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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-08 Daily Xml
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Bills

Ayers House Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (16:03): This act will legislate and ensure ongoing public access to Ayers House and exempt Ayers House from council rates. The minister will remain as the registered owner of Ayers House on the certificate of title. The National Trust will be liable for all claims related to Ayers House. We are building on Don Dunstan's vision and efforts in the heritage space, and we look forward to Ayers House remaining in the hands of the National Trust for generations to come. I commend this bill to the house.

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (16:03): Ayers House is one of our state's finest assets. Named after its original owner, Sir Henry Ayers, a distinguished politician, financier and Premier of South Australia, it is a fine example of colonial architecture that has been home to the National Trust since 1972 after the building was transformed from a nurses' quarters into a public museum, restaurant and function centre. Like many in this place, I have attended several weddings at Ayers House and marvelled in its history and well-maintained environment.

The National Trust was established under an act of parliament in South Australia in 1955. It is not a government body and relies on the generosity of memberships, grants and donations. They do an incredible job of managing many heritage buildings and nature reserves, some of which I have in my electorate, such as Gamble Cottage, Watchman House and Watiparinga Reserve. Its core responsibility is the preservation, management, maintenance and promotion of historic sites, natural reserves, museums, folk history, collections, icons and heritage. They work hard to raise awareness of our history and also to encourage current and future generations to explore their past, enjoy what our state's heritage has to offer and ensure that these incredible places will be there long into the future.

One of our government's election commitments was to introduce legislation to grant the National Trust ongoing rights to Ayers House, including its use for commercial opportunities so that it is able to generate the revenue it needs to carry out all of the work that it does. The National Trust has over a thousand registered volunteers and over 5,000 members. Some of those volunteers live in my community, and the work that they do in maintaining our local heritage and the love that they have for these treasures is outstanding.

In fact, in November last year I was very grateful to be able to reward one of these volunteers with a Premier's volunteer award. That special person was Maxine Conlon. Having devoted more than a decade to volunteering with the Coromandel Valley & Districts Branch National Trust, Maxine is passionate about promoting the history and heritage of the area. The branch's primary objectives relate to the collection, preservation and promotion of local heritage, both as stories and items of significance. Maxine is active in the pursuit of these objectives as a regular organiser of open days and special events at three historic properties managed by the Trust, as a tour guide on bus and walking tours of the district, and through working on documenting, cataloguing and maintaining the branch's archives. She has been a highly effective and respected branch treasurer for 10 years.

Of particular note was Maxine's extensive involvement in coordinating dozens of activities run to celebrate the 175th anniversary in 2012 of the founding of Coromandel Valley. She was immersed in the year and constantly available. It was a lovely morning tea at Watchman House and it was lovely to share the day with all of the volunteers. The Coromandel Valley & Districts Branch National Trust are also responsible for making some of the most delicious marmalade that I have ever shared, and many of my colleagues here have benefited from them. Bev Harper is the head chef with assistance from her very talented kitchen hand, Bruce. So good is the marmalade that last year it took out two very prestigious awards at the Australian Marmalade Championships held in Victoria. Volunteers are the lifeblood of our community and the work that they do throughout is irreplaceable.

The National Trust, as mentioned, has been the caretaker of Ayers House for over 55 years, and this bill will ensure that they continue to be the custodians. The bill is intended to guarantee Ayers House as a permanent site for the National Trust of South Australia and to permit the National Trust to generate revenue. This includes the National Trust accessing income from the associated car park for the purposes of meeting maintenance costs of the property.

Whilst the government will continue to own Ayers House, the National Trust will be responsible for heritage conservation, property maintenance and all associated operating costs of Ayers House. The National Trust will become the lessor in relation to existing leases and will be able to enter into future lease opportunities for Ayers House. The National Trust will not be allowed to sell, mortgage or transfer the Ayers House land or buildings, and public access to Ayers House will be mandated in perpetuity. The objects of the National Trust of South Australia Act 1955 will be updated to reflect the National Trust's permanent role within Ayers House.

The National Trust was first asked to assist in managing Ayers House in 1971. In 1970, the then Premier, Don Dunstan, invited the National Trust to contribute to his plan to restore, furnish and present the house to the public as a museum, restaurant and function centre. This bill expands upon the vision of the former Premier by granting Ayers House to the National Trust as a permanent home.

The Ayers House Act will ensure that this location is safe from a future minister evicting the National Trust on a whim, like the now opposition leader attempted to do in 2021. Prior to the 2018 state election, the Liberal Party promised to provide $500,000 to the National Trust to develop and implement a master plan for the building, but in 2021 gave them their marching orders in favour of the History Trust and upped the investment to $6 million. This was an unprecedented and unwarranted attack on the 55-year stewardship of Ayers House by the National Trust—a body which, for 65 years, has nurtured and safeguarded much of South Australia's built and natural heritage. Thankfully, this bill will now protect the National Trust and their ongoing work at Ayers House. I commend the bill to the house.

