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

*Restore the site of the current Aquatic Centre and Protect this adjacent site in Denise Norton Park. A public rally in September 2022. Pic: Alex Frayne*

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.

Under immediate threat: dozens of trees, including century-old sugar gums providing habitat for koalas, possums and birds. Advice to the Government is that any tree marked “moderate” (in yellow) can be removed.

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.