Festival Plaza

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (12:21): I move:

That this council—

1. Notes that on 11 June 2025 the state planning commission assessment panel granted planning consent for the 38-storey Festival Plaza Tower 2;

2. Recognises that over 125 eminent South Australians, including former Premier Reverend Hon. Dr Lynn Arnold AO and former President of the Legislative Council, the Hon Anne Levy AO, have signed an open letter calling on the Premier and this parliament to stop the construction of Festival Plaza Tower 2, protect Festival Plaza as an open, civic space, and retain it as public land;

3. Acknowledges that the construction of the Festival Plaza Tower 2 would incur a major loss of open, civic space and negatively impact on the heritage values of the Parliament House complex and the Adelaide Parklands; and

4. Calls on the Malinauskas government to intervene to prevent the construction of Festival Plaza Tower 2.

The motion that I am moving today notes that, on 11 June 2025, the state planning commission assessment panel granted planning consent for a 38-storey Festival Plaza Tower 2. It recognises that over 125 eminent South Australians, including former Premier the Reverend Hon. Dr Lynn Arnold AO and former President of the Legislative Council, the Hon. Anne Levy AO, have signed an open letter calling on the Premier and this parliament to stop the construction of Festival Plaza Tower 2, protect Festival Plaza as an open civic space, and retain it as public land.

The motion acknowledges that the construction of the Festival Plaza Tower 2 would incur a major loss of open civic space and negatively impact on the heritage values of the Parliament House complex and the Adelaide Parklands, and it calls on the government to intervene to prevent the construction of Festival Plaza Tower 2.

This motion will be important to any South Australian who cares about the character and heritage of the City of Adelaide. The skyscraper that is being proposed will overshadow North Terrace and our historic Parliament House, and obscure the view for the public. It will prevent the public from being able to enjoy Festival Plaza, which is an iconic civic space.

This 160-metre-tall skyscraper will be the tallest commercial building in Adelaide and it will feature an outdoor dining area, retail tenancies on the ground floor, an elevated plaza space on level 1, and it will include commercial office space from levels 6 to 16 and 19 to 35, and I understand also a restaurant on level 36.

The planning minister, the Hon. Nick Champion, has said that SCAP approval was 'unambiguously good news for the state', adding that the Festival Plaza will be 'vibrant and teeming with people' once the tower is finished. 'We want to activate the plaza,' he says, 'and office workers will do that.'

Just how many office workers will be brought to this Labor-Walker tower? In February of this year, InDaily reported that the office vacancy rate in the Adelaide CBD was over 16.4 per cent. So why is the government building yet another colossal office tower? Are office buildings really the limit of this government's imagination when it comes to our public green space?

This skyscraper risks turning one of Adelaide's most iconic open public spaces into just another soulless commercial precinct. I am not against skyscrapers, and, in fact, I think skyscrapers make sense for the CBD. But you do not put it on the best piece of real estate we have in our state. You do not put a skyscraper right next to our Parliament House.

Let me say, if ever there was a symbol of the power of developers in our democracy, this is it. We are going to have two giant Walker towers literally overshadowing the people's Parliament House, reminding all South Australians who really run the show. It is like Sauron out of Lord of the Rings. It is totally inappropriate.

The Labor Party have shown themselves to be devoid of any imagination when it comes to this Festival Plaza. That whole precinct has been a total dog's breakfast. Really, the original sin was surely John Rau and the approach that he took to the Riverbank Precinct. It is a cross between a maze and an obstacle course trying to get around that area, and this giant tower is just going to further complicate the picture. It was outrageous that the Walker Corporation were granted exclusive use of this Parklands site in the first place. The existing tower overshadowing Parliament House is surely monstrous enough.

