MELBOURNE, Jan 30 AAP – Unless Victoria pushes ahead with channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne will end up as a “backwater”, like Adelaide , Premier John Brumby said…

Well, didn’t that little one liner cause a stink over here in Adelaide? Front page of today’s Advertiser reveals that Melbourne has Wayne Carey and ‘Naughty Corey’, and we have, well, what do we have? Adelaide has seriously lost its way. I spent all last week covering the Tour Down Under for AFP in its first year with UCI Pro Tour status (a year earlier than hoped for by organisers), and I spend this week hearing it criticised because it cost too much, doesn’t have a sponsor, and the Tour de France winner wasn’t here.

Please Adelaide, this is exactly what Brumby was describing.

I’m in my mid-twenties and have worked in the media for six years. In the past year Adelaide has lost its ATP sanctioned international tennis tournament and its PGA Nationwide golf tournament. The horse racing industry in South Australia needs a huge revamp, but the new complex and renovation at Victoria Park was put in the coffin by the Adelaide City Council, and the nails were banged in by Jane Lomax-Smith.

People complain that money shouldn’t be spent on the racing industry because it is dying. It’s kicking the bucket because money isn’t spent on it; prize money is too low, and so we don’t have the quality of horses that the east coast has. It’s a catch-22, but if money isn’t spent then it will die. The facilities at Victoria Park are pathetically inadequate; half of the course is taped off because it isn’t safe to walk near the stands. The Adelaide Cup is now a Group 2 race, a downgrade that will probably never be corrected.

In one way I don’t blame the government. Why? Governments that do nothing don’t upset people. When Rann announced the extension of the tram he (and listeners of the radio, and readers of the paper) were greeted with 12 months of whining; money should be spent on this, or that, the tram doesn’t go anywhere, buy more busses, it blocks traffic, no one uses it, and on and on and on. Now that it’s running it’s popular, (actually, too popular, now the people complain that there aren’t enough trams and they’re too crowded) but why would a government risk at least a year of bad press? Radio commentators (in particular, ABC mornings) have become so conservative, that one wonders if taxes should only be spent on schools and hospitals so no one complains.

I could go on and on, and perhaps I will later, but if people in Adelaide want to get parochial and stick it up the vics, then don’t write to the paper saying we’re better than Melbourne, write and call admitting what we already know, that we need to spend public money on more than schools and hospitals.