Heritage Advocacy for election
As the Federal election draws near, the Adelaide Park Lands Association has joined a new body: the Australian Heritage Advocacy Alliance.
Your Adelaide Park Lands have been listed on the Australian National Heritage Register since 2008.
However that listing has been ineffectual at stopping the gradual erosion of your Park Lands, with dozens of sites chipped off your Open Green Public spaces to cater for special sectoral interests.
A multi-storey car park proposed to take over parts of Park 27 in your Adelaide Park Lands.
It is a similar story for many other heritage assets around Australia that supposedly have the protection of National Heritage listing.
As the Australian Heritage Advocacy Alliance says
"Our valuable national heritage assets are being squandered in a federal heritage policy ‘vacuum’.
"Heritage issues are seldom to be found on any political agenda. All over Australia, heritage assets are being lost, or are in jeopardy. Irreplaceable losses continue to occur. Much is at stake.
"[The AHAA] will raise awareness of all candidates in the forthcoming federal election about national heritage asset issues, heritage policy deficiencies, heritage asset losses, threats – and importantly propose workable solutions."
The Adelaide Park Lands Association wrote to the AHA on 4 April 2022 (PDF, 6 pages, 3.1 Mb), to join the campaign. Our letter described sites within your Park Lands that have been recently lost and those that are presently threatened. These include Park Lands sites for:
Clockwise from top left: the Casino hotel on Park 26, the Botanic High School and proposed extension on Park 11; the proposed new Women’s and Children’s Hospital on Park 27, and the massive re-zoning of Park Lands carried out in January 2022 which has cleared the way for more development to attack Open Green Public space in your National Heritage-listed Adelaide Park Lands.
The AHAA has compiled a staggering (and growing) Australia-wide list of heritage assets that have been lost or are presently threatened. The list includes items of built heritage, and natural heritage.
The Adelaide Park Lands are just one of many assets featured on that list. Former heritage assets lost in South Australia include the Fernilee Lodge at Burnside (left) and the Grand Central Hotel in Pulteney Street (right) which was demolished to make way for a car park.
Pic credits: Burnside Historical Society (L) and Michael Burden - National Trust (R)
Threatened heritage assets in South Australia include Edmund Wright House in King William Street (left), the giant kelp marine forests off the south-east coast (right), and the heritage suburb Colonel Light Gardens.
Pic credits: Ian Argent (L) and Cayne Layton, Craig R. Johnson (R)
You can register to become part of the Australian Heritage Advocacy Alliance – simply email your contact details to: info@ahaa.net.au