Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

another Minister obtain a reply to that question?’. Premier Thomas
Playford curtly responded, ‘Yes’.
Two days later Hambour questioned the Premier for the information
regarding the establishment of a prison farm at Cadell. Playford replied,
‘The question of construction of a prison farm at a site along the River
Murray between Morgan and Loveday is the subject of investigation by the
Public Works Committee. Until it has reported on the project, the
Government is debarred by statute from taking any further action thereon’.
The premier might feel a slight unease because he had not done anything to
determine what was happening because he did not expect Hambour to ask
him so soon again about the matter. Playford leaves Parliament House with
a colleague, walks down the steps, then briskly walks the 100 m across the
North Terrace–King William Street intersection to the Adelaide Club.
Not many Members of Parliament are members of this rather exclusive
club because there is this a perceived notion that a parliamentarian serves
all sections of his community, and to belong to such a club could easily
bring about that class-thinking divide within a liberal democracy where a
lack of discretion becomes political dynamite.
The three-storey building with that pronounced first floor street balcony is
now somewhat dwarfed but during Graf Anrep-Elmpt’s sojourn in Adelaide
it looked imposing, as were its members. To this day it has a good
membership of around 1000, which speaks for its ability to retain basic
values while other clubs suffer declines in membership. When an Adelaide
businessman, Albert Bensimon, announced that his application to join the
club had been rejected on account of him being a Jew and club members
being anti-Semitic, a media release quickly clarified the matter by pointing
out that a number of members are of the Jewish faith. Jeweller Bensimon,
as so many who pull out the racist or anti-Semitic card if they lose in a
battle-of-the-wills, did not realise it was his noisy and abrasive manners that
excluded him from an exclusive club where some members pride
themselves in being social fossils!
‘Mr Premier, how delightful to see you here. Are you coming in?’, says a
slim grey-haired man as they meet on the footpath at the steps to the club.
‘Yes, Ian, we haven’t lunched, and if you’ll do the honours’.
So Thomas Playford and his colleague lunch as guests of a club member
who comes to the rescue when they meet outside the building. This is not
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