City of Port Adelaide Enfield council adopts motion to consider smoke ban on Semaphore Rd
A major thoroughfare running through one of South Australia's star beach suburbs could soon be a smoke-free zone.
Port Adelaide and Enfield councillors voted unanimously this month for a report into making the western section Semaphore Rd, which connects Semaphore Beach and its famous jetty with a line of shops and restaurants, free of cigarettes and vapes.
Semaphore councillor David Wilkins proposed the motion and told NewsWire this week a Semaphore local had asked the council to consider the ban.
'We actually had a local resident reach out to our mayor, who raised the concept of it,' he said.
'The resident is particularly passionate about it because she lost her father in 2020 to sinus cancer, which they have shared with us, was likely caused by passive smoking.
'As a result of that, she's asked whether we can put in smoke free areas, so we're protecting people in the community.'
Semaphore lies in Adelaide's western district, bordering Port Adelaide to the east and West Lakes to the South.
It's a popular tourist spot, with the foreshore clock tower, jetty and steam train rides that run from the beach to Fort Glanville and back all drawing in families from the city and interstate.
The retro Odean Star cinema also sits on Semaphore Rd alongside eateries like Zambrero and Yo-Chi.
Mr Wilkins said a smoke ban would elevate the strip's attractiveness even further.
'We've got the beach, the cinema, it's very much a place we want to encourage people to come and visit,' he said.
'This proposal would really help create a welcoming environment to come and visit and support our local traders.'
Staffers will now prepare a report and interview businesses on the thoroughfare to gauge their position, including the pubs that serve the strip.
'I think it will likely be supported because it's about encouraging people to come and visit,' Mr Wilkins said.
Staff will also investigate whether the council has the legal authority to implement the proposed ban.
Cancer Council SA senior manager for prevention Christine Morris praised the idea.
'It's fantastic to hear that local councils are taking a proactive approach to keeping South Australians safe from the harmful effects of smoking, by making more public spaces smoke-free,' she told NewsWire.
'South Australia is leading the nation in providing smoke-free spaces since new laws were introduced last year and we welcome continued action to protect community members from exposure to second-hand smoking, especially vulnerable people and children.'
Semaphore already has some smoke-free zones.
In 2021, Mr Wilkins organised a ban on smoking outside public buildings such as libraries and community centres.
'It just makes it such a more welcoming and inviting environment,' he said.
The City of Port Adelaide Enfield council areas covers a vast portion of Adelaide's north, stretching from Klemzig in the east to Semaphore in the west and the Osborne naval shipyard in the north.
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Sam Hawley: Interest rates might be coming down, but house prices are, once again, heading in the other direction. Given there is a major problem with housing affordability, and there are so many people who can't even afford to enter the market, why on earth is that? Today, the ABC's finance expert, Alan Kohler, on how conditions are ripe for a housing price surge, just as they were back in the early 2000s. In other words, why history's repeating. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal Land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Alan, interest rates are coming down and they could drop even further this year. So that should mean houses are more affordable for borrowers. But it's not that simple and you're going to explain to us why. Now, to do that, let's go back to the turn of the century. In 2001, the Reserve Bank was cutting rates just like it is now, wasn't it? Alan Kohler: Correct. Sam Hawley: What was going on back then? Alan Kohler: In 2001, the Reserve Bank cut interest rates six times that year. News report: Nervous anticipation for one of the Reserve Bank's most expected interest rate cuts, the sixth and last this year. Alan Kohler: And that was in response to the dot-com crash in the United States, which happened on basically in March of 2000. It continued for a while. The Nasdaq halved, more than halved. And there was a recession in the United States. The Reserve Bank was concerned that the Australian dollar would rise too much because of that, because obviously the US Federal Reserve was cutting interest rates in response to the recession. So the Reserve Bank of Australia cut interest rates in precaution, even though there was no recession in Australia. The economy did slow a bit. There was a bit of a fall in the share market, but not anything like what happened in the US. 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Up to that point, foreign students' visas were issued on the basis of either gazetted countries or non-gazetted countries. China and India were included in the non-gazetted countries and it was very difficult for students from those places to get a visa. After July 1st, 2001, that changed and became the same for everybody, which is the way it ought to be, of course. But that led eventually to a huge increase in students from China and India from the mid-2000s. And that led to a doubling and then tripling of net overseas migration into Australia. At the time. Sam Hawley: Wow. All right. So we get a pot and then we put all these things into it and we stir it around. So there's the capital gains tax, there's the first homeowner's grant, the rates are dropping and there's this massive increase in immigration. And when you stir it all around, you come out, Alan, with house prices rising. Alan Kohler: Yes. Well, so all of those four things that we've discussed added to demand from investors and migrants and so on. So there was a big increase in demand, but there was no response in supply. The government did nothing about increasing supply at the time. And the result was that for 10 years, between 2005 and 2015, there was a dire, big shortage of housing, an undersupply of housing for a decade, which really set the scene for a big increase in house prices. And what happened was that the house price to income ratio rose from between three to four times incomes, this is average incomes in 2000, to eight or nine times incomes at the end of that time. And that was a huge change in the way that housing related to people's incomes and also GDP of the there was a stop to immigration during the pandemic. And then post the pandemic, population growth has gone back to more than 2% per annum, which is what it was in the period after 2005. Sam Hawley: All right. So, Alan, that's the history of the skyrocketing house prices and how we ended up here. Now, today, interesting that we have exactly the same conditions. Alan Kohler: That's right. The Reserve Bank is cutting interest rates, probably not by six times, but by probably four or five times this year, possibly into next year as well. We've got first time buyer grants back on. We've got a big increase in migration. I mean, the Treasury forecast in the budget for this financial year, net overseas migration is 335,000. But in the first nine months of the year, it's already 360,000 and looks like being 400,000 this year. There's no targets on immigration, but there's a Treasury forecast and net overseas migration is going to well exceed the Treasury forecast. And of course, there's been no change in the capital gains tax discount because the Labor Party failed to win in 2016 and 2019, where that is their policy to reduce it 25%. All the conditions are in place for another rise in house prices. 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