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Adelaidean 22 February 1999 Vol 8 No 1

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Adelaidean 22 February 1999 Vol 8 No 1 ADELAIDEANVol 8 No 1 N EWS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE FEBRUARY 22, 1999 Hugh Stretton on Don Designing new life for Adelaide collaborative research INSIDE 2 Dunstan 5 old bridges 6 helps rehabilitate Indian soils Dunstan Foundation enjoys good support Don Dunstan: photo courtesy of The Sunday Mail. The scene in Elder Park on 12 February as the crowd watched the Festival Theatre memorial celebration of Don Dunstan's life. Photo: Kristina Binns, Image & Copy Centre, Waite Campus. THERE HAS been a good public response towards its development. legal and industrial reform and the Pearson, Professor Hugh Stretton and to the newly-established Don Dunstan The Foundation aims to award creation of a humane and just society. the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mary Foundation, with many enquiries and scholarships and prizes, promote The Trustees of the Foundation are O’Kane. donations received. research projects, courses, lectures Mr Phillip Adams AO, AM, Ms The Foundation has been established and seminars, publish the results of Robyn Archer, Mr David Combe, the Further information is available on at the University of Adelaide, at the research and subsidise the Hon Greg Crafter, Mr Andrew 8303 3364. A web site has been set up at dissemination of educational materials request of Mr Dunstan’s family, to Dunstan, Ms Jennie George, the Hon <http://www.adelaide.edu.au/ fund research and education on issues in those areas which were of particular Barry Jones AO, the Rt Hon The Lord concern to Don Dunstan. dunstanfoun.html>; this will be updated of importance to the former Premier Mayor of Adelaide, Dr Jane Lomax- and further developed as the Foundation’s during his lifetime. The State These include social equality and Smith, the Hon Dame Roma activities gather momentum. Government has pledged $250,000 multiculturalism, economic equity, Mitchell AC, DBE, CBE, Mr Noel Positive messages found in 1999 entry round THE STUDENT awarded the University of Justin is one of many high-achieving Adelaide’s inaugural Andy Thomas South Australian students who have scholarship, Justin Ghan, has come face-to- benefited from the University of face with the astronaut himself. Adelaide’s new scholarships scheme. Mr Ghan completed Year 12 at Pembroke The scheme has attracted outstanding High School and received perfect scores international and interstate students, as in all subjects. This year he begins his well as encouraging many of South studies in Mechatronic Engineering. Australia’s high-achieving Year 12 students to study here. The Andrew Thomas scholarship is named after the NASA astronaut, who The success of the scholarships was one graduated from the University of of several positive developments in Adelaide in the 1970s with a degree in student entry this year. Mechanical Engineering before going on Despite concerns about the Asian to do his PhD in Engineering. economic crisis, the number of Dr Thomas met Justin Ghan at a international students enrolling has Justin Ghan and Andy Thomas. Photo: David Ellis morning tea with the Vice-Chancellor, increased to its highest level ever, with Professor Mary O’Kane, last month. new international enrolments up by at Mr Ghan said he was excited to be least 12%. (See page 3). awarded the scholarship, which would Applications increased slightly and cut- allow him to pursue his dream of studying off scores have remained high, with The University Celebrating engineering at the University of Adelaide. Engineering increasing its minimum Dr Thomas congratulated Justin on his from 89.8 to 92—the highest cut-off for of Adelaide success and said it was a “great Engineering in Australia. compliment” to have a scholarship 1874-1999 named after him. Continued Page 4 years Approved For Print Post 565001/00046 For Print Post Approved 125 PAGE 2 FEBRUARY 22, 1999 ADELAIDEAN COMMENTARY WHEN DON WAS WRONG Every reader has heard a dozen by acquisition (with generous tributes to the life and work of Don Hugh Stretton compensation and re-housing for the One hundred and Visiting Research Fellow Dunstan in the last ten days, most of School of Economics evicted population), comprehensive twenty-five years old - them praising the extraordinary demolition, and new development range and goodness of his public which should include six twenty- a solid foundation for concerns and the passion and skill storey towers or private apartments. and tenacity with which he advanced them. The predictable local resistance was led most the future What new is there to say? Understandably, no obstinately by Cedric Pugh, a small young man mourner has written about Don’s mistakes or who claimed to know something about planning, The University is 125 years old this year. changes of direction. But few politicians have but whose low income and likely political and Such an anniversary provides