David Olney and Steve Davis

Musical Pilgrimage

This is not a typical Adelaide Show episode. For the first time in 434 instalments, Steve Davis opens by confessing he’s not sure how many more episodes there will be because something has broken in him. Not in South Australia’s people, whom he loves unreservedly, but in his trust of the state’s governance. What follows is one of the most honest conversations the show has ever hosted.

There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode. The mood didn’t call for it.

In the Musical Pilgrimage, Steve closes with Australia Day by Steve Davis & The Virtuosos, a song whose thesis turns out to be the quiet heart of everything discussed: that we’ve retreated into our selfish dwellings, stopped sticking our arms over the fence to say hello, and in doing so have left ourselves vulnerable to exactly the kind of politics this episode is about.

You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve!

The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards.

And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au

If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it.

And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concise
page.

Running Sheet: Something Has Broken: SA Politics, the Park Lands, and the Politics of Distraction

00:00:00 Intro

Introduction

00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week

There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week.

00:03:15 David Olney and Steve Davis

Steve opens by describing where he is: not disconnected from South Australia’s people, but from its governance. He says he is earnestly worried, and that there is no performative aspect to the episode. To stress-test his thinking and provide context, he has invited back David Olney, whose academic background covers history, international politics, international security, and complex problem-solving. David notes that colleagues once told him he thought more like a psychologist or neurologist than a political scientist, always searching for the human motivation beneath structural problems.

David introduces the work of political theorist Ted Robert Gurr, who studied the conditions preceding revolution across different periods of history. Gurr found two sequential thresholds: first, when people stop believing things will get better; and second, when they become convinced things are actively getting worse. Steve places himself at Gurr’s second threshold, citing the government’s handling of the algal bloom, a secret tower deal at peppercorn rent, tree clearing in the Park Lands for a golf event, and the prospect of further clearing for a motorcycle race. His concern is not with the events or sports themselves but with the irreversible damage to trees that Tourism SA uses to represent Adelaide.

Two further things have deepened Steve’s despair. The first is what he reads as a coordinated flood of upbeat ministerial social media videos that do not address the Park Lands issue at all. He sees it as a tactic borrowed from Trump’s playbook. The second is the government’s launch of a media literacy tool to help students decode messaging, at the same time as the government itself, in Steve’s view, avoids transparency, attacks critics personally rather than engaging with their arguments, and operates through private deals. David draws on Rebecca Costa’s book The Watchman’s Rattle to frame this: Costa observed that as civilisations struggle to deal with significant problems, political attention shifts to small and peripheral ones. David’s illustration from literature is the war in Gulliver’s Travels fought over which end of a boiled egg to crack.

Steve recommends the book Angertainment by Ed Koper as a guide to recognising this pattern. He uses Koper’s framing to contrast two dystopian visions: Orwell’s 1984, where repression at least provokes resistance, and Huxley’s Brave New World, where a population entertained into passivity never finds cause to push back. David agrees that Huxley’s version is the more troubling of the two.

David then explains neoliberalism at Steve’s request: the economic model adopted across the English-speaking world in the early 1980s under Thatcher, Reagan, and Hawke, which replaced mixed economies with market-driven ones. David argues that the mixed economy model of the postwar decades, while imperfect, delivered stable living standards and could absorb shocks. What replaced it produced private monopolies, underinvestment in infrastructure and services, and a political landscape where both major parties operate within the same economic framework. His summary: in Australia, both parties wear one jackboot and one fluffy slipper. David connects this to the growth of parties like One Nation and Britain’s Reform Party, arguing that voters who have seen no meaningful improvement from either major party are reaching for alternatives, not out of ideological conversion but out of exhaustion.

Steve raises a related concern: that the same billionaire interests bankrolling One Nation-type parties have no real incentive to disrupt neoliberalism, which raises questions about where that political energy actually leads.

Toward the end of the episode, Steve reads from a reply he has just received from his federal member, written in response to a handwritten letter he sent six weeks earlier about a gas tax. The reply is considered and personal, acknowledging hundreds of individual constituent responses and explaining the member’s position. Steve describes it as a strand still holding, though he is careful not to place too much weight on it. David names two economists whose recent books offer some grounds for thinking a better model is possible: Mariana Mazzucato and Daron Acemoglu.

Steve closes by naming David Pocock as an example of what a politician in this era can be, and David adds Barbara Pocock to that list. The episode ends with a brief exchange about what Don Dunstan and Malcolm Fraser might have made of where their respective parties have ended up.

The following resources were mentioned during the episode.

Books

Angertainment by Ed Koper
The Watchman’s Rattle by Rebecca Costa
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
The Common Good Economy by Mariana Mazzucato

Podcasts

The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart
The Rest is Politics US featuring Anthony Scaramucci

00:42:34 Musical Pilgrimage

In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to Australia Day by Steve Davis & The Virutalosos.

