Park lands protection a losing battle, but worth fighting for

Why do you hassle?

A journalist put this query to me throughout an interview final week, when the State Authorities introduced one other determination to find but extra buildings on our park lands.

It’s a good query. The Metropolis of Adelaide has not too long ago been combating a dropping battle to forestall growth on our Nationwide Heritage-listed, and doubtlessly World Heritage-listed, park lands.

My response is that, in life, you don’t simply struggle the battles you’ll be able to win. You struggle those which might be value combating, particularly once we are, by laws, required to preserve our park lands.

Already, we now have misplaced 25 per cent since they had been laid out, with long-time Advertiser columnist Rex Jory as soon as evaluating the erosion of our park lands to “mice nibbling at cheese”.

The fact is, if the mice hold nibbling, sooner or later there received’t be any cheese left.

In an InDaily opinion piece about park lands growth, former Labor minister Chris Sumner says the present authorities took a “help-yourself-to-free-land” method to the park lands.

Sumner remembered, considerably fondly, the time Premier Don Dunstan handed planning legal guidelines shielding the park lands and the Hills Face Zone, insurance policies continued underneath John Bannon and explicitly supported by Mike Rann, who returned alienated land to the park lands.

Rann additionally enacted laws requiring the State Authorities, their businesses and the Metropolis of Adelaide to guard and improve them.

The current authorities has adopted an aggressive pro-development agenda in our park lands and we regularly neglect that every particular person determination has penalties.

When heritage and planning legal guidelines had been circumvented to construct the $3.2 billion Girls’s and Youngsters’s Hospital on a heritage and park setting, the laws handed at warp velocity final 12 months, allowed the federal government to take away any impediment to growth, and contemplated the implications even when the group didn’t realise that they had been seeing solely the skinny fringe of the wedge.

The plan to demolish the state-heritage listed Thebarton Police Barracks meant that the constructing complicated housing SAPOL’s Mounted Operations Unit needed to go.

Fortunately, the Act permits Police Minister Joe Szakacs to take any land he chooses to seek out them a brand new house.

As soon as once more, an ‘in depth’ search has recognized a ‘disused’ nook of Golden Wattle Park/Mirnu Wirra (Park 21) as their favoured choice, since we’re instructed the mounted horses aren’t capable of cross predominant roads.

I don’t intend to argue in regards to the assertion however will level out that our park lands aren’t simply manicured, decorative areas with rose bushes and footy fields.

This web site occurs to be designated as a biodiversity zone and re-vegetation space. These pure areas are integral to our park lands.

After we do arise for our pristine figure-eight patch, we’re branded egocentric, old school NIMBYs who’re holding the progressive utopia of South Australia again.

Simply because the State Authorities has handed laws permitting them to snap up no matter parcel of park lands they like, doesn’t make it proper

Alexander Downer instructed The Guardian these wish to protect the park lands had been “squeaky wheelers” and a “narrow-minded, change-averse” minority. 

This newest chapter within the park lands standoff is nothing new, albeit slightly extra brutal.

I imagine the Premier when he mentioned the Girls’s and Youngsters’s Hospital plan was not about free land, so it’s a pity that the answer to each growth downside is utilizing the park lands as a land financial institution.

What’s being proposed received’t be only a few bridle paths and floats. SAPOL have grand plans which embrace excessive perimeter fencing, stables for an expanded troop of 40 horses, lodging for some 30 employees, a contemporary horse coaching facility plus tack and fodder shops.

This isn’t about horses. It’s a couple of semi-industrialised complicated alienated forever.

Consistent with the custom of deriding park lands supporters as nay-sayers who’re holding again progress, I’ve been branded a hypocrite for criticising this plan however permitting privately-owned horses to graze on North Adelaide paddocks. 

Adelaideans aren’t idiots. They know a steady is a constructing and a paddock is a subject.

Our park lands aren’t simply manicured, decorative areas with rose bushes and footy fields … this web site occurs to be designated as a biodiversity zone and re-vegetation space

Satirically, nonetheless, the one factor our critics ignore is the significance of our park lands within the plan to get extra folks dwelling in our metropolis.

If we wish to improve our inhabitants by condo dwelling, we have to have open area for biking, operating and different leisure actions.

Individuals don’t wish to reside in concrete jungles the place they should dodge vehicles on metropolis streets for an opportunity to go for a run or stroll the canine.

It might seem the horse has bolted (pardon the pun) for us at Adelaide City Corridor relating to criticising these newest plans.

We could not have the ability, however apathy and indifference aren’t an choice.

The one factor we now have on our facet is a rational argument and a well-established consensus that open area and Adelaide Park Lands are treasured.

Simply because the State Authorities has handed laws permitting them to snap up no matter parcel of park lands they like, doesn’t make it proper and simply because they’ll, they don’t need to do it.

The Metropolis of Adelaide might recommend a location for the present horses to graze as a short lived measure away from a delegated biodiversity web site.

We might devise a long-term plan and the federal government might determine to embrace conservation, group values and their get together’s historical past. 

That’s why I hassle.

Dr Jane Lomax-Smith is Adelaide Lord Mayor and a former Labor minister.