It’s more than Marion v MAGA as Adelaide’s anti-Musk NIMBYs blow a fuse over Tesla | David Penberthy

Let’s crunch the numbers to gauge exactly how the community really felt in this “massive” backlash, writes David Penberthy. Have your say.

We need to redefine the term “massive community backlash” when it comes to the kind of unrepresentative outrage that almost scuttled plans by Elon Musk’s Tesla to open a battery facility at the Tonsley precinct.

Let’s crunch the numbers to gauge exactly how the community really felt about this.

According to the 2021 Census there are 41,650 dwellings and 94,712 residents in the City of Marion, where the council has made what’s been described as a “hugely unpopular” decision to approve the Tesla development.

It was certainly hugely unpopular with the overwhelming majority of people who responded to the council’s invitation for feedback, with 95 per cent of submissions opposing the proposal.

But what was the total number of submissions received? Just 1000.

I am sure the proponents of this “grassroots” campaign regard 1000 submissions as a towering achievement in the annals of people power.

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A more soberminded reading of the numbers invites the conclusion that of everyone living in the Marion Council area, one in 94 people is upset about Tesla opening a battery facility, 93 out of 94 people couldn’t give a rat’s about Tesla opening a battery facility, and of those 93 many of them are happy about Tesla opening a battery facility.

One person out of 94 is not a “massive community backlash”. Ninety-three out of 94 people is a tsunami of apathy.

These figures are actually overly generous to the Tesla opponents, because the submissions were open to people beyond the Marion Council area and warped accordingly, allowing young anarchists living in a Brompton share house to subvert the dominant paradigm and stick it to those Donald Trump and Elon Musk fascists by filling out their own submissions.

Marion Mayor Kris Hanna. Picture: Emma Brasier

US President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to the press as they stand next to a Tesla Cybertruck on the South Portico of the White House on March 11, 2025. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

In fact, more than half the submissions were from outside the Marion Council area.

Demonstrably, this was not a demonstration of people’s power.

It was a demonstration of the squeaky wheelers at work, as we have seen time and again in this city.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the plans for the SANFL to move to West Lakes, the creation of a new hockey pitch at Unley High, or the torturous history of the Adelaide Football Club headquarters, the organised and the irritated hold themselves out as representative of majority opinion.

We did an interview with one of the three Marion councillors on Monday who actually said on air that the project should not go ahead because the overwhelming majority of people in the council area did not want it to.

An assertion like this comes from the trademark extrapolation of the most rubbery figures from consultation which most people in their right mind and with busy lives would never dream of taking part in.

The weirder part of this whole thing is the obsession with Musk himself. It invites ridicule from multiple angles.

Musk has become such a pariah that people who regard themselves as progressive will go to war with a company that’s committed to harnessing power from the sun and storing it in batteries for later use, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Opponents of the Tesla Battery Factory proposed for Tonsley in the Marion council area. Picture: Ben Clark

It is genuinely hilarious.

What about the moral inconsistency of the would-be boycotters and their paucity of knowledge of world events.

I’m no Trump fan and think the idea of bringing in Musk to oversee the Department of Government Expenditure in such a cruel and cavalier fashion has been appalling on so many decent public servants who in many cases until recently were providing important services.

But it is really strange to see Tesla being the No. 1 corporate hate figure, among people who blithely fill their house with all manner of Chinese-made goods, ignorant or indifferent to everything from the treatment of the Uighurs to Tiananmen Square to Nepal, Hong Kong and Tibet.

It really is impossible to be pure in a globalised world, and if you’re going to pick a target you can find a more deserving candidate than Elon Musk.

Some of the venom from the protesters has been off the charts and suggests they need to spend a bit more time brushing up on their history.

One caller described Musk on air as a “Nazi” this week, suggesting a flimsy acquaintance with the events of the 1930s and 1940s.

Indeed, if it’s Nazis you’re worried about, I can think of one other car maker whose vehicles you might want to avoid.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk during US President Donald Trump’s inaugural parade inside Capitol One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

Then there’s the environmental component to all this.

I spent my entire youth growing up in Mitchell Park and know the place like the back of my hand.

I had mates on the south side near Sturt Rd, used to walk through Bradley Grove Oval down Celtic Ave to Marion High, rode my bike around Bradley Grove parallel to the Tonsley line where Chrysler and Mitsubishi once stood.

I love Mitchell Park, but Mitchell Park is not Kakadu.

The idea that the handful of trees near the proposed Tesla site have to be saved as per the River Franklin in 1982 is one of the odder things I’ve heard.

This is an industrial area which historically was host to the heaviest of industries, in such an unfettered manner that it still has genuine environmental problems.

Indeed the use of TCE in the area – a carcinogenic solvent used to clean oil and grease off metals – was so slapdash that parts of the area can still not be safely used for parks or housing.

Concreting over that land and using it for business makes sense.

It’s going to create 100 jobs – jobs in an industry that is vital if we are going to decarbonise this planet.

The Marion Council did well to stare down this nonsense and give the project formal approval.

And remember, it did so not in the face of a “massive community backlash”, but in the face of near-blanket public ambivalence toward an eminently sensible idea.