The Lord Mayor of Adelaide Dr Jane Lomax-Smith responds to last week’s op-ed from Bruce Djite with her own column, and says the role of Council in city development has never been more important.

As Joseph Campbell once said, mythology helps us make sense of the world – but that doesn’t make every myth true.

Take Bruce Djite’s op-ed last week: it reads like a fable, complete with a villain (the City of Adelaide), a hero (himself), and a neat, self-serving moral.

But the story? It’s pure hubris.

In case you missed it, here’s the gist – though you’ve likely heard this tale before.

The City of Adelaide, painted as a 185-year-old roadblock to progress, should be blown apart and replaced by a grab-bag of commissions and trusts, suggests Bruce.

Our plucky young ‘hero’ claims the Council kills development, underfunds Park Lands, and lacks any real vision.

It’s a familiar yarn. One where the Council is, paradoxically, both too progressive and not progressive enough, penny-pinching and over-spending, narrow-minded and naive.

This familiar rhetoric has returned on the back of the State Government last week pushing through legislation to take control of the North Adelaide Golf Course and associated Park........

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