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (16:09): I rise to speak on the Ayers House Bill. It is a pleasure to be able to speak on this bill and the importance of protecting heritage in our state and on the delivery of yet another election commitment. Prior to the election, we committed to introduce legislation to grant ongoing rights in relation to Ayers House to the National Trust of South Australia, including its use for commercial operations to generate revenue for the National Trust. This bill delivers on that commitment.

The National Trust as an organisation has been working to protect and promote heritage in South Australia since it was established under an act of parliament in South Australia in 1955. It exists on donations, grants, membership fees, entry fees and sponsorship and is strongly supported by our community. The trust actively conserves, manages and promotes South Australia's Indigenous, natural and built historical heritage and culture and does so as a community-based, not-for-profit non-government organisation.

Like all not-for-profit organisations, it relies on the support of the community, including more than 1,000 registered volunteers and over 5,000 members. Over the years, the National Trust and their volunteers have contributed towards supporting heritage conservation and heritage education. While we may only have built heritage stretching back over 200 years, we have natural and Indigenous heritage that spans close to 100,000 years, and we need to make sure that all of this is protected.

Ayers House is an iconic building along our cultural boulevard, joining our beautiful Museum, Art Gallery, State Library, Bonython Hall and so many others between our historic Adelaide Railway Station and our unique Botanic Gardens. Many South Australians will have visited Ayers House for events, functions, open days or high tea.

The National Trust was first asked to assist in managing Ayers House in 1971. In 1970, our progressive and visionary Premier of the time, Don Dunstan, invited the National Trust to contribute to his plan to restore, furnish and present the house to the public as a museum, restaurant and function centre from its then disposition as nurses' quarters.

The Ayers House Act will ensure that this location is safe from any future minister evicting the National Trust on a whim, particularly our current member for Black when in landlord mode. The act will maintain the minister as the registered owner of Ayers House on the certificate of title, while giving the National Trust permanent care, control and management of Ayers House. Further, it will allow the National Trust to generate income to support its operations through leases, licences and other activities within Ayers House while also ensuring public access.

The National Trust will be liable for all claims related to Ayers House, while the property will be exempt from council rates, and transitional provisions will be put in place. It is important that we protect our heritage and that we support organisations like the National Trust that work for our community. I support this bill and commend it to the house.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (16:12): I rise to make a very brief contribution to the debate. I understand it is not the desire of the government to take the debate to committee this afternoon, and so there will be an opportunity for the fleshing out of these matters clause by clause in committee and, indeed, eventually in the course of the third reading. It is important that in the course of the second reading debate, the second reading debate does not conclude without an opportunity to correct the record on a range of things that I think have been aired in variously gratuitous ways by members opposite.

I just want to endorse the contribution of the member for Bragg. He has been of tremendous assistance to the Leader of the Opposition over this now sustained period of time. I applaud not only the Leader of the Opposition's time in government with responsibility for these matters but his continued leadership in the portfolio in opposition. It is a sign of not only his deep knowledge but also his dedication to the task.

The member for Bragg has indicated that we will be supporting the bill. I want to ensure that in the course of the debate there is a fulsome opportunity for the correct record to be placed on the Hansard. I leave my remarks at that for the time being. I look forward to further contributions in the course of the second reading.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (16:15): I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to the Ayers House Bill. I want to particularly thank the member for Bragg, who acts as the shadow assistant minister for environment and heritage, for largely looking after this piece of legislation on behalf of the Liberal Party of South Australia.

I did want to use this opportunity to correct the record, to make very clear and make sure the exact recent history was on the public record with regard to the Ayers House initiative that began under my time as minister for heritage in South Australia between 2018 and 2022. In fact, one of the most significant investments in heritage restoration of any government building in South Australia's history was the Liberal Party's commitment in 2020-21 to the restoration of Ayers House on North Terrace.

It was deemed by myself, but particularly by the former Premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall, that there was an incredible opportunity to restore Ayers House, to lift it from a really rundown building and to restore its heritage, to tell its story, to tell the story of its founders, the people who built the house, to tell the story of Henry Ayers and his significant contribution to this state, to this parliament in fact. There was so much to be able to do in that property.

The property also finds itself in a geographically strategic location. It is right across the road from Lot Fourteen, which of course was a focal point of much investment, and also heritage restoration in itself, with regard to the previous government's focus to turn that into a hub of entrepreneurialism and a place where start-ups could go to get off the ground and really thrive in South Australia. As part of the Lot Fourteen project, millions have been spent on the restoration, particularly of heritage-listed facades, and so because of the serendipitous location of Ayers House across the road we really did feel that there was an incredible opportunity to invest in the restoration of Ayers House.

