No matter how old you are, no matter how special you are, if you’re an Adelaide Park Lands’ tree, don’t have your roots buried between Premier Peter Malinauskas and a vanity project. Rex Patrick reports.
We get it. The MotoGP motorbike racing is entertaining and will be popular with South Australians. But is it OK to cut down 400 trees and put an imposing 16-acre racecourse in the middle of what was once a world unique park land?
Would such a proposition in New York City Central Park be entertained? Only if Peter Malinauskas were the NYC’s Mayor.
The proposed Adelaide MotoGP Track (Supplied: DIT)
Earlier this week the South Australian Government announced its plans to ‘annex’ public park lands to build a race track for MotoGP.
The announcement came a few days before the Government were did to hand over an MWM Freedom of information request into “cutting down trees to accommodate MotoGP” and the “building of permanent structures in the Adelaide Park Lands” to accommodate the MotoGP.
Rather than have MWM break the news, the Government decided to get out on the front foot with a very schmick PR campaign as they announced exactly what we expected; there would a mass lopping of trees and the building of permanent structures in the Park Lands.
Age old unique design
It’s almost 190 years since Colonel William Light laid out his plans for Adelaide City.
It was to be a city inside a park.
The design placed a figure eight of parks around both Adelaide and North Adelaide. It’s generally regarded as a masterwork of urban design.
A city inside a Park (Source: Adelaide Park Lands Association)
So special is the layout there have been moves afoot for 30 years to have the Park Land World Heritage listed. The problem is that, whilst politicians pay lip service to a listing, they don’t really mean it. After all, to politicians it’s not the priceless land that counts, rather it’s free land to be used for their vanity projects.
Since 1837 the Park Lands have been made home to car parks, sheds, hospitals, universities and schools, infrastructure, commercial buildings, convention centres and sporting facilities.
Each one of those projects was a sellable idea – it’s only when you stand back and look at nearly 200 projects over that time that you realise the unique Park Land’s that encircled the city have been slowly eaten away.
The MotoGP circuit is just another good individual project that adds to the hundreds of other projects that have slowly destroyed the Park Lands.
Peter ‘Chopper’ Malinauskas
Despite successive Premiers of South Australia subjecting the Park Lands to night after night of long knives, the current Premier has surpassed them all.
Instead of recognising, as New Yorkers do, that a growing city’s parks get ever more important, Malinauskas has taken, taken, and taken from the Park Lands: the Botanic High School, the new Woman’s and Children’s Hospital, the Adelaide Aquatic Centre, the Men’s Australian Open Golf course (previously Liv Golf until Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund pulled its funding for that tournament) and now the MotoGP track.
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Not only has the figure eight been broken through the annexing of land for the Woman’s and Children’s Hospital, across all Malinauskas’ projects
nearly 1,400 trees have been or face being felled.
Peter ‘Chopper” Malinauskas’ has had little regard or sympathy for the unique status of the Park Lands, which in itself could be a catalyst for economic benefit, or the long-standing trees in there.
Along with the MotoGP announcement came news of consultation on the Government’s plans. But most are calling that consultation disingenuous at best, and most likely just a sham process.
Stop the chop
While the Adelaide Park Lands Association is ramping up its ‘stop the chop’ plans, Malinauskas has calculated that there are more motor sports enthusiasts in South Australia than there are Park Lands supporters.
43,784 South Australians have signed a parliamentary petition opposing the Park Lands projects. But Malinauskas isn’t listening, stating the government wasn’t “constantly going to respond to a minority view”, but instead focus on what a “silent majority” might want.
Park Lands Protest in the City (Source: Adelaide Park Lands Association)
Those protesting ‘the chop’ are concerned with the long-term future of the City of Adelaide, and the gift given to it by the visionary that was Colonel Light. Malinauskas is looking for a win.
They are two very different things.
Decisions on the future of a city are ones for leaders. Decisions on winning elections or ones for retail politicians. Malinauskas is clearly of the latter ilk.
And as MWM has already reported, he need not worry about bad press.
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Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the "Transparency Warrior."