SA Drink Of The Week

Robert Godden and David Olney

Musical Pilgrimage

A year ago, political commentator Robert Godden’s pin-up was Premier Peter Malinauskas. Steve recorded this episode on the day the chainsaws began clearing Parklands trees for the MotoGP track, and asked Robert how that view has changed. His answer is about listening, and former geopolitics lecturer David Olney explains why governments seem to have stopped doing it. From there the conversation follows the same thread through the MotoGP circuit, a proposed data centre at Tungkillo in the Adelaide Hills and the ramping crisis. It ends with Robert’s one-sentence view of what government is for, which Steve was tempted to play on repeat as the entire episode. And the image for this episode is from the government’s own publicity kit, with a little enhancement to show the heat belting off the tarmac in a tree-less space.

The South Australian Drink of the Week is Never Never Signature Vodka, from the distillery that has just won gold at the 2026 South Australian Tourism Awards. Steve takes it neat from the freezer, where he learned to keep vodka in Budapest, and ends up describing olive brine, a slow-motion blanket and a row of fluffy white geese.

The Musical Pilgrimage is a hymn Steve wrote by hand in the style of a classic Anglican hymn, then fed through AI so a human performer could hear a draft. Eternal, Unknowable, Data on High is his response to the Tungkillo data centre debate and to his own use of the tools behind it.

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: The Mali Scar

00:00:00 Intro

Introduction

00:03:13 SA Drink Of The Week

Steve introduces the SA Drink Of The Week, Never Never Signature Vodka, with some news. Never Never has just been named South Australia’s leading distillery tourism experience, with gold at the 2026 South Australian Tourism Awards. It had the highest score across this year’s winery, brewery and distillery categories, which sends it to the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards.

He congratulates former guest, Sean Baxter, and the team, then goes to the freezer. When Steve lived in Budapest, he kept vodka on the windowsill through minus 15 winters, and he has kept it cold ever since. He pours it neat, and the first thing he notices is an oily viscosity. There’s a faint olive-brine note on the nose. The first sip arrives like “a lovely blanket that’s being unfurled in slow motion”, and it has none of the bite some vodkas carry. The label says it’s enriched with olive, coconut and avocado oils, and promises a “velvety texture with exceptional balance”. Steve finds the balance right across the palate, like standing in the surf as foam passes without knocking you over. The aftertaste is a subtle coconut note, something like pearl, and then the geese. He suggests drinking it straight or mixing it, and mentions that the distillery’s Triple Juniper Gin has only been around for 12 months.

00:07:46 Robert Godden and David Olney

Steve opens by reminding Robert that a year ago he held up Peter Malinauskas as his political pin-up, and asks where things stand now. Robert says the Premier hasn’t changed, but the relationship with the public has. In his view, this is a government that no longer accepts that “consultation includes the possibility that it changes its mind”. He remembers Michael Harbison driving around with an ear fixed to his car, advertising that he was listening. Steve links that to John Schumann’s song about the “ragtag extremists”, where part of the plan is to ignore people until they give up. Robert says the label now gets worn as a badge of honour, and adds, “Asking someone not to cut down a possum’s house is not extreme.” David Olney offers an explanation that goes back to the 1980s. In his view, governments in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand consult reliably only when the economy is busy enough that most people aren’t watching. When it slows, any consultation about trees turns into “why is our life so hard”, and that makes every party look as though it has no way forward. The two also trade a friendly argument over the word neoliberalism. Robert is wary of how people twist it, while David insists it is an academic term for an idea cooked up by economists who had never run a business.

That brings them to the Parklands. Steve stresses that the Stop the Chop campaign isn’t anti-MotoGP. His objection is that alternatives never seemed to be explored. He mentions an Advertiser editorial pointing at the campaign’s celebrity supporters, including a photo of Matt Preston enjoying hospitality at a MotoGP event, and says John Schumann is a motorbike rider who loves the sport, just not the location. Robert has his own reasons for opposing the race. He dislikes any motor sport that burns fossil fuels, and he recalls a rider from an earlier episode who tried an e-car and said he’d stick with traditional racing for the noise. He says a tree that 20 generations of possums have lived in isn’t replaced by 10 saplings planted three kilometres away. He also doubts the government’s crowd claims. In his view, it counted 100,000 attendees over four days, but at least 25,000 were there for Robbie Williams, and “Bob from Salisbury” would have spent his $300 in Adelaide anyway. For Robert, the Premier’s answer to everything is sport. David reads it differently. He sees a government drawn to big-ticket spectacle because it can’t help Main Street, with Rwanda’s coming Formula 1 bid as his example.