Steve introduces Australia Day as a song exploring how Australia lost the social conditions that made postwar migrant integration work. The central argument is that Italians, Greeks, and Vietnamese newcomers were absorbed into communities partly because people had time and proximity, sticking their arms over fences and saying hello. McMansions, mobile phones, and an economic model built on scarcity and anxiety have eroded that. David adds that prime ministers who romanticised the 1950s as a human ideal were simultaneously promoting the economic model that made those conditions impossible to replicate. Steve writes the songs and uses a virtual session band to produce them, with the hope that a live musician will one day take them further.

This is not a typical Adelaide Show episode. For the first time in 434 instalments, Steve Davis opens by confessing he&rsquo;s not sure how many more episodes there will be because something has broken in him. Not in South Australia&rsquo;s people, whom he loves unreservedly, but in his trust of the state&rsquo;s governance. What follows is one of the most honest conversations the show has ever hosted.
There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode. The mood didn&rsquo;t call for it.
In the Musical Pilgrimage, Steve closes with Australia Day by Steve Davis &amp; The Virtuosos, a song whose thesis turns out to be the quiet heart of everything discussed: that we&rsquo;ve retreated into our selfish dwellings, stopped sticking our arms over the fence to say hello, and in doing so have left ourselves vulnerable to exactly the kind of politics this episode is about.
You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We&rsquo;re here to serve!
The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for&nbsp;Best Interview Podcast in Australia&nbsp;at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for&nbsp;Best News and Current Affairs Podcast&nbsp;in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards.
And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It&rsquo;s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we&rsquo;ll add you to the list:&nbsp;<a href="mailto:podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au">podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au</a>
If you enjoy the show, please&nbsp;<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/another-boring-thursday-night/id696302138">leave us a 5-star review&nbsp;</a>in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store &ndash;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.redbubble.com/people/theadelaideshow/shop?asc=u">The Adelaide Show Shop</a>. We&rsquo;d greatly appreciate it.
And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://theadelaideshow.com.au/complete-list-adelaide-show-episodes/">our index of all episode in one concise page.</a>
Running Sheet: Something Has Broken: SA Politics, the Park Lands, and the Politics of Distraction
00:00:00&nbsp;Intro
Introduction
00:00:00&nbsp;SA Drink Of The Week
There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week.
00:03:15&nbsp;David Olney and Steve Davis
Steve opens by describing where he is: not disconnected from South Australia&rsquo;s people, but from its governance. He says he is earnestly worried, and that there is no performative aspect to the episode. To stress-test his thinking and provide context, he has invited back David Olney, whose academic background covers history, international politics, international security, and complex problem-solving. David notes that colleagues once told him he thought more like a psychologist or neurologist than a political scientist, always searching for the human motivation beneath structural problems.
David introduces the work of political theorist Ted Robert Gurr, who studied the conditions preceding revolution across different periods of history. Gurr found two sequential thresholds: first, when people stop believing things will get better; and second, when they become convinced things are actively getting worse. Steve places himself at Gurr&rsquo;s second threshold, citing the government&rsquo;s handling of the algal bloom, a secret tower deal at peppercorn rent, tree clearing in the Park Lands for a golf event, and the prospect of further clearing for a motorcycle race. His concern is not with the events or sports themselves but with the irreversible damage to trees that Tourism SA uses to represent Adelaide.
Two further things have deepened Steve&rsquo;s despair. The first is what he reads as a coordinated flood of upbeat ministerial social media videos that do not address the Park Lands issue at all. He sees it as a tactic borrowed from Trump&rsquo;s playbook. The second is the government&rsquo;s launch of a media literacy tool to help students decode messaging, at the same time as the government itself, in Steve&rsquo;s view, avoids transparency, attacks critics personally rather than engaging with their arguments, and operates through private deals. David draws on Rebecca Costa&rsquo;s book The Watchman&rsquo;s Rattle to frame this: Costa observed that as civilisations struggle to deal with significant problems, political attention shifts to small and peripheral ones. David&rsquo;s illustration from literature is the war in Gulliver&rsquo;s Travels fought over which end of a boiled egg to crack.
Steve recommends the book Angertainment by Ed Koper as a guide to recognising this pattern. He uses Koper&rsquo;s framing to contrast two dystopian visions: Orwell&rsquo;s 1984, where repression at least provokes resistance, and Huxley&rsquo;s Brave New World, where a population entertained into passivity never finds cause to push back. David agrees that Huxley&rsquo;s version is the more troubling of the two.
David then explains neoliberalism at Steve&rsquo;s request: the economic model adopted across the English-speaking world in the early 1980s under Thatcher, Reagan, and Hawke, which replaced mixed economies with market-driven ones. David argues that the mixed economy model of the postwar decades, while imperfect, delivered stable living standards and could absorb shocks. What replaced it produced private monopolies, underinvestment in infrastructure and services, and a political landscape where both major parties operate within the same economic framework. His summary: in Australia, both parties wear one jackboot and one fluffy slipper. David connects this to the growth of parties like One Nation and Britain&rsquo;s Reform Party, arguing that voters who have seen no meaningful improvement from either major party are reaching for alternatives, not out of ideological conversion but out of exhaustion.
Steve raises a related concern: that the same billionaire interests bankrolling One Nation-type parties have no real incentive to disrupt neoliberalism, which raises questions about where that political energy actually leads.
Toward the end of the episode, Steve reads from a reply he has just received from his federal member, written in response to a handwritten letter he sent six weeks earlier about a gas tax. The reply is considered and personal, acknowledging hundreds of individual constituent responses and explaining the member&rsquo;s position. Steve describes it as a strand still holding, though he is careful not to place too much weight on it. David names two economists whose recent books offer some grounds for thinking a better model is possible: Mariana Mazzucato and Daron Acemoglu.
Steve closes by naming David Pocock as an example of what a politician in this era can be, and David adds Barbara Pocock to that list. The episode ends with a brief exchange about what Don Dunstan and Malcolm Fraser might have made of where their respective parties have ended up.
The following resources were mentioned during the episode.
Books
<a href="https://amzn.to/4eiId2b">Angertainment by Ed Koper</a> <a href="https://amzn.to/4osyZVO">The Watchman&rsquo;s Rattle by Rebecca Costa</a> <a href="https://amzn.to/4v7scmV">Brave New World by Aldous Huxley</a> <a href="https://amzn.to/4vKLZZc">1984 by George Orwell</a> <a href="https://amzn.to/49TA6I7">Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman</a> <a href="https://amzn.to/4a0QUNs">The Common Good Economy by Mariana Mazzucato</a>
Podcasts
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@restispolitics">The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart</a> <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-rest-is-politics-us/id1743030473">The Rest is Politics US featuring Anthony Scaramucci</a>
00:42:34&nbsp;Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to&nbsp;<a href="https://stevedavis.com.au/blog/australia-day/">Australia Day&nbsp;by Steve Davis &amp; The Virutalosos</a>.
Steve introduces Australia Day as a song exploring how Australia lost the social conditions that made postwar migrant integration work. The central argument is that Italians, Greeks, and Vietnamese newcomers were absorbed into communities partly because people had time and proximity, sticking their arms over fences and saying hello. McMansions, mobile phones, and an economic model built on scarcity and anxiety have eroded that. David adds that prime ministers who romanticised the 1950s as a human ideal were simultaneously promoting the economic model that made those conditions impossible to replicate. Steve writes the songs and uses a virtual session band to produce them, with the hope that a live musician will one day take them further.

