PORT WATERFRONT REDEVELOPMENT

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:35): I move:

That the Legislative Council notes—

1. The open letter sent to Premier Mike Rann from a group of prominent Australians calling on the Premier to ensure that opportunities are fully explored to integrate Port Adelaide's maritime heritage and character into the Port Waterfront Redevelopment in an enlightened way;

2. The importance of historic working boatyards and related marine heritage as a tangible and integral element of the sense of place of Port Adelaide and LeFevre Peninsula;

and calls on the Premier to—

1. Allow the three remaining historic working boatyards in Jenkins Street, Birkenhead, another year of operation beyond 30 June 2008 to enable a thorough Burra Charter assessment of their significance; and

2. Ensure greater recognition of the importance of Port Adelaide's marine heritage in the overall Port Waterfront Redevelopment.

This motion relates to a subject we have talked about before in this place, but it is a matter that needs to be resolved very urgently, that is, the protection of heritage in Port Adelaide. My motion proposes that this council notes the open letter that was sent to Premier Mike Rann from a group of prominent Australians calling on the Premier to ensure that opportunities are fully explored to integrate Port Adelaide's maritime heritage and character into the Port Waterfront Redevelopment in an enlightened way.

Members might not have seen the letter that appeared on the opinion page of the Adelaide Advertiser of Tuesday 17 June under the by-line of Sir James Hardy (a person who would be familiar to everyone) and entitled 'Last chance to save our Port history.' The open letter, as it appears in the paper, was slightly abridged, so I want to put its full text on the record. The letter, dated 16 June, states:

Dear Premier,

Along with the majority of the Port community, we applaud the development of the Port Waterfront as a much-needed regional revitalisation. However, we see a challenge in Port Adelaide and call upon you, as Premier, to meet it.

The challenge is to ensure that the redevelopment honours the importance of the birthplace of South Australia and its history and contributes to regional economic growth to maximum extent, by building on national and international examples of the successful incorporation of maritime industry and heritage. These include Helsinki, Cape Town, Boston, London, Oslo, Seattle, Wellington, Vancouver, Sydney, and Copenhagen.

In Port Adelaide, the maritime character of its waterfront is being stripped away, with one of the last remaining opportunities to retain some of this irreplaceable character about to be lost for good.

In other port cities around the world where best practice urban design is applied, this same character is being embraced to enrich the revitalisation of their waterfront zones, but in Port Adelaide it all stands to be lost.

In 2001, the Land Management Corporation (LMC) called for registrations of interest for a 'Port Adelaide waterfront redevelopment opportunity'. It produced a vision for the Port, with paramount objectives for the redevelopment that included 'achieving excellence in planning and urban design, which recognises Port Adelaide's maritime use, character and heritage' and its 'rich heritage of unique waterfront character'.

Responding to the LMC's vision and aims, the Newport Quays consortium, and their architects talked of their plans for a development that would have a unifying theme consistent with the maritime and heritage nature of the existing environment. Heritage was an integral component of the consortium's proposal to ensure that the cultural, social and historical significance of the Port was retained and enhanced, and that Burra Charter principles were applied to comprehensively assess this heritage. As recently as 2004, the LMC stated in its prospectus that it would 'continue to ensure that the redevelopment appropriately accounts for the maritime history and culture of the area'.

What has happened to this vision that is allowing the character and heritage to be eroded and why haven't Burra Charter principles been applied in order that a comprehensive heritage assessment be carried out?

At this stage, I would just break that letter to mention briefly this notion of the Burra Charter, because some members might not be familiar with it. The Burra Charter defines the basic principles and procedures to be followed in the conservation of heritage places. These principles and procedures can be applied to a monument, a courthouse, a garden, a shell midden, a rock art site, a cottage, a road, a mining or archaeological site, or a whole region or district. In fact, they are very comprehensive.

The creation of the Burra Charter follows a previous international charter developed in Venice in 1966. In 1977, the Australian International Council on Monuments and Sites decided to review the Venice Charter in relation to Australian practice. In 1979, a meeting in the South Australian town of Burra Burra developed an Australian version of the charter, which has since been known as the Burra Charter. The Burra Charter accepted the philosophy and concepts of the Venice Charter, but wrote them in a form which would be practical and useful in Australia. The Burra Charter is the result of the collective wisdom and experience of people working in the conservation of heritage places in Australia and overseas.