Data centres follow, because Steve sees the same pattern. The proposed Tungkillo data centre has been paused while the developer rethinks how it communicates with residents. David says the debate focuses on water and energy, when the surprise is how many skilled workers a data centre needs. Electricians, systems engineers and technicians are on site constantly, he says, because the racks are always being swapped out. If 100 of them bought houses in Tungkillo, he says, the main street would see more money than it has since the 1980s. Steve pushes back on farmland, and David replies that most of the country north of Adelaide is already under houses. He’d rather have the data centre, he says, because houses stop generating economic activity once they’re built. Robert says residents put 432 questions to the developer, on energy, water, noise, farmland and bushfire, and the company should have asked for help in designing the project. “You can love AI and be enthusiastic about it without wanting to sign a blank cheque for infrastructure.” Both add that Labor didn’t support this week’s inquiry, which the opposition and crossbench established. Steve recalls the Hills properties that trucked in water not long ago. Robert says he bought water for his horses this year.

The same missing-listening thread runs through ramping. Steve notes the new revelation that ramping depends on aged care beds, and Robert remembers COVID, when hospitals phoned his disability and aged care business to place people and sent equipment to match. He says the state government now blames the Commonwealth and doesn’t seem to be pressuring it. David says this is how a Labor premier and a Labor prime minister behave, because the Constitution sets up states and the federal government to fight over money whatever party they’re from. Robert adds the story of the 1993 Olympic bid, won by John Fahey and Paul Keating working together. By 2000, Howard and Carr were in charge, and both leaders had been replaced. He also says the media keeps its eye on the wrong story, citing a recent Advertiser front page about a man convicted of murder as a teenager who was seen in a KFC.

The closing question is about deflection. Steve describes the past week’s announcements, which pointed at the Adelaide City Council and aged care while the tree felling and budget overruns went on. David says his master’s in strategic communication taught him to tell the truth early and say what you’re going to do. What the course left out, he says, is the case where you have no ideas and no skin in the game, and then “deflection becomes everything”. Robert has the last word: “The public is not an obstacle for the government to solve. The public is the reason for the government.”

00:45:58 Musical Pilgrimage

In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to Eternal, Unknowable, Data On High by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos.

It isn’t often a hymn turns up on the Adelaide Show, but this one comes straight out of the roundtable. Steve wrote it by hand in the style of a classic Anglican hymn, then used AI to turn the draft into something a human performer could hear and take on. He recorded it on the day of a Microsoft outage, with the Tungkillo data centre on hold. Before the song, he talks about the human brain’s habit of finding the laziest route to getting things done, and about everything we keep in the cloud. He calls it an ironic, tongue-in-cheek, bittersweet hymn. The verses run from rivers running dry to “your shareholder yields”, with the refrain “forever your servants for eternity”. Steve sums up humankind as lemmings heading for a cliff, and doing so “happily for the trinkets we’re getting along the way”.

