by Shane Sody

The State Government has confirmed that it is holding part of your Adelaide Park Lands hostage, and will return the hostage site to “Open Green Public” only if the City Council surrenders a different site for Park destruction.

The admission was made during a State Government submission to a City Council meeting on Tuesday 17 May 2022.

The Education Minister, Blair Boyer and his Education Department bureaucrats are pressing ahead with plans to confiscate a large part of what little remains of your Park Lands on the eastern side of Frome Road, i.e. Frome Road /Nellie Raminyemmerin Park in Park 11.

They have 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 are demanding that the City Council hand over their preferred site.

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 Steve 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.

This proposal was NOT foreshadowed in the State Government's sham "consultation" last year on its intended re-zoning.

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.

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.

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 or fences 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.

City Councillor Keiran Snape has made it clear he won’t be supporting this land grab:

“I'm a big supporter of education and our public schools system, however I cannot support yet another attempt to seize parts of our precious Park Lands. We have other sites available in the City square mile. Unfortunately the new Government, like all of those that came before it, seems intent on going for the easier, cheaper option.”

What can you do?

Contact:

• City Councillors,

• the Education Minister, Blair Boyer; and

• the Member for Adelaide, Lucy Hood

and 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.