by Shane Sody
Australia's national environment and heritage protection laws have again been exposed as worthless, after the Federal Environment Department waved through a $3 billion State Government attack on your Park 27.
A report by the State Government's own heritage consultants, DASH architects, and 178 public submissions about the State Government's proposed new Women's and Children's Hospital were put before the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).
The DCCEEW reports to Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek.
Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek
Her Federal Department has a role because the proposed hospital would be built over a large swathe of your National Heritage-listed Park Lands, including this grove of about 50 ancient olives and sheoak trees.
It was expected that DCCEEW would also seek advice from the specialist Australian Heritage Council (AHC) before making a recommendation to Minister Plibersek.
However a senior bureaucrat, acting as the Minister's delegate, sidelined and blindsided the AHC, which was preparing to give advice.
The Department's head of environmental assessment Kylie Calhoun, formed the view that NO formal assessment was necessary, despite admitting that half of the hospital site was on a National Heritage-protected part of your Park Lands. (PDF, 12 pages, 335 Kb).
Chair of the Australian Heritage Council, former Victorian Premier, Ted Baillieu
Chair of the Australian Heritage Council (AHC ) Ted Baillieu visited Adelaide in August 2023 to inspect the site.
Mr Baillieu has reacted strongly to the decision:
“The AHC is profoundly disappointed [and] strongly disagrees with the decision.
“The AHC made a submission to the public process advising the proposal had a very significant impact on the Heritage values on the APL and was unacceptable.
“The outcome means the National Heritage Listing now officially provides no Heritage Protection to the Adelaide Park Lands.”
This artist’s impression, released by the State Government, indicates only a handful of trees on the corner would survive in what would become the almost-complete destruction of Kate Cocks Park.
The State Government last year refused to consider other non-Park Lands sites for the proposed hospital, not even the convenient site across North Terrace from the RAH.
Sandy Wilkinson’s concept massing model showing how a new WCH could be built opposite the RAH behind the NewMarket Hotel with a pedestrian tunnel under North Terrace.
The Premier claims that the Federal Government has given his Park Lands hospital plans a "tick" of approval.
However the reality is that DCCEEW has neither approved nor disapproved. It has simply chosen not to intervene.
Neither the scope of this Park Lands attack, nor the evidence (presented to DCCEEW) of a series of cumulative attacks, whittling away your Park Lands over years, was deemed sufficient to trigger any federal protection for your Park Lands - not even to suggest any federal conditions should be placed on the development.
Hence we have posed a serious question in the headline to this article. If this enormous attack on your Park Lands is not sufficient to trigger Federal intervention, then what would be sufficient? What use is Federal Heritage listing?
Improve Federal protection
Environmental groups around Australia have been campaigning for years to improve Australia's weak environmental protection laws.
The Adelaide Park Lands Association is one of 69 community groups making up the "Places You Love Alliance".
This Alliance has been calling on successive Federal Governments to implement the recommendations of the 2020 Samuel Review, which found the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 was unfit for purpose and needed to be totally rewritten.
The BS postscript
The Premier has made the absurd claim that putting a six-storey hospital and an eight-storey car park onto your Park Lands will magically make more Park Lands "accessible."
The reality is that adjacent areas of your Park Lands are being held hostage - fenced off from you - simply so that the State Government can make them "accessible" after building next to them. https://www.adelaide-parklands.asn.au/blog/2022/10/19/restoration-challenge-issued