I refer to the Burra Charter in my motion, and the open letter to the Premier also refers to the Burra Charter principles. The open letter to the Premier goes on:

The vision has been lost through incremental erosion. The 'maritime use' has been curtailed by opening bridges that will open twice a day, forcing the sailing clubs, tugs, fishing boats and active tall ships out of the inner harbour. The 'maritime heritage' will be represented in the 53 hectare waterfront redevelopment only by one item, Fletcher's Slip (while Sydney Harbour has 137 items) with all other items deemed, at this stage, to have no formal heritage value and therefore in line for demolition. We are losing the majority of our precious maritime character in direct contradiction to the desired vision for the redevelopment.

We are concerned that the three remaining historic working boatyards at Jenkins Street, Birkenhead, are required by the LMC to close at the end of this month and are scheduled to be demolished soon after. They have long histories; one of them is a five-generation business. If they are removed from the inner harbour then we have missed a significant opportunity to enrich and diversify the revitalisation of Port Adelaide. The boatyards are rich in character and culture. If they close their doors on 30 June, they will be lost for good, with the irreplaceable infrastructure and assets contained within being dissipated through auctions and rubbish skips, to say nothing of the loss of the culture of boatbuilding that has taken place using the same tools and skills in the same place for the last 170 years.

Every LMC-initiated community consultation since 2001 has consistently, and in our view rightly, identified the boatyards and related maritime heritage as tangible and integral elements of the character that defines the sense of place of Port Adelaide and the Le Fevre Peninsula and contributes to the thriving tourism economy of the region.

We would like to revisit the intent of both the LMC's 'Port Adelaide waterfront redevelopment opportunity' and the development consortium's earlier vision for a multifaceted development that respects Port Adelaide's unique maritime character. We call on you to intervene to ensure that opportunities are fully explored to integrate the Port's maritime heritage and character into the new development in a creative, enlightened and vibrant way, one which is enriched and guided by the vision that was espoused on day one, providing a development that benefits all and is uniquely Port Adelaide.

We ask that the boatyards be given another year of operation so that adequate time is provided for a thorough Burra Charter assessment of their significance to be undertaken, and that from this, design concepts be developed where the boatyards and other maritime items and character might be incorporated into the master plan for the redevelopment.

Yours sincerely,

I have read that whole letter into Hansard, because I think it is important that we take seriously the call from these prominent South Australians and Australians. In fact, there are some international experts on this list as well.

The signatories are: Anita Aspinall, President of the National Trust of South Australia; Professor Philip Cox AO, Director of Cox Architects and Planners; Bryan Dawe, ABC TV political satirist, writer and former Birkenhead boy; Professor Mads Gaardboe, Head of School at the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia; Steve Grieve, Chairperson of Country Arts SA; Sir James Hardy KBE OBE, yachtsman, businessman and community leader; Elizabeth Ho, Executive Director of the Hawke Centre; Dan Houston, Editor of Classic Boat Magazine in the UK; Emeritus Professor Alison MacKinnon, President of the History Council of South Australia; Jack Mundy, union leader and instigator of heritage protection through 'Green Bans'; Professor Nancy Pollock-Ellwand, Head of School, School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at Adelaide University; and Mary-Louise T Director of the Australian National Maritime Museum. They are prominent people whose views we ignore at our peril. That is why my motion proposes that we call on the Premier to do the same things that these prominent Australians have called for: to give these boatsheds another year of operation to enable a thorough charter assessment of their significance and to ensure that we get proper recognition of the Port's maritime heritage into the Port Waterfront Redevelopment.

I will conclude with one very brief quote from one of the signatories to this letter, and that is Dan Houston, who is the editor of Classic Boat Magazine. What he says is:

We meet people all the time who bemoan the loss of boatyards where there were maybe wooden boats and a working skill base. This whole idea that we can all live in cracker boxes near the sea and sail plastic boats brought all the way from China, with no idea how they are designed and made, is anathema to the human spirit. They let something real go and then five years later realise that they have destroyed the soul of a place. By then, of course, it is too late.

I would urge all honourable members to support this motion.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.