A year ago, political commentator Robert Godden&rsquo;s pin-up was Premier Peter Malinauskas. Steve recorded this episode on the day the chainsaws began clearing Parklands trees for the MotoGP track, and asked Robert how that view has changed. His answer is about listening, and former geopolitics lecturer David Olney explains why governments seem to have stopped doing it. From there the conversation follows the same thread through the MotoGP circuit, a proposed data centre at Tungkillo in the Adelaide Hills and the ramping crisis. It ends with Robert&rsquo;s one-sentence view of what government is for, which Steve was tempted to play on repeat as the entire episode. And the image for this episode is from the government&rsquo;s own publicity kit, with a little enhancement to show the heat belting off the tarmac in a tree-less space.
The South Australian Drink of the Week is Never Never Signature Vodka, from the distillery that has just won gold at the 2026 South Australian Tourism Awards. Steve takes it neat from the freezer, where he learned to keep vodka in Budapest, and ends up describing olive brine, a slow-motion blanket and a row of fluffy white geese.
The Musical Pilgrimage is a hymn Steve wrote by hand in the style of a classic Anglican hymn, then fed through AI so a human performer could hear a draft. Eternal, Unknowable, Data on High is his response to the Tungkillo data centre debate and to his own use of the tools behind it.
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 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&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: <a href="mailto:podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au">podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au</a>
If you enjoy the show, please <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/another-boring-thursday-night/id696302138">leave us a 5-star review </a>in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store &ndash; <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 <a href="https://theadelaideshow.com.au/complete-list-adelaide-show-episodes/">our index of all episode in one concise page.</a>
Running Sheet: The Mali Scar
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:03:13&nbsp;SA Drink Of The Week
Steve introduces the SA Drink Of The Week, <a href="https://neverneverdistilling.com.au/products/signature-vodka">Never Never Signature Vodka</a>, with some news. Never Never has just been named South Australia&rsquo;s leading distillery tourism experience, with gold at the 2026 South Australian Tourism Awards. It had the highest score across this year&rsquo;s winery, brewery and distillery categories, which sends it to the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards.
He congratulates former guest, Sean Baxter, and the team, then goes to the freezer. When Steve lived in Budapest, he kept vodka on the windowsill through minus 15 winters, and he has kept it cold ever since. He pours it neat, and the first thing he notices is an oily viscosity. There&rsquo;s a faint olive-brine note on the nose. The first sip arrives like &ldquo;a lovely blanket that&rsquo;s being unfurled in slow motion&rdquo;, and it has none of the bite some vodkas carry. The label says it&rsquo;s enriched with olive, coconut and avocado oils, and promises a &ldquo;velvety texture with exceptional balance&rdquo;. Steve finds the balance right across the palate, like standing in the surf as foam passes without knocking you over. The aftertaste is a subtle coconut note, something like pearl, and then the geese. He suggests drinking it straight or mixing it, and mentions that the distillery&rsquo;s Triple Juniper Gin has only been around for 12 months.
00:07:46&nbsp;Robert Godden and David Olney
Steve opens by reminding Robert that a year ago he held up Peter Malinauskas as his political pin-up, and asks where things stand now. Robert says the Premier hasn&rsquo;t changed, but the relationship with the public has. In his view, this is a government that no longer accepts that &ldquo;consultation includes the possibility that it changes its mind&rdquo;. He remembers Michael Harbison driving around with an ear fixed to his car, advertising that he was listening. Steve links that to John Schumann&rsquo;s song about the &ldquo;ragtag extremists&rdquo;, where part of the plan is to ignore people until they give up. Robert says the label now gets worn as a badge of honour, and adds, &ldquo;Asking someone not to cut down a possum&rsquo;s house is not extreme.&rdquo; David Olney offers an explanation that goes back to the 1980s. In his view, governments in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand consult reliably only when the economy is busy enough that most people aren&rsquo;t watching. When it slows, any consultation about trees turns into &ldquo;why is our life so hard&rdquo;, and that makes every party look as though it has no way forward. The two also trade a friendly argument over the word neoliberalism. Robert is wary of how people twist it, while David insists it is an academic term for an idea cooked up by economists who had never run a business.
