by Shane Sody
The Adelaide City Council has caved in to hostage threats and has voted to sell part of your Open Green Public Park Lands to the State Government, for a new high school building.
The decision, at Council’s meeting on Tuesday 12 July, makes the City of Adelaide complicit in one of the many current Park Lands attacks by the State Government.
SA Labor’s Blair Boyer and Frome Park which he and his Education Department bureaucrats have secured, by threatening to continue preventing public access to a different part of your Park Lands.
Earlier this year, State Government bureaucrats confirmed to the City that an unidentified part of your Park Lands was being held hostage and would be returned to “Open Green Public” only if the City Council surrendered this part of Frome Park / Nellie Ramminyemmerin Park in Park 11, for destruction.
Councillor Alex Hyde told the Council meeting on 12 July that the State Government’s Park attack was “arguably unnecessary … as there are plenty of vacant sites in the City." Nevertheless, in voting in favour of the sale, Cr Hyde said: “We're ensuring that we're able to extract the maximum amount of value for our Park Lands.”
Only three Councillors voted against the sale:
These three Councillors may be applauded. They were the only ones who voted against the Park Lands sale.
Councillor Moran told the meeting: "Any Park Land that they feel they can give back to us then they should already be giving back to us."
The site of the State Government’s proposed Park Lands attack - Frome Park /Nellie Ramminyemmerin Park within Park 11.
The State Government has rejected calls to build needed new education facilities anywhere other than your Park Lands.
They have targeted a preferred site within the 0.2% of your Open Green Public Adelaide Park Lands and they have been demanding successfully, that the City Council hand over their preferred site. On Tuesday 12 July 2022, a majority of the Council agreed to do so.
In late 2021, the former Liberal State Government undertook consultation on proposals to re-zone 70 hectares of your Open Green Public Park Lands for development, while simultaneously (and hypocritically) seeking the status of “National Park City” for Adelaide.
The public response was overwhelmingly positive for your Park Lands, with 87 per cent urging the State Government to protect Open Green Public spaces.
Despite this, the former Liberal State Government ruthlessly went ahead with re-zoning approximately 35 hectares of your Open Green Public Park Lands. When the re-zoning took effect in January 2022 it became the biggest attack on the Adelaide Park Lands in their 185-year history.
Soon afterwards, the former Premier Steven Marshall announced that another eight-storey school building would replace some of your Open Green Public space. The Labor Party immediately agreed that if it was elected, it would do the same.
Making a mockery of Adelaide's "National Park City" status, the re-zoning has allowed the new Labor Government to proceed with a $98 million high school extension, that would partly obliterate what little remains of Open Green Public space along the eastern side of Frome Road - i.e. Frome Park/ Nellie Raminyemmerin Park.
The Botanic High School in 2019 doubled the size of what was previously the UniSA Reid building, but left some green space (Frome Park) still open along Frome Road, in Park 11
Botanic High School already has a massive footprint extending into Park 11
This proposal was NOT foreshadowed in the former State Government's sham "consultation" last year on its intended re-zoning.
An artist’s impression of the proposed large extension of the Botanic High School (on the right) into and over the top of the Open Green Public space of Frome Park.
The reason a Park Lands site has been preferred is that the new Education Minister or his bureaucrats are either:
lacking in sufficient imagination; or
unappreciative of the world-unique nature of this city - the only city in the world built inside a Park.
They would rather continue the mistakes of previous decades by whittling away Park Lands, than come up with any alternative that would protect Adelaide's priceless asset.
As some Councillors pointed out during debate on Tuesday 12 July, there are plenty of alternative sites, because many high schools (and prestigious Universities) have split campuses.
The Education Minister or his bureaucrats seem to regard Park Lands as cheap, disposable land - not (as they should be regarded) as a priceless resource that no other city in the world could match.
Their plans identify a "red zone" next to the existing Botanic High School. The red is appropriate because their plans are certainly not "green". They would cut away a large slice of Frome Park / Nellie Raminyemmerin Park in the already compromised Park 11.
The targeted “red zone”. All the area of this diagram is within Park 11, but only the parts marked in green (and red) presently remain “Open Green Public”. How many more times will Park Lands be chipped away before there is no green left?
HOSTAGE TAKING
State Government bureaucrats claim they would negotiate with the City Council a "land swap" so that there would be “no net loss of publicly accessible Park Lands”. They have not identified any site where they would intend to demolish a building to return land to Open Green Public status.
Assuming that they do have such a site in mind, the offer would be an admission that the other site is effectively a hostage. If the State Government has control of any building or site on Park Lands that is not needed for its current purposes, then it has a legal obligation (under s23 of the Adelaide Park Lands Act 2005) to consider how to make that site available as Park Lands.
That (other) site, wherever it is, must be considered a hostage and should be released unconditionally, to be returned to Park Lands.
The people of South Australia should not have their world-unique Park Lands held hostage.
The State Government has a legal obligation to identify this other site. Once identified, work should be undertaken to release it back to Park Lands. Only after that is done, might the State Government perhaps try again with a new round of discussions to try to have Frome Park sacrificed, to reduce the area of your Adelaide Park Lands.
Councillor Phillip Martin
City Councillor Phillip Martin told us: “I still can’t believe the Team Adelaide Council actually signed off on an agreement that says if Council and the State Government reach a deadlock in negotiations then they can agree on some other “payment”….. that’s the word they use!
“Our Park Lands are not a commodity you can trade like some sort of board game.
“We have a Council election in November and I hope everyone will take note of who has voted to give away our Park Lands and then don’t vote for them. It’s the only hope for real change.”
What can you do?
It is too late to contact City Councillors because a majority on the Council have already agreed to the sale. Nevertheless, you can contact:
and tell them that it’s not too late for a re-think. Urge them to protect Adelaide’s world unique resource, and find an alternative high school site in the other 99.8% of Adelaide.
See more ways you can TAKE ACTION on behalf of your Open Green Public Adelaide Park Lands.
