The Adelaide Show Podcast

10/09/2026

The book launch is underway now for A Woman In A Thousand by Susan Neuhaus at Mortlock Library. She’s about to be interviewed by fellow author, Lainie Anderson.

It’s about Lady Galway, wife of Governor Galway in South Australia during WWI.

You’ll hear the interview this weekend on the next episode of The Adelaide Show Podcast.

05/09/2026

What a nourishing session for the soul. About 60 people gathered for a Sisters in Crime Australia event today. For authors sharing stories and their insights into writing. Thoroughly engaging discussions; a stark contrast to what passes for public discourse these days.

SA Chapter convenor, Samantha Battams - Author was given a commemorative gift by incoming convenor, Michelle Prak Author. Both are authors and former guests of The Adelaide Show.

PS Keep your ears tuned for a couple of fascinating guests later this year.

25/08/2026

We'd been made aware of this AI post by South Australian Labor, with its comments turned off, unlike its other posts. There does seem to be an increase in spiteful, kindergarten-level output from the party in recent times, so, to bring a cool head to matters, we ran it through the Adelaide Show's own Spin Detector. I think it is hard to argue with the "grown up" reading of the situation. It said:

Tactic identified — Angertainment (Decontextualised Rage-Bait) with Political Theatre (The Principled Attack). The post manufactures a clean villain narrative by stripping each "opposition moment" of its actual reasoning, then uses that pattern to pre-emptively delegitimise any scrutiny of current projects.

What's missing — We don't know *why* the Liberals opposed or cancelled each thing — cost concerns, planning objections, and genuine policy disagreements get flattened into the word "opposed" stamped in red. The Adelaide 500 cancellation in particular had a specific political context that differs significantly from "opposing infrastructure." We also don't know what the actual Liberal objections to MotoGP and the golf course upgrade are — they might be reasonable, they might not be, but this post has no interest in telling you. Comments being turned off is the tell: this is a broadcast, not a conversation.

The legitimate grievance — There's something real here. If a political party reflexively opposes popular projects and those projects succeed, that's a fair pattern to point out. Consistency of opposition matters in democratic accountability. That's a legitimate line of attack — it just deserves actual evidence rather than red stamps.

Draft response — Interesting that comments are off on this one. Asking *why* the Liberals opposed each thing — rather than just *that* they did — would either strengthen this argument considerably or complicate it. The stamp does the work that the evidence was supposed to do.

PS I recently outed myself as a one-time member of the ALP's Bragg sub-branch, many years ago (episode 434). The current bouts of hidden deals and disingenuous claims of mandate, have soured those past connections. So it is truly disappointing to watch any political party shrink from having bold belief systems and principles, and devolve into petty name calling and rage baiting machines. Steve

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bhp2wBZNc/

Ashton Hurn’s SA Liberals are at it again, opposing another event that will bring huge benefits to our state.

They opposed the Adelaide Oval redevelopment. They fought the new Adelaide Aquatic Centre. They cancelled the Adelaide 500.

All have gone on to be hugely successful.

Now they’re opposing MotoGP and the North Adelaide Golf Course upgrade.

Same old Liberals: oppose, obstruct, cancel — then watch South Australians prove them wrong.

24/08/2026

ICYMI: Here is the song featured at the end of this week's episode. Just sharing it here because it seems that instead of addressing concerns about transparency and being thoughtful and responsible about our civic inheritance of the park lands, the Premier and his various teams are obsessing over ways to mock or lie about the cross section of South Aussies who gathered on Sunday.

As the song says, when you have a party that prefers verbal karate instead of doing things considered hard ...

As always, this is a song draft, my words (Steve Davis), looking for any local performers who want to take this song and make it their own.

PS While this song has currency for many of us at the moment, it is a general reflection on any leaders who believe they have transcended democracy and become deities.

23/08/2026

“When we voted I don’t believe we gave informed consent,” says Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith, commenting on government claims it has a mandate for permanent upheaval of Park Lands for a MotoGP.

22/08/2026

Is Peter Malinauskas Accidentally Building the Liberal Party's Next Asset?

This week I did something that surprised even me: I publicly liked posts from two South Australian Liberal Party politicians. Two days running. That's not a habit of mine, so I called in the gang to help me work out what was going on.

Long-time political commentator Robert Godden and geopolitics analyst David Olney joined me to unpack why Jack Batty, Member for Bragg, and Opposition Leader Ashton Hurn are suddenly sounding like grown-ups in a party Robert describes as otherwise riddled with "decrepit fossils and weird cultists." The real question we kept circling: is Peter Malinauskas himself the one handing the Liberal Party its opening, by drifting from consensus premier to something more contentious, more autocratic, and driving his own supporters into the arms of the opposition?

We didn't stop at parliament. I ran South Australia's Health Minister's saccharine response to a horror day of ambulance ramping through The Adelaide Show's free Spin Detector tool, and the result is worth reading on its own: a masterclass in "flooding the zone with warmth" while the Ambulance Employees Association's actual, specific claims quietly leave the room. Robert and David both had plenty to say about what that tells us about accountability in this state right now.

