DON'T LET THE FACTS......

If you don’t know all the details then you should not mouth off about issues you know nothing about.

I refer to David Penberthy's column in Friday 14 June's Adelaide Advertiser: “SANFL HQ Saga Shows the Inanity of Council”. Let me just point out that the granting of a licence to the SANFL over Football Park has nothing to do with football and everything to do with land that is owned by the residents of the West Development, West Lakes, being taken away from the rightful owners (the residents who have paid for it) by a big corporation with vested interests and lots of money to splurge on propaganda. This land was promised to the residents when they bought their homes. It is no longer a football oval, and this lease will cause the oval to remain a barren bare oval for 42 years with no trees, BBQs, playgrounds, seating etc and prevent community use when the residents want to use it.

A bit of background - The SANFL sold Football Park to the developers for $83m back in 2014 and were happy to walk away and establish themselves at Thebarton. However, now that they are being forced out by the Crows, they want to reestablish themselves on land that is no longer a football oval but the legally-required 15% greenspace for the West Development. They want to use it free of charge for 42 years and prevent any community infrastructure being established on this land for community use. The Crows were knocked back by the Adelaide City Council on using the parklands for their new home and use of the Bowden site was refused by the State Government, so they decided to muscle their way in to Thebarton at the expense of the SANFL. All that was needed was for the SANFL to grow some balls (pun intended) and tell the Crows to ‘bugger off’ and none of this would have happened.

The councillors who voted against the SANFL licence should be commended, as they were the ones who refused to be coerced by state and local politicians with Labor party affiliations and big sporting organisations with money. They were the ones who actually listened to the deputations by the residents and voted with their conscience rather than doing what the Mayor told them to do. The Mayor was undoubtedly pulling the strings.

The Community Consultation by the Council was biased and did not present both sides of the story, so the responses from most of the people outside of the immediate local area, should not have been counted, as they did not know what they were voting for. They just thought they were supporting their footy club because they were asked to.

So, if you have any integrity, Mr Penberthy, then you should do some actual research and find out the other side of the story and write a column about your findings after consulting with the other stakeholders.

You have a lot of power through your column in the Advertiser. I suggest you use it to rectify the damage you have done to those Councillors of Charles Sturt Council who have done the right thing.