Royal Adelaide Hospital Site Redevelopment

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:35): My question is to the Minister for Housing and Urban Development. At a meeting of the old RAH developers and their legal representatives held on 15 June 2017 at the Dame Roma Mitchell House offices, did they ask the minister whether they should consider removing residential apartments from their proposal, and did the minister say no to that question?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (14:36): There has been a request from the developers who had been granted the opportunity to negotiate exclusively with government to meet with the government to understand a series of requirements the government had for the development that was to occur in the future, should they be successful.

I note with interest that there has been some reporting—although, of course, never attributed—that there was a suggestion that the developer could deliver a development, the nature of which they had outlined to the government, and that residential development would not be required, that that was somehow optional and could be dispensed with when it was made absolutely clear to the government, in their proposed construction schedule, that if they were to be successful in their development the first stage of what they were to build, after the government had gone through and done the necessary demolition and remediation works, was indeed residential development.

For them, of course, the necessity was to create sufficient cash returns and cash flows so that they could start to move on to some of the perhaps less commercial elements of the development. I certainly do not recall that being canvassed at that meeting and I certainly do not recall, based on the advice given to me by the government's negotiation team, that that was a feasible option for the developer at any point if they were able to deliver a development of the scale and mix of uses they were purporting to want to deliver on the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site.