From there we turned to Sunday's Adelaide Park Lands Association's Stop the Chop march, and whether turning up in numbers still means anything in 2026. Robert and David didn't let me off easy here, comparing it to the Vietnam moratorium marches and the Arab Spring, and the historical detour into why Rome actually fell is one of the more mind-bending tangents we've had on this show.

And because sometimes the only sane response to feeling unheard is to write a song about it, we close the episode with "For Pete's Sake," a new comedic ska track from Steve Davis and The Virtuosos, aimed squarely at politicians who set sail toward their own interests while telling us they're still listening.

Episode 438 is up now, wherever you get your podcasts. Full show notes and the Spin Detector tool at theadelaideshow.com.au.

- Steve Davis

https://theadelaideshow.com.au/podcast-episodes/438-is-peter-malinauskas-a-liberal-party-asset/

Episode 438: Is Peter Malinauskas accidentally handing the Liberal Party an asset by driving disillusioned voters their way?

20/08/2026

Here's another test of our Spin Detector tool. This time, we asked it to analyse the Premier's tactics in the InDaily story covering the protests over his wanton destruction of Adelaide Park Lands and his labelling of opponents as cultural elitists.

How do we make sense of this? The Spin Detector Tool does a good job of providing fair evaluation - even more fairminded than my loaded introduction to this post. It said:

Tactic identified — Tribal Identity Framing (Us vs Them) with a secondary layer of Righteous Anger Activation. Malinauskas is reframing a planning dispute about public land as a class war between ordinary motorsport fans and snobbish elites — which is a much easier fight to win than the actual argument about tree loss and park lands development.

What's missing — The "cultural elitists" aren't identified, and the Premier's framing collapses two very different objections into one dismissible caricature. People raising concerns about irreversible tree loss in a protected green belt aren't necessarily opposed to motorsport — they may simply want the consultation that the Premier himself just confirmed hasn't happened yet. The Federal Court case is also barely touched: if the government's own lawyers are currently arguing their position in court, "we'll consult after the design is done" is a fairly narrow window for public input to matter.

The legitimate grievance — The park lands genuinely are contested social territory in Adelaide, and there's a real history of wealthier, more organised residents having disproportionate influence over how they're used. If motorsport fans, families, and working-class users feel those spaces haven't reflected their interests, that's worth taking seriously. The Premier isn't inventing the tension — he's just weaponising it.

Draft response — Worth noting: the Premier is promising post-design consultation on a track where construction begins in December, while his lawyers are simultaneously in Federal Court arguing for the right to build it. "Cultural elitism" is doing a lot of work to keep attention off that sequence of events.

The Premier has teed off in parliament against MotoGP and Golf critics as the state's lawyers present their case in the Federal Court.

17/08/2026

Sparing a thought today as the memorial service is underway for Peter Squires OAM, the driving spirit behind Old Tailem Town Pioneer Village. Not to be confused with the picture of me and the old Adelaide Show truck that was on display (or was it).

The work of Peter, his family, and staff, especially their generosity of spirit, brought history alive for many of us.

This skill is crucial because in this day and age, governments easily run roughshod over our cultural and civic inheritance, chasing headlines and the pouring of concrete at any cost.

Taking time to reflect on where we came from, what shaped us, and the notion of questioning what legacy we will leave for tomorrow, was epitomised by Peter.

Vale Peter Squires OAM

16/08/2026

Sharing this today in solidarity with everybody at Semaphore Workers Club after the hideous and gutless vandalism carried out by neo-nazis (you know, the scourge the world fought against in WWII).

This interview was done ahead of the Semaphore Music Festival, which will be upon us soon enough. And it features a regular singer who stands astride that stage, Don Morrison.

Meet Semaphore Music Festival director Debra Thorsen, Workers Club president Sally Mitchell, and local legend Don Morrison.

13/08/2026

One of our listeners put the Premier's AI Royal Commission announcement through the Spin Detector this week. Then they sent us the output.

Here's a taste:

"Tactic identified — Political Theatre: Staged Authenticity with a secondary layer of Flooding the Zone with Warmth. The announcement is structured as decisive leadership — the premier just returned from America, met the important people, saw the scale of the problem, and is now acting. This is the classic hero's journey framing of governance: I went, I learned, I led."

And then it went further:

"A Royal Commission with a final report due July 2027 is, in practical terms, a two-and-a-half-year holding pattern on substantive AI policy. The timeline also conveniently lands after the next state election cycle begins to heat up."

But here's the thing — the Spin Detector didn't just take a swing at the announcement. It also named the legitimate concern underneath it:

"AI deployment is genuinely outpacing regulatory frameworks everywhere, and a small jurisdiction like South Australia is particularly exposed. The impulse to build a serious, expert-led policy process before the harms compound is sound governance instinct, not just theatre."

That's the whole point of the tool. Not to make you cynical. To make you clear.

The full output is in the image below. The tool is free at TheAdelaideShow.com.au. Paste in any post or announcement and see what comes back.

We'd love to know what you run through it.