436 – Rag-Tag Extremists
Political analyst and Dunstan government insider Stuart Sweeney sits down with Steve Davis to dissect the battle for the Adelaide Park Lands, tracing a direct line from the tobacco industry’s doubt playbook to Premier Peter Malinauskas’ handling of protesters, before John Schumann debuts his new protest anthem, “Rag-tag Extremist Blues.” If you’ve ever felt that nagging sense that the South Australia you were promised at the ballot box isn’t quite the one being delivered, this episode is for you. Stuart Sweeney arrived in Adelaide in 1975 to work inside the Dunstan government’s industrial democracy unit, and fifty years later he’s applying that same insider’s eye to a premier he believes is running the tobacco industry’s old doubt-sowing playbook against the citizens fighting to save the Park Lands. It’s a long, unhurried conversation – fitting, Steve notes, for an episode built around a Negroni “made to be sipped slowly and savoured.”
