by Shane Sody

A forty-year-old law to promote motor sport is being used to thwart Park Lands planning, landscaping and authorise restrictions on access to your Open, Green, Public spaces.

The South Australian Motor Sport Act 1984 was brought into operation to permit Formula One motor racing to be held in your Park Lands the following year, 1985. However, that same law is now used to legally authorise fencing off and restricting and dumping motor racing detritus into large swathes of your eastern Park Lands for an ever-increasing period each year.

The South Australian Motor Sport Act 1984 does not limit how much of your Park Lands can be claimed for motor sport. Nor does it place any limits on the length of time they can be fenced off to prevent your access.

The Act gives absolute power to the relevant Minister (currently the Premier, Peter Malinauskas) to declare a “specified area” and specified “prescribed works periods” during which the Motor Sport Board effectively takes over, and “the rights or interests of any other person in or in relation to the land are suspended for the declared period.”

What’s more, there is no limit in the Act on how many such events may be held, or how often they can be held.

In June 2024, the Premier and the Motor Sport Board relied upon these broad, sweeping powers to foreshadow that they would legally install a second race track for use in November 2024.

Over the coming months, your Park Lands will be cordoned off and affected not just by the five months required for the Adelaide 500 infrastructure, but also for construction of a new dirt track.

This additional, supposedly temporary track is to be built in a so-far unidentified but different part of your Adelaide Park Lands - likely to be in King Rodney Park / Ityamai-itpina (Park 15).

Its purpose will be to allow “sprint cars” to race during the Adelaide 500 motor sport carnival in November.

See the ABC’s news coverage of the issue here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-30/dirt-speedway-plans-for-adelaide-parklands/103909614

Of course this land grab is not consistent with the Park Lands Management Strategy that was prepared by the State Government’s own advisory body Kadaltilla / Park Lands Authority.

However that Strategy is irrelevant because it is trumped by dirty laws.

The Chief Executive of the Motor Sport Board, Mark Warren told the ABC that the Adelaide 500 organisation had a "long history" of leaving the Park Lands in a "better state than what we found them."

That has been contested by regular visitors to Victoria Park / Pakapakanthi (Park 16) who report picking up many black cable ties and other waste for months after each motor sport event.

But the aftermath of each Adelaide 500 event is not just small pieces of rubbish. Some of the annual motor sport paraphernalia remains in your Park Lands for months after the conclusion of the Adelaide 500 in November.

Crash barriers and other detritus will persist again in Victoria Park/ Pakapakanthi (Park 16) until after the subsequent Motor Sport Festival scheduled for March 2025.

Dirty laws - anachronisms

The word “anachromism” may be defined as “a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old fashioned.”

Being 40 years old, the South Australian Motor Sport Act 1984 is an anachronism. Among other things, it fails to acknowledge the climate crisis.

The South Australian Motor Sport Act 1984 was legislated before we all became aware that Open Green Public spaces improve public health and even save lives.

The continued reliance on this old legislation, to restrict access to your Park Lands, and to authorise an unnecessary increase in Adelaide’s carbon-emissions in the name of “sport” is also in some tension with the SA Parliament’s 2022 declaration of a climate emergency.

Other dirty laws

In recent months we’ve discovered that the Federal law which grants National Heritage status to your Adelaide Park Lands is ineffective in protecting your Park Lands from threats and attacks that are initiated by the State Government.

• What Use is National Heritage Listing? (16 November 2023)

Nor does the relevant State law, the Adelaide Park Lands Act 2005 offer any protection.

Successive State Governments (both Liberal and Labor) have used the expedient of simply changing the land use zones, in parts of your Park Lands, from time to time.

Ministerial re-zonings have simply changed the rules so that any proposed new commercial building or infrastructure is zoned as permissible for construction in your Park Lands.

Last year the Upper House of State Parliament came within one vote of authorising an inquiry into the lack of Park Lands protection: Parliamentary Inquiry foiled. (2 June 2023)

It’s time to look again at the dirty laws that permit pollution and fail to protect your Park Lands.

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What Others Have Said

On being confronted with this latest Park Lands grab by the Premier and the Motor Sport Board, the Lord Mayor, Jane Lomax Smith issued a statement:

“The Motorsport Board's unwillingness to explain their full intentions for the Park Lands for the 2024 event, and the fact we learned of the supercross and sprintcars plans through the media, is very disappointing, … It's also disrespectful to the local community and not a way I would expect an organisation funded by the State Government to behave."

The Deputy Lord Mayor, Cr Keiran Snape, in his words “confronted the head of the Motorsports Board” with several concerns surrounding the forthcoming Adelaide 500.

• “The increase in the declared area; [i,e, an extra 16,000 square metres this year].

• “The increase in time needed for bump in, bump out; [now extended to be longer than five months]

• “The level of secrecy and disrespect shown to the State Government's own Park Lands advisory board” [ie the Park Lands Authority/ Kadaltilla by not revealing its plans during a briefing in late May to the Authority.]

A recent article by author John Bridgland (2 June 2024) describes it this way:

“The imported dirt project would be nothing if not symbolically profound in its indifference to the Park Lands site’s natural ambience; the motivation purely monetary; and the accountability in economic terms certain to be non-transparent.”

Read his article: “40-year-old motor race law trumps Adelaide Park Lands Act 2005 and its creation of an Authority with no authority.” (PDF, 4 pages 9.5 Mb)

The author of this article, Shane Sody, is the President of the Adelaide Park Lands Association and the editor of the semi-monthly newsletter, "Open Green Public".

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