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STATE OF OUR HERITAGE: FROM BAD TO WORSE
2018
SOLD
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Edmund Wright House
In 1971 Premier Don Dunstan intervened to prevent the demolition of Edmund Wright House, by purchasing the building with the aid of public subscriptions. The building has sat vacant since 2016. In 2019 the Marshall Government sold the building for $6.38m to a Sydney property developer. Three years later it remains vacant and inaccessible and looks increasingly neglected.
2019
DEMOLISHED
Shed 26
Shed 26, an important legacy of Port Adelaide’s industrial heritage was approved for State Heritage listing in 2019, which should afford the highest level of protection. Instead, Minister for the Environment, David Speirs, vetoed the listing by the Heritage Council the following month. Despite a vigorous public campaign to defend the shed, developer Cedar Woods demolished it in July 2019.
sTATE oF ouR HERITAGE: from bad to worse
The future of South Australia’s heritage is at greater risk than at any time in the past 50 years.
The State Government’s changes to planning laws and regulations have undermined South Australia’s heritage protection system to expedite development at any cost, including the loss of our heritage. Public rights to have input into policy and decision making in planning and development have been severely curtailed. South Australia now has the least democratic planning system in the country and the nation’s weakest heritage and tree protections.
How did this happen? What can we do about it?
There is broad community consensus that our heritage should be protected for the benefit of present and future generations. Those benefits have well established economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions. In the face of long-term climate change and the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, protecting and preserving our heritage becomes even more important. Our built heritage and natural environment supports and sustains human and ecological resilience in times of uncertainty and change. As well as dismantling long established heritage protections, the state government has made a number of decisions to sell, demolish and privatise some of the state’s most important heritage places, generally ignoring the overwhelming public opposition to these decisions. The Marshall Government has reneged on many of the commitments it made prior to the last election in respect of our heritage. After four years, South Australia’s heritage is more vulnerable than ever to demolition, neglect or inappropriate development. Places that should be afforded the highest level of protection have been demolished, sold or privatised. Our heritage protection system is in disarray and no match for the development at any cost policies established though the Planning and Design Code.
2020
2021
SAVED
PRIVATISATION Waite Gatehouse
In 2020 the Department of Infrastructure and Transport (DIT) announced that it would demolish the State Heritage listed Waite Gatehouse at Urrbrae for an intersection widening project. DIT is notorious for its destruction of trees, but this was the first time it had proposed the demolition of a State Heritage building, which once would have had iron-clad protection under the heritage laws. The Minister for the Environment and the Heritage Council were publicly silent on the proposed demolition. Instead, a huge public campaign secured a government commitment to relocate rather than demolish the gatehouse.
2021
PRIVATISATION
Ayers House
In June 2021, Minister for the Environment, David Speirs issued a notice, without warning, to evict the National Trust form Ayers House after 50 years as the custodian of the building and six decades advocating for its protection. The government has since misled the public about its plans for Ayers House which amount to further commercialisation and the creation of government offices at an exorbitant cost. The National Trust is petitioning the Parliament for permanent care and control of Ayers House, to keep it for the people, for all time.
Martindale Hall Privatisation
Prior to the 2018 election the Liberal Opposition pledged that it would not remove the charitable Trust that protected Martindale Hall as a gift to the people of South Australia. In May 2021, Minister for the Environment David Speirs introduced to Parliament a Bill to abolish the charitable trust and facilitate the privatisation of Martindale Hall through a lease arrangement. Although passed by the Government in the lower house, the Bill did not pass in the Legislative Council, where the Opposition and cross-benchers opposed it.
