Commenting on the story: Art Gallery of SA under fire over “perverse” sculpures

It’s art and it’s 2024.

These sculptures have been around for some time now and form a great part of the modern sculpture collection at the gallery. There’s some pretty graphic religious effigies in the gallery too, but interestingly silent on those!

Our government is secular and should not be swayed by wowser conservative religious groups. I’d be more interested in a lobby to government to make religious groups pay tax and then we would have more money for more art. – Daniel Hilary

For goodness sakes! If people do not want to see/look at a particular piece of artwork, they can simply look away. Go to another part of the gallery, take their kids to the coffee shop or the museum.

Why do (very) minority group people have a need to tell the rest of us what we are allowed to see? And the State Government what it can fund? Perversely, the same groups often bleat about ‘freedom of speech.’ Bah humbug. – Myrana Wahlqvist

This is how art institutions can alienate mainstream, generally supportive community members. – Mike Martens

However much Christians and Muslims and any other religious groups might regret it, we are not living in a theocracy and their views have no more weight in the field of art than does any other group.

Art is meant to reveal, enlighten, inform, excite, provoke, and stimulate our minds and our emotions. If the little delicate princes and princesses can’t understand that and can’t take the heat of an art gallery with wide ranging material on offer, then they should stay away.

I personally find a lot of Christian iconography quite disturbing and offensive; what child needs to see (without warning) St Sebastian pierced with arrows, or the decapitated head of St John the Baptist? And absolutely, no religious or political or similarly biased group with vested interests should be asking for the withdrawal of funding of one the very institutions that celebrates humanity and its art, in all its diversity. – Nicola Stratford

Bravo, AGSA. The minority view seeking to take us back to the dark ages should be ignored. No one is forcing them to look, they cannot force us not to. – John Irving

Commenting on the story: City economic development agency sees red over proposed budget cut

As a former Chair of the Rundle Mall Management Authority it has been my policy not to comment on the ACC or it’s administration, but this concept of reducing the AEDC seems ridiculous to the point of laughable.

Let’s put a couple of things in context for the Council member who says that the AECD isn’t doing it’s job.

The AEDC receives a large percentage of their funding from the Rundle Mall Levy, so the 4% figure is a bit misleading to start with. What is the net figure after you take out the levy from their funding? The levy is not taken for general revenue but specifically to support and kept a vibrant city centre shopping precinct.

It is reasonable to ask what is the job of AEDC, and it should be clear that it is to develop ideas to attract people to the city. Then it is to attract landlords who will invest in property to attract more people to the city.

So maybe we should ask what the council is doing to support the AEDC?

The Council relies on, and continues to increase, parking fees, the greatest single deterrent to people coming to the city to shop or socialise. Sure they can’t just give up the revenue but a targeted program to use their own parking stations in innovative ways to attract people has always been in the too hard basket.

The Council ties up building owners in enormous red tape if they want to develop buildings in the city. The added cost of maintaining heritage buildings (which makes up a large percentage of vacant city buildings) is both prohibitively expensive and almost impossible to navigate.

The large percentage of unoccupied buildings is because no one in their right mind would develop the older buildings that are unattractive to tenants or developers because of high costs and red tape. Of course we can also blame Covid and the work from home movement for less people needing tenancies, but that avoids the real issue.

There is no simple answer but hiding behind “everyone has to share the pain” is a total diversion away from placing the blame for this position on the Council, not the exceptional AECD.

They have propped up an ailing system against this type of negativity and the situation would have been far worse without them. – Eric Granger

Commenting on Notes On Adelaide: Our housing crisis is challenging SA from all directions
As a suggestion, perhaps we could improve the way we build houses. It’s a cottage industry in this century.
I understand, in Japan, Toyota is a major house builder using production line methods. They build the home in a factory and ship it to the end location. The same in Europe.

If you look objectively at most houses being built today, they are just transportables put on a concrete slab.

Our current methods are antiquated and very expensive. – John Clayton

Commenting on the story: Whyalla Steelworks restart a step closer

Words are important. I’ve read the Whyalla Steel works recent shut down and restart, differently to some.

According to InDaily Many workers at the steelworks, Whyalla’s biggest employer, have been forced to take a 30 per cent pay cut while GFG deals with the shutdown of steel production.”

Technically speaking the workers have not been forced to take a 30% pay cut. Mr Gupta put an
offer to keep all staff on the books, paying the staff their basic pay, no overtime or penalty rates for not being at the ‘coking coal face’. Fairly decent deal. Most industries would have sent staff home, no pay.

Plans to decarbonise the plant have been set back by around two years”. Technically again, not correct. Mr Gupta pushed back the GreenSTEEL transition to 2027. A planned rescheduling, that may be more to align the electric arc furnace switching on, to the availability of Green Hydrogen and power from the government Green hydrogen power plant, not planned to be operating until late 2026.

So, in summary,  essentially no ‘forced pay cut’ and no two year ‘set back’. – Steve Harrison