Your Magic Pudding
It seems that State Government spin doctors are trying to write a sequel to a century-old Australian children's book 'The Magic Pudding”.
Characters in the story keep eating slices of the "magic pudding", but no matter how many slices are cut from the pudding, it never gets any smaller.
Characters from “The Magic Pudding” by Norman Lindsay
The State Government wants you to believe that although it's cutting slices from your Park Lands, Park Lands will be magically re-grown!
Cutting slices from the magic pudding? Five attacks in a year.
The spin from the Government is that putting a $3 billion hospital on your Park 27 will magically make more Park Lands appear!
Here's the official spin from the Premier, Peter Malinauskas:
"The new Women’s and Children’s Hospital will see more than 30,000 square metres of inaccessible Park Lands around Adelaide Gaol restored and opened to the public."
The spin is the word "inaccessible". Areas of your Park Lands that have been locked away behind State Government fences, will have those fences removed, (the areas will become “accessible”) after the Government cuts nearby slices from your Park Lands.
What’s missing from this Government narrative is any admission that it is the Government itself that has made parts of your Park Lands inaccessible by fencing them off from you, over many years.
The promise is merely to tear down fences that the Government itself erected; and then landscape the previously fenced-off areas.
The “magic pudding” in action: Government spin imagery makes fences disappear and landscaping appear after a major slice is cut from your Park 27.
But that will happen only after a three billion dollar hospital, and multi-storey car park obliterates not just the Thebarton police barracks, but also much of Kate Cocks Park, including this forest of she-oaks and olive trees.
The imminent demolition of the heritage-listed Thebarton Police barracks (built on your Park Lands in 1917) will not result in any Park Lands being restored to you.
Unlike a magic pudding, cutting slices from your Park Lands makes them shrink.
The two-hectare area of the old Police Barracks is only one part of the enormous area required for the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital and its associated car park (pictured coated in green walls).
But that’s not all. The Premier admits that even after 2031, when construction of a new three billion dollar hospital on Park 27 of your Adelaide Park Lands is complete, yet more losses will be coming.
Mr Malinauskas says the Park Lands site of the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital allows “room for both the WCH and the RAH to expand in the future”.
The Premier is referring to this garden off Port Road, the last remaining Open Green Public space in the so-called ‘biomedical precinct’ which is part of your Park 27.
This century-old river red gum tree is the main feature of the Park 27 garden, all of which is now regarded as “future expansion space” for hospital extensions.
That site is again being offered for sale.
In June 2023, doubts emerged about potential engineering problems associated with the Government's chosen hospital site.
Nevertheless, the State Government is pressing ahead. You are being invited to comment on plans for the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital. The period for commenting expires on Monday 19 June.