A historic level of funding was to be provided by the state government to lift that building up and to do a sympathetic restoration, to look after every aspect of the heritage of the building, to knock off the much more recent—I think 1960s—annexe that was bolted onto the back of the building, to strip out the old bathrooms and kitchens, which were added in, again, in relatively modern times and had no fitting with the building, nor any modern purpose in terms of being bathrooms and kitchens.

This was a building that had become a camel. It was a building that was not fit for purpose. It had a museum in the front of it, and those rooms were looked after to a degree by the National Trust for some 50 years, but not to the extent that I felt was appropriate as the heritage minister. I felt we could partner with a range of heritage organisations, from the National Trust to the History Trust of SA and a range of other interested parties, to invest in that place.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create an incredibly special place that told the story of South Australia's post-European history and to bring that building to a place where it could be accessed by all because, sadly, it is inaccessible by large swathes of the community, huge numbers of people, particularly people with disabilities and older people, so it is exclusionary in its current form.

We wanted to put a lift on at the back where the old annexe was, giving people access to the rooms upstairs, and obviously do a very sensitive heritage restoration in the state rooms. This would then allow the building to be able to be used for a range of state functions, for events around the History Festival, and to be able to partner across the road with Lot Fourteen, with international visitors who might visit that site being able to cross the road and engage with the history of South Australia through being able to immerse themselves in the state room of Ayers House, hear that post-European story and be able to access the building in a way that just was not possible because as the building stands it is highly exclusionary. There are a lot of parts of that building you cannot get into. A lot of it is sealed off.

Because of limited funds, the National Trust of South Australia's footprint in the house had really shrunk to the state rooms. The ability to expand that, to hold exhibitions, lectures, productions and perhaps screen movies that told history stories—again, an anchor point, for the History Festival—was the vision for Ayers House. That vision was hijacked by the Labor Party, but not initially. I am not even going to blame the Labor Party for this. It was hijacked by Dr Darren Peacock, the former chief executive officer of the National Trust of South Australia, of blessed memory. He has been moved on now, rightly so.

Darren Peacock spread an immense amount of misinformation and innuendo about what the former government and I as minister sought to do. We wanted to partner with the National Trust. We wanted to partner with history SA. We wanted to partner with our history-focused organisations to create a centre of excellence for the telling of the story of South Australia and that is firmly on the public record.

But as part of that, we did feel we had to end the National Trust's lease and provide them with support to move to their North Adelaide building and to move material into storage that they had stored there. They had huge amounts of storage. It was like a bric-a-brac operation, to be quite frank. Huge amounts of material were stored there in various levels of condition and we felt that we needed to support them to carefully move that out, undertake this multimillion dollar restoration and accessibility project, knock off those modern additions to the building and go back to the true Ayers House, a place that could be accessed by all to tell South Australia's story.

Mr Peacock mounted a huge campaign: Save Ayers House. I am not sure what he wanted to save Ayers House from. My view was that Ayers House needed to be saved from him and his grotesque abrogation of leadership over an extended period of time. He bullied and harangued the board. I saw the way he treated the former president Deborah Morgan in meetings. He talked down to her, talked over her and mansplained to her. It was a terrible process and quite unbecoming.

He spread rumours that we were going to create a situation where the History Trust would have their offices in there. It was certainly going to have office accommodation in the upstairs rooms, and he made out that this was a terrible thing to happen, notwithstanding that for many years the National Trust had their offices in those rooms as well, albeit under very poor, inaccessible and inappropriate conditions for staff.

We wanted to restore those rooms sensitively and make sure they were fit for purpose. We are talking about old bedrooms or sections of the building completely inaccessible now. Mr Peacock—Dr Peacock, I should say, as he would want me to use his correct title—said we were going to fill it with IKEA furniture. Nothing could be further from the truth. We were going to create a situation where this building was going to be beautifully restored. It was going to be a centrepiece for the storytelling for multiple history-related organisations now and into the future.

Dr Peacock spread a sewer of lies and misinformation for an extended period of time against myself, against the Liberal Party, and that was locked onto by the Labor Party. Now, that is their political prerogative and they have moved ahead with the Ayers House Bill. It will be interesting in the committee stage to understand whether aspects of that bill are legally sound. I suspect this bill will be challenged in the courts in the coming years and the government will be caught up in all sorts of litigation, because there are aspects around competitive neutrality in this bill which are absolutely not thoroughly tested. I am absolutely not convinced that the competitive neutrality argument around the business that operates on the western side of Ayers House will be protected appropriately with regard to potential commercial ventures held in the building by the National Trust going forward.