That brings them to the Parklands. Steve stresses that the Stop the Chop campaign isn&rsquo;t anti-MotoGP. His objection is that alternatives never seemed to be explored. He mentions an Advertiser editorial pointing at the campaign&rsquo;s celebrity supporters, including a photo of Matt Preston enjoying hospitality at a MotoGP event, and says John Schumann is a motorbike rider who loves the sport, just not the location. Robert has his own reasons for opposing the race. He dislikes any motor sport that burns fossil fuels, and he recalls a rider from an earlier episode who tried an e-car and said he&rsquo;d stick with traditional racing for the noise. He says a tree that 20 generations of possums have lived in isn&rsquo;t replaced by 10 saplings planted three kilometres away. He also doubts the government&rsquo;s crowd claims. In his view, it counted 100,000 attendees over four days, but at least 25,000 were there for Robbie Williams, and &ldquo;Bob from Salisbury&rdquo; would have spent his $300 in Adelaide anyway. For Robert, the Premier&rsquo;s answer to everything is sport. David reads it differently. He sees a government drawn to big-ticket spectacle because it can&rsquo;t help Main Street, with Rwanda&rsquo;s coming Formula 1 bid as his example.
Data centres follow, because Steve sees the same pattern. The proposed Tungkillo data centre has been paused while the developer rethinks how it communicates with residents. David says the debate focuses on water and energy, when the surprise is how many skilled workers a data centre needs. Electricians, systems engineers and technicians are on site constantly, he says, because the racks are always being swapped out. If 100 of them bought houses in Tungkillo, he says, the main street would see more money than it has since the 1980s. Steve pushes back on farmland, and David replies that most of the country north of Adelaide is already under houses. He&rsquo;d rather have the data centre, he says, because houses stop generating economic activity once they&rsquo;re built. Robert says residents put 432 questions to the developer, on energy, water, noise, farmland and bushfire, and the company should have asked for help in designing the project. &ldquo;You can love AI and be enthusiastic about it without wanting to sign a blank cheque for infrastructure.&rdquo; Both add that Labor didn&rsquo;t support this week&rsquo;s inquiry, which the opposition and crossbench established. Steve recalls the Hills properties that trucked in water not long ago. Robert says he bought water for his horses this year.
The same missing-listening thread runs through ramping. Steve notes the new revelation that ramping depends on aged care beds, and Robert remembers COVID, when hospitals phoned his disability and aged care business to place people and sent equipment to match. He says the state government now blames the Commonwealth and doesn&rsquo;t seem to be pressuring it. David says this is how a Labor premier and a Labor prime minister behave, because the Constitution sets up states and the federal government to fight over money whatever party they&rsquo;re from. Robert adds the story of the 1993 Olympic bid, won by John Fahey and Paul Keating working together. By 2000, Howard and Carr were in charge, and both leaders had been replaced. He also says the media keeps its eye on the wrong story, citing a recent Advertiser front page about a man convicted of murder as a teenager who was seen in a KFC.
The closing question is about deflection. Steve describes the past week&rsquo;s announcements, which pointed at the Adelaide City Council and aged care while the tree felling and budget overruns went on. David says his master&rsquo;s in strategic communication taught him to tell the truth early and say what you&rsquo;re going to do. What the course left out, he says, is the case where you have no ideas and no skin in the game, and then &ldquo;deflection becomes everything&rdquo;. Robert has the last word: &ldquo;The public is not an obstacle for the government to solve. The public is the reason for the government.&rdquo;
00:45:58&nbsp;Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to <a href="https://stevedavis.com.au/blog/eternal-unknowable-data-on-high/">Eternal, Unknowable, Data On High by Steve Davis &amp; The Virtualosos.</a>
It isn&rsquo;t often a hymn turns up on the Adelaide Show, but this one comes straight out of the roundtable. Steve wrote it by hand in the style of a classic Anglican hymn, then used AI to turn the draft into something a human performer could hear and take on. He recorded it on the day of a Microsoft outage, with the Tungkillo data centre on hold. Before the song, he talks about the human brain&rsquo;s habit of finding the laziest route to getting things done, and about everything we keep in the cloud. He calls it an ironic, tongue-in-cheek, bittersweet hymn. The verses run from rivers running dry to &ldquo;your shareholder yields&rdquo;, with the refrain &ldquo;forever your servants for eternity&rdquo;. Steve sums up humankind as lemmings heading for a cliff, and doing so &ldquo;happily for the trinkets we&rsquo;re getting along the way&rdquo;.

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.

Good government is not just about what you get done. It's about showing that they're worth doing. It's about listening while there's still time to change what's gonna happen. And it's about owning the results afterwards. Because the public is not an obstacle for the government to solve. The public is the reason for the government. Robert Godden.