A number of concerns have been raised by the government's own heritage agency, Heritage SA, about the impact of this tower on our Parliament House and on the listing as a national heritage place. In a submission to the SCAP, Heritage SA raised concerns that the visual dominance of the proposed tower would leave views of parliament's northern facade compromised. Indeed, Heritage SA's principal architect, Michael Queale wrote, and I quote from his submission:

The currently open setting to the north of Parliament House will be enclosed by the tower, compromising the historic landmark scale of Parliament House along the North Terrace boulevard. While the tower will be set back behind Parliament House, its scale will still dominate views of the setting of Parliament House when seen from the city.

It is not just the Greens who are up in arms about this. Respected members of the community from across the political divide have been speaking out against this as well. Indeed, more than 120 prominent South Australians have signed an open letter demanding an immediate halt to the proposed tower, including many people who have served the Labor Party over many years with distinction, like the Reverend Dr Lynn Arnold AO, former Premier of our state; the Hon. Anne Levy AO, former President of our Legislative Council; the Hon. Peter Duncan, former Attorney-General in the Dunstan Labor government; Archdeacon Peter Sandeman AM, former CEO of Anglicare; and Dr Christel Mex from the City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters. In this open letter, which has been published, they say:

We believe the proposal to allow this highly significant public site to have a speculative, commercial tower built on it, directly overshadowing the SA Parliament, is wrong on multiple counts:

It places private corporate profit ahead of public purpose.

The Code Amendment, that changed the zoning law, was rushed through without following the government's own community engagement charter, or due planning process.

It erodes the adjacent Park Lands, already under constant threat from commercial overreach, and the vistas from the Park Lands through Parliament House.

When this issue was raised on the radio last week, the argument seemed to be put by the government that, 'Well, this was advertised on YourSAy.' Might I say, YourSAy is a totally inadequate consultation mechanism. When I was on the city council, I used to rail against the use of YourSAy; it is a highly ineffective engagement model. Very few people are normally aware of what is being posted on YourSAy, and it generally gets very few respondents.

One would have thought that a project such as this, that is so significant for our state, would be subject to a significant consultation process. You do not just stick it on a website and expect members of the community to be engaging with it. That is a cop-out. These developments that we are seeing from the government are chipping away at public land. Indeed, just this week we saw the Malinauskas government announce that it wants to seize more of the Parklands for its LIV Golf tournament redevelopment. Once these spaces are gone, we will not get them back. It is very clear that the development sector are looking on at the Parklands, and our public green space, and really salivating at the prospect of being able to sink their teeth into this space.

Just this morning, Bruce Djite of the Property Council was on the radio talking about his view that the city council should be stripped of all of its authority over planning decisions. That is a very disturbing development. That clearly is in the sights of the Property Council and it will be incumbent on the Malinauskas government to rule that out in coming days, because the Property Council is very clear to see these sorts of developments imposed on the community, despite the lack of public consent.

The Malinauskas government has also said that they do not have any authority over this decision: that is a cop out. They made it very clear that they wanted to see this project get the green light. We saw some months ago they responded to strong community pressure from the Greens and a range of community groups to step in and save the Crown and Anchor from destruction. They should be doing the same thing when it comes to the Festival Plaza site.

The government will say, 'Oh well, the previous Liberal government was committed to three storeys; three storeys would be a poor outcome, let's go to 38.' I find that one of the most ridiculous arguments I have heard in this debate. I do not understand how three storeys would be a worse outcome than 38 storeys in terms of the impact on public space. The government says this will be a key civic and community space: it is an office tower. It is an office tower that may well end up being a ghost tower because of the significant vacancy rates that we already have when it comes to office space in our city.

This is also endemic of a planning system that serves vested interests, that serves the big end of town at the expense of ordinary South Australians. I urge the government to rein in their instinct to go after public space. The Parklands are not a land bank, and our Festival Plaza should not be a plaything for developers. This really is the wrong direction for our state, so I urge them to step in and do something, because this proposal for the Riverbank Precinct and the Festival Plaza absolutely stinks to high heaven.

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