Stewart Sweeney
Adelaide Premier Peter Malinauskas likes at every opportunity to call his critics “naysayers,” “NIMBYs,” and “complainers.” It sounds almost harmless — a leader frustrated by delay, wanting to “get stuff done.”
But listen carefully to the tone and frequency of his remarks, and something darker emerges: a faint but consistent note of contempt for the citizen as a participant in democracy.
Again and again, the Premier describes those who raise questions about LIV Golf, Walker Tower, the crisis in the Gulfs or Park Lands encroachment not as concerned South Australians, but as obstacles.
He speaks as if the people themselves are the problem, as if democracy’s noise and disagreement are flaws to be overcome rather than the foundation of legitimacy.
It is a choice of framing that echoes the language of the Property Council and the angry rhetoric found in the opinion columns of News Ltd’s Advertiser and the Australian.
This framing is profoundly anti-democratic. It implies that once elected, the government alone knows best and that consultation is a box to tick, not a dialogue to sustain.
The Premier’s impatience with scrutiny suggests not just confidence but irritation: the classic “I know better than you” posture that too often hides insecurity behind bravado.
There is, unavoidably, an echo of Donald Trump’s playbook here.
Trump too divided citizens into “doers” and “complainers,” patriots and enemies, friends and “losers.”
He made contempt a political language-the moralisation of efficiency, the glorification of action, the portrayal of dissent as disloyalty.
Malinauskas is no Trump in policy or personality, but the rhetorical rhythm is uncomfortably familiar: an “us” that gets things done and a “them” that stands in the way.
It is this dividing line between the government and its own citizens that corrodes democracy from within.
When the Premier mocks or dismisses people for caring about what happens to their city, he teaches others in power to do the same.
Public debate becomes a nuisance. Criticism becomes sabotage. And before long, “the people” are celebrated in slogans but excluded from decisions.
Malinauskas often speaks of “confidence” and “momentum,” of South Australia being “open for business.”
But democracy is not a business, and citizens are not shareholders waiting for quarterly results. They are co-authors of the common good. Their questioning is not an impediment to leadership it is the life of democracy itself.
A Premier who cannot bear scrutiny will soon come to see his own public as an adversary.
And that is when leadership tips into something more troubling a performative decisiveness masking a deep disdain for those whose only fault is to care enough to ask questions and suggest alternatives.
* Stewart Sweeney is a Dumbarton man who has been living in Australia since the mid-Seventies. His message about democracy is well made. Much of it applies here in Dumbarton where our editor has been threatened leaving a community group because The Democrat supported their campaign to keep their local library open.