It is also true to say that I have some significant concerns about how the National Trust is going to afford to pay for the ongoing upkeep and maintenance of this building going forward. The Department for Environment and Water injects hundreds of thousands of dollars into this building to ensure that it is waterproof, that it remains with a level of integrity in terms of dangers associated with catching fire and basic maintenance that ensures that building is safe for visitors.

So the National Trust and the members of the National Trust need to be aware that this bill will see that organisation liable for tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, per annum in terms of ongoing maintenance costs that they do not have carriage of at the moment. They have to go into this deal with their eyes wide open. I am happy to see this property pass into the ownership of the National Trust for all intents and purposes as the bill seems to suggest. But the National Trust has to understand that the level of financial burden and liability that could be shifted to them is going to be substantial and to the detriment of many other buildings in terms of their statewide property holdings.

The spirit of the bill put forward by the government is supported in a general sense but I do hope that the National Trust and its board, and the members of that board, have a really good grasp of what is coming with this bill, because the liability and the financial impost is significant. I hope they have been able to secure an ongoing grant from the Labor government of around $100,000 to $200,000 per annum to ensure that they are equipped to look after this property. It is a jewel in the crown of heritage in South Australia, but to remain a jewel in the crown—and it had drifted in recent years—it needs constant investment.

I do worry that this bill and the transfer of all obligations to the National Trust could leave this building, this beautiful building, this critical heritage asset within our state, fundamentally vulnerable to slipping into genteel decline. That is my worry here and I hope the National Trust have dotted their i's and crossed their t's and I hope they are up for the challenge that faces them with regard to the management of this building.

Of course, the passage of time with the change of government has meant that the pause button was hit with the restoration of the building. That means the costs have gone up, so far less in terms of the overall restoration of the building will ever be achieved now. We have a situation now where much less restoration activity can occur, so that is a lesser outcome for telling the story of South Australia, for telling the story of Ayers House and looking after Ayers House into the future.

This is concerning as well. The accessibility side of things: will the lift go in? Will the instruments of accessibility such as ramps and accessible bathrooms, which were planned as part of the restoration of the back of the building and not impacting the heritage values of the building, still go ahead?

I do not know if that is the case. I hope so, but again I hope we are not seeing this building shut off, excluding hundreds if not thousands of potential visitors a year who do not have the physical capacity to enter the building.

Again, I hope the National Trust have been able to negotiate a multimillion dollar upgrade. We know there are several million dollars sitting there to do work there. It was $7 million, but the value of works planned now sit at around about $10 million, given the two years that have elapsed since the work was planned and the inflationary environment that we are in now. All these things lead to a diminished outcome for Ayers House and a diminished outcome for the members of the National Trust. Members of the National Trust should be respectfully asking the Board of the National Trust whether they have done their due diligence around this.

It is one thing to 'save' Ayers House and bring it back under the ownership of the National Trust. Again, I do not have a great deal of concern about that, but does it come with an annual maintenance grant of a couple of hundred thousand dollars to look after it, and does it come with an envelope of money, sitting at around about $10 million, to do those works that the Liberal government were going to do? If it does not come with that annual maintenance grant and if it does not come with an envelope of money worth around about $10 million, this building will slip into genteel decline, and the National Trust will nurse it as it decays. That is my worry.

The National Trust manage many buildings around the state. They have a significant asset load. They look after such a cross-section of buildings, from lighthouses to environmental reserves—so not just buildings—and to buildings in country towns. They have great holdings in Burra and Port Pirie. In the South-East, in particular, they have buildings scattered around the CBD and further afield. I just hope that they have the capacity, without selling-off buildings, to look after Ayers House.

Again, I emphasise that I support the sentiment and the spirit of the government's bill, but I do have concerns that the National Trust's internal capacity and cash reserves may not be able to manage this project, going forward, without that ongoing financial commitment from the government. Hopefully, we can find out about that financial commitment during the committee stage in the coming weeks and we can dig into how much money is being provided, both in terms of capital grant and then the ongoing maintenance and upkeep grant. Clearly, this speech will put the government on notice, in an appropriate way, that those questions will be asked as part of the committee stage.

I think Ayers House is a magnificent building. It is a building that deserves to be respected; it is a building that deserves to be restored; it is a building filled with stories that ought to be told for generations to come. I hope that, in the desire to get a quick political in here, we are not seeing the abrogation of responsibility around the stewardship of this building. These old buildings need stewardship: they need love, they need TLC. Ayers House will need more and more into the future as it ages, and moving it, for all intents and purposes, as the legislation says, from the government to the National Trust, will see the National Trust having to come up with significant finance, on an ongoing basis, to look after this building.

I wish them all the best with it. I hope the directors of the National Trust have undertaken their duties. I hope they are not being duped by the government; I think they are smarter than that. I wish them all the best, and here is to a bright future for one of South Australia's great buildings.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Odenwalder.

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