an changed their minds as rightly, honestly or business impotence were indicated (to opportunity to pause and consider both effectively as he was capable of doing. If I write inexperienced observers) by his ageing Corolla. our achievements and the challenges for He was not even an intended victim of the plan— the future. about the talent now it is not because he can no longer retaliate. What follows was spoken in his he lived in safe territory near-by. And Dunstan The University has turned in a very presence at an earlier celebration of his work, and had a formidable capacity to persist with a good creditable performance indeed—we have it pleased and moved him. So here are two project against conservative opposition. some famous graduates and a reputation as a quality educator, and major research examples of Don changing his mind when But then the opposition did an unconservative player. The nature of universities in protesting citizens convinced him that he was thing. They made a clean sweep of their local Australia has changed greatly over the wrong. council, in the heart of Don’s own electorate. Any 125 years the University has been in MATS politician with an unsafe seat would have had the existence. Whereas in the late 19th sense to drop such a dangerous project, whatever century only a small number of people During his first ministry a study of Adelaide’s its merits. But Don actually listened to the were able to attend university, we now metropolitan transport was in progress. He did rebels, and was actually persauded. Seven weeks live in an era in which a majority of people nothing to discourage it. As a far-sighted after the local government election he addressed in Australia will attend university at modernizer he saw the need for radical surgery to the annual Australian Planning Congress in some time in their lives. In the late 19th meet the public and private transport needs of a century research was not much discussed. Brisbane. He repeated the misgivings about population which was growing fast in numbers, suburban sprawl—but said that what it needed Now, at the end of the 20th century, the productivity and car ownership. The MATS plan creation of knowledge-based societies was not necessarily double density, but good local drawing heavily on research is vital for duly proposed a network of high-speed non-stop centres and public and private services. He economic growth. This University urban motorways with many acres of three-level repeated the case for restoring life and people to provides crucial support for that growth, interchange. It would evict thousands of the city and the old slum suburbs—but hark at particularly in South Australia; but it has residents and cut off many more thousands from how: considerable national and international their local shops, schools, kindergartens, old presence also. In Australia the mums and grandads, and bus stops. Nor do I mean by inner-city redevelopment the universities collectively account for over wholesale tearing down of buildings and 25% of all research and development When the plan was published Labor was out of office. Don visited the United States and saw existent communities simply to replace them expenditure. This University alone with an asphalt desert and high-rise blocks of accounts for 1.5% of the nation’s research. what that sort of surgery was doing to the centres which it served and to the urban and suburban flats. I mean, rather, a far more judicious I mentioned above that the University has territory through which it carved its way. Hear development which while aiming at increasing some famous graduates, including two population densities in those areas, does so on Nobel Prize winners (Bragg and Florey), him on 5KA within weeks of returning to office in 1970: the basis that the existing community—if there Australia’s only astronaut, and major is one—is not displaced but augmented; not community and political leaders such as The MATS Plan proposes massive freeway bull-dozed, but added to; not Ong Teng Chong, the President of systems and an ever diminishing use of public Singapore, and of course Don Dunstan, compartmentalized, but given the possibility transport. We believe that such planning is not and opportunity of achieving again the social who was one of Australia’s great social only regressive but also creates the reformers. The establishment of the Don and economic cohesiveness that should exist in Dunstan Foundation will give renewed circumstances leading to a final collapse of an urban city region. Such redevelopment impetus in the University to issues that efficient public transport. Adelaide with this should give people the opportunity to enjoy both were important to Don. These include kind of planning could end as jammed up, and the solitude of gardens, parks and squares and social and economic equity, the practice of cut up, and polluted by exhaust gases, as Los the gossip of a community shopping centre, democratic and inclusive forms of Angeles is today.
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