. They can't understand why the state government hasn't gotten down on its knees and begged forgiveness for actually governing (more or less) in the name of the people – all of the people, not just those protecting property values.

Malcolm King works in generational change. He was an associated director in DEEWR in Labour Market Strategy.