‘My computer’s broken’: Laptop carnage at Town Hall

Adelaide City councillor and Christian prayer enthusiast Henry Davis is no stranger to the odd verbal stoush with a council executive, but his latest run-in this week saw more than words thrown about.

The incident, which occurred during Tuesday night’s tedious weekly episode of council prayer drama, left Davis’ Microsoft Surface Pro “split open down the sides” (his words) after it slid off a table occupied by one of the council’s top mandarins, chief operating officer Michael Sedgman.

Davis left his chair to approach Sedgman after the councillor failed several times to bring forward a debate about re-establishing prayer at council.

The incident was captured in the background of council’s livestream. See (and hear) for yourself below:

A slightly bewildered Davis trotted back to his seat with his computer. He read off a paper agenda for the rest of the meeting.

The council was also forced to retake votes as Davis fell behind on the agenda. Asked by Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith why he didn’t vote on one matter, Davis replied: “Yeah sorry, my computer’s broken – I’m trying to recover.”

Davis had wanted to bring forward debate about the prayer because it was listed at the bottom of the council agenda and scheduled for discussion after a separate recommendation to remove the prayer was to be voted on.

The Lord Mayor was happy to accept Davis’ request but not until the council voted on 13 other items – all of which were unrelated to the prayer.

Davis could not abide by this, asking repeatedly for the prayer debate to be brought to the start of the meeting and arguing that not doing so would be in contravention of the council’s standing orders.

Sedgman was then roped into the stoush when the council administration was asked to provide advice on the matter. To Davis’ further frustration, Sedgman sided with the Lord Mayor, saying: “There’s a debate that’s not necessary here.”

That’s when Davis got up out of seat to confront Sedgman. Davis told InSider that he wanted to ask for “clarification as to why we weren’t following the regulations” but could not get a response.

As to why he couldn’t stop his laptop from slowly sliding off the table, Davis says: “I was standing up at that time to move away, there was no way I could save it from smashing.”

Councillor Davis’ laptop on Tuesday night. Photo: supplied/Henry Davis

InSider sought Sedgman’s side of the story through council’s media advisers but he declined to comment on the matter.

As for the damaged laptop, Davis says it’s now repaired – although council says the laptop needed no repairs as it sustained no damage.

Bridging the centuries

To mark the reopening of Old Murray Bridge this month, SA Infrastructure and Transport recreated a photo of the original crew that built the bridge in 1879.

As the first major bridge spanning the Murray River in South Australia, Old Murray Bridge is a significant State Heritage structure. The $46 million works will increase the bridge’s life span by an estimated 30 years.

The bridge reopened to two-way traffic this week.

Conspiracy theorists flood Greater Adelaide plan response

Regular readers of InDaily will know the State Planning Commission is seeking everyone’s views about what should be in the next 30-year plan for Greater Adelaide.

But if the government’s Facebook advertising is anything to go by, the Commission might get more than they bargained for – a video on PlanSA’s Facebook page promoting the concept of “living locally” was this month flooded by 15-minute-city conspiracy theorists.

Living locally is an urban planning concept promoting city design in which most of life’s daily necessities and services can be reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

Indeed, as State Planning Commission chair Craig Holden says in the promoted video: “This means that we live and work as close as we can together, we reduce our carbon footprint, we reduce our time on the road and traffic and transport and the like.”

Perhaps in a pre-social media world the concept would be uncontroversial, but instead it’s been engulfed in conspiracy theories about it being a government plot to limit freedom of movement.

“Keep your new world agenda out of Australia, we love it the way it is,” read the most-liked of the 69 comments to the PlanSA post.

Another wrote: “Why isn’t he come out with the truth SMART CITIES. Surveillance to the core. No more freedom.”

PlanSA’s social media team made an admirable effort to respond to most comments.

When one climate change denier asked if the Greater Adelaide plan discussion paper was a “roll out of 15 min cities”, PlanSA responded: “The Discussion Paper seeks to start the conversation of how and where Greater Adelaide could grow, it does not make recommendations.”

When another ominously commented “riots soon”, PlanSA queried: “Because of a Discussion Paper that asks communities how they would like to see their region live and grow for the future?”

It’s worth noting that InDaily’s Facebook comment section is not immune to conspiracies. Someone this week suggested the future development opportunities of the Rundle Street Upark represented stage one of “the elimination of personally owned vehicles” to establish 15-minute cities.

Links with Lithuania

In one of those weird coincidences, two notices landed in InSider’s inbox this week about Lithuania. First up was an email telling InSider of the inclusion of Kaunas modernist architecture (Modern Kaunas: The Architecture of Optimism, 1919–1939) on the World Heritage List.

Second was the announcement that Adelaide’s UNESCO City of Music general manager, Joe Hay, has been appointed to the Vilnius Night Office… the department that ensures you have a great night out in the nation’s capital. A very good gig to land.

According to Global True Lithuania, an encyclopedia of Lithuanian heritage worldwide, “Adelaide arguably hosts the richest Lithuanian heritage in Australia”. It was created by a large Lithuanian community which arrived to South Australia in the 1950s as people fled the Soviets.

Eye in the sky

As the weather heats up for the long weekend, Surf Life Saving Australia is marking 50 years of flying the Westpac Helicopter to keep beachgoers safe up and down our coasts.

The helicopter has been flying around South Australia since 1979, and much has changed since then… especially fashion sense, thankfully.

Stuff you should know…

Today is the International Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, a United Nations effort to educate the world about food security.

The UN site says “reducing food losses and waste is essential in a world where the number of people affected by hunger has been slowly on the rise since 2014, and tons and tons of edible food are lost and/or wasted every day”.

Buying only what you need and composting kitchen scraps are a few of the ideas anyone can implement at home.