In the past 11 weeks, a petition to Restore and Protect this site in your Adelaide Park Lands has grown by 250%.

Premier Peter Malinauskas has been urged to step in, to listen to the South Australian public, and change course: choose a brownfield site for his proposed new Adelaide Aquatic Centre.

The South Australian Government has been embarrassed by the Australian Heritage Council, over its poor record on managing your Open Green Public Adelaide Park Lands.

Since being elected in March 2022, the State Government has produced plans or proposals to confiscate your Open Green Public Park Lands for:

• a new $98 million eight-storey high school building,

• a new $82 million aquatic centre,

• a new multi-storey car park,

• a new $3 billion hospital,

• a new police barracks and stables for the mounted police unit; and

• more bitumen to help stage carbon-emission motor races in your Victoria Park.

The State Government will spend hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring 524 properties to rebuild a stretch of South Road.  However the Premier, Peter Malinauskas has so far resisted calls to acquire even one brownfield site to Protect and Restore your Park Lands.

The plans for South Road have undergone a long process of community consultation.

In contrast, there was NO consultation from the State Government on whether a Park Lands site would be the best option for its promised new regional $82m Aquatic centre. An alternative process, using open-ended consultation questions revealed a massive 85% support for a non-Park Lands site.

We wrote to the Premier on 20 December 2022, advising him that more than 1,000 people had signed a petition urging the Government to select a brownfield site for a new Aquatic Centre. By 8 March 2023, we had not received any response to that letter. Accordingly, on 8 March we wrote again, to let the Premier know that the petition supporters had swelled from 1,000 to more than 2,500.

On 6 March 2023, we joined hundreds of others in lodging a formal objection to State Government plans to re-zone this Park.

Even though development in this Park has not been authorised by the City Council, and would be inconsistent with current zoning, the State Government is nevertheless drawing up plans to tear down dozens of trees, including century old sugar gums in Denise Norton Park / Pardipardinyilla (Park 2). The Government’s own consultants have pointed out the effect that this would have on native wildlife.  

Even as those tree destruction plans are being prepared, more and more people are signing our petition. The list of over 2,500 signatures, effectively backs up the City Council’s position. The Council voted earlier this year to also urge a State Government re-think.

What can you do?

If you haven’t done so already, then:

• please sign the on-line petition to the Premier: https://www.change.org/p/save-these-trees-choose-a-brownfield-site-for-new-aquatic-centre

• write directly to the Premier, Peter Malinauskas, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Tom Koutsantonis and/or the Member for Adelaide, Lucy Hood. Click on their names to open a draft suggested email.

Read more

See our earlier coverage of the proposed new Aquatic Centre:

• Worth nothing? Or Priceless? (25 Feb 2023)

• Council joins Aquatic Centre brownfield push (2 Feb 2023)

• Government to chop falcon, possum, cockatoo habitat (27 Jan 2023)

• Aquatic centre double press: Gov’t and Council (15 Jan 2023)

• Aquatic centre: petition reaches 1,000 signatures (20 Dec 2022)

• Cognitive dissonance on your tree canopy (4 Dec 2022)

• Ideal brownfield opportunity (29 Nov 2022)

• Diversions, illusions on Park attacks (12 Nov 2022)

• Demand brownfield building sites instead (28 Oct 2022)

• Patrick’s FOI probe on Aquatic Centre bungle (26 Sept 2022)

• Hands Up for your Trees (12 Sept 2022)

• New Aquatic Centre site targets dozens of mature trees (5 Sept 2022)

• No assurances on tree destruction plans (15 Aug 2022)

• When given a real choice (31 July 2022)

• Aquatic centre consultation farce (22 July 2022)

• Hindmarsh, Brompton, for an Aquatic Centre? (30 June 2022)

• Olympic swimmer backs Park restoration (29 June 2022)

• Imagine a restoration of this Park (20 June 2022)

• State Gov’t tree threats making national headlines (16 June 2022)

• Think Outside the Box for locations (26 May 2022)

• Aquatic mistakes - learn from history and restore a Park (16 Feb 2022)