A weekly podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us each week as a co-presenter to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, food, art, music, relationships, critical thinking, health, news, interviews, chat and quizzes. 

Every single interview, every single show, unlocks insights into what drives people to be doing what they're doing and what keeps them striving. 

The Adelaide Show is produced by Steve Davis and Nigel Dobson-Keeffe.

Please subscribe to our In Crowd list; you get an email each Friday (when we have published a new episode) with an overview of that week's show. Plus, consider joining our Inner Circle; a small group of passionate South Aussies who allow us to pick their brains and gain interviewee suggestions.

This podcast began life as Another Boring Thursday Night In Adelaide from episodes 1-79.

A podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us each week as a co-presenter to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, ...

The Adelaide Show

A podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, food, art, music, relationships, critical thinking, health, and general news. Every single interview, every single show, unlocks insights into what drives people to be doing what they're doing and what keeps them striving. The Adelaide Show is produced by Steve Davis, and ends with an original song by a South Australian artist. Please subscribe to our In Crowd list; you get an email each Friday with an overview of that week's show. This podcast began life as Another Boring Thursday Night In Adelaide from episodes 1-79.

A podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, food, art, music, relationships, critical thinking, health, and general news. Every single interview, every single show, unlocks insights into what drives people to be doing what they're doing and what keeps them striving. The Adelaide Show is produced by Steve Davis, and ends with an original song by a South Australian artist. Please subscribe to our In Crowd list; you get an email each Friday with an overview of that week's show. This podcast began life as Another Boring Thursday Night In Adelaide from episodes 1-79.

In a raw and unusually personal episode, Steve Davis admits something has broken in his connection to SA’s government and sits down with former geopolitics lecturer David Olney to make sense of the spin, the Park Lands, the politics of distraction, and whether there’s still a strand worth holding onto.