Why do you bother?

A journalist put this question to me during an interview last week, when the State Government announced another decision to locate yet more buildings on our park lands.

It’s a fair question. The City of Adelaide has recently been fighting a losing battle to prevent development on our National Heritage-listed, and potentially World Heritage-listed, park lands.

My response is that, in life, you don’t just fight the battles you can win. You fight the ones that are worth fighting, especially when we are, by legislation, required to conserve our park lands.

Already, we have lost 25 per cent since they were laid out, with long-time Advertiser columnist Rex Jory once comparing the erosion of our park lands to “mice nibbling at cheese”.

The reality is, if the mice keep nibbling, one day there won’t be any cheese left.

In an InDaily opinion piece about park lands development, former Labor minister Chris Sumner says the current government took a “help-yourself-to-free-land” approach to the park lands.

Sumner remembered, somewhat fondly, the time Premier Don Dunstan passed planning laws shielding the park lands and the Hills Face Zone, policies continued under John Bannon and explicitly supported by Mike Rann, who returned alienated land to the park lands.

Rann also enacted legislation requiring the State Government, their agencies and the City of Adelaide to protect and enhance them.

The present government has followed an aggressive pro-development agenda in our park lands and we often forget that each individual decision has consequences.

When heritage and planning laws were circumvented to build the $3.2 billion Women’s and Children’s Hospital on a heritage and park setting, the legislation passed at warp speed last year, allowed the government to remove any obstacle to development, and contemplated the implications even if the community didn’t realise that they were seeing only the thin edge of the wedge.

The plan to demolish the state-heritage listed Thebarton Police Barracks meant that the building complex housing SAPOL’s Mounted Operations Unit had to go.

Luckily, the Act allows Police Minister Joe Szakacs to take any land he chooses to find them a new home.

Once again, an ‘extensive’ search has identified a ‘disused’ corner of Golden Wattle Park/Mirnu Wirra (Park 21) as their favoured option, since we are told the mounted horses are not able to cross main roads.

I don’t intend to argue about the assertion but will point out that our park lands are not just manicured, ornamental areas with rose bushes and footy fields.

This site happens to be designated as a biodiversity zone and re-vegetation area. These natural areas are integral to our park lands.

When we do stand up for our pristine figure-eight patch, we are branded selfish, old-fashioned NIMBYs who are holding the progressive utopia of South Australia back.

Just because the State Government has passed legislation allowing them to snap up whatever parcel of park lands they like, doesn’t make it right

Alexander Downer told The Guardian those want to preserve the park lands were “squeaky wheelers” and a “narrow-minded, change-averse” minority. 

This latest chapter in the park lands standoff is nothing new, albeit a little more brutal.

I believe the Premier when he said the Women’s and Children’s Hospital plan was not about free land, so it’s a pity that the solution to every development problem is using the park lands as a land bank.

What’s being proposed won’t be just a few bridle paths and floats. SAPOL have grand plans which include high perimeter fencing, stables for an expanded troop of 40 horses, accommodation for some 30 staff, a modern horse training facility plus tack and fodder stores.

This isn’t about horses. It’s about a semi-industrialised complex alienated for all time.

In keeping with the tradition of deriding park lands supporters as nay-sayers who are holding back progress, I’ve been branded a hypocrite for criticising this plan but allowing privately-owned horses to graze on North Adelaide paddocks. 

Adelaideans aren’t idiots. They know a stable is a building and a paddock is a field.

Our park lands are not just manicured, ornamental areas with rose bushes and footy fields … this site happens to be designated as a biodiversity zone and re-vegetation area

Ironically, however, the one thing our critics ignore is the importance of our park lands in the plan to get more people living in our city.

If we want to increase our population through apartment living, we need to have open space for cycling, running and other recreational activities.

People don’t want to live in concrete jungles where they need to dodge cars on city streets for a chance to go for a run or walk the dog.

It may appear the horse has bolted (pardon the pun) for us at Adelaide Town Hall when it comes to criticising these latest plans.

We may not have the power, but apathy and indifference aren’t an option.

The one thing we have on our side is a rational argument and a well-established consensus that open space and Adelaide Park Lands are precious.

Just because the State Government has passed legislation allowing them to snap up whatever parcel of park lands they like, doesn’t make it right and just because they can, they don’t have to do it.

The City of Adelaide could suggest a location for the current horses to graze as a temporary measure away from a designated biodiversity site.

We could devise a long-term plan and the government could decide to embrace conservation, community values and their party’s history. 

That’s why I bother.

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