Royal Adelaide Hospital Site Redevelopment

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:41): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier stand by his statement to the media on 20 September in relation to the old Royal Adelaide Hospital redevelopment proposal from Commercial and General and John Holland that it was an 'absolute fantasy' and a 'joke' that the developers had offered to remove the private residential apartments from their proposal?

Mr Pisoni: The Premier made the comment.

The SPEAKER: I call to order the member for Unley.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:41): The circumstances around the process there are fairly clear. There was a process that ultimately led to a particular group being a preferred group for negotiation with the government. They put certain proposals to the government, which included a particular vision for the site. That remained essentially, so far as we were concerned, the basis for the ongoing discussions, from which ultimately, as everybody knows, the government formed the view that it didn't represent, in the end, sufficient value for the community for the government to proceed with that arrangement.

Everybody would be aware from media reports that the original proposal put forward by that consortium contained a number of apartments, a substantial number of apartments actually. I think the proposal involved the concept of a 99-year lease for potential acquirers of those apartments. So far as I am aware, there has never been a suggestion that the proponents had abandoned or walked away from that proposition. So far as I am aware, that was always an underpinning aspect of the proposal that they put to government, and the suggestion that that had been withdrawn is, with respect, not correct.