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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-31 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Adelaide Parklands

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (14:21): My question is to the Minister for Climate, Environment and Water. Is the minister responsible for protecting or funding any aspect of the Adelaide Parklands and, if so, what is the minister doing to protect them?

The Hon. S.E. Close: Sorry, what was the question?

Mr BATTY: Is the minister responsible for protecting or funding any aspect of the Adelaide Parklands and, if so, what is the minister doing to protect them? With leave, sir, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr BATTY: On ABC radio last week, the minister for environment and heritage refused to answer questions about the Parklands, stating, 'I am not the Parklands minister.' However, budget papers show that the Department for Environment and Water funds the Adelaide Parklands to the tune of $1.7 million per year.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:22): I thank the member for Bragg for his question. As has been made abundantly clear under previous questioning from the member for Bragg, the minister responsible for the Parklands, more broadly, is the member for Taylor, who is more than happy to answer your questions accordingly.

Nonetheless, what I can say, without my wanting to pre-empt the flavour of the member for Bragg's questions, is that the government is working tirelessly, as we speak, on a range of issues that are material to the Parklands, in no small part because of the advocacy of a number of members within the parliament, not least of which are the member for Adelaide, along with the Deputy Premier, the Treasurer, the Minister for Police and the minister for urban and regional planning.

We are working very hard at the moment to seek to address the Mounted Operations Unit question. As has been publicly aerated, SAPOL provided advice to the government that its preferred site was Park 21 in the South Parklands, in the context of locations within five kilometres of the CBD. We have been working tirelessly in recent weeks to assess that proposal versus other options that the government is actively considering.

It has been a genuine team effort from a number of members on the front bench, like I said, not least of which are the Deputy Premier, the Treasurer, the Minister for Police and the minister for urban and regional planning. So there is a lot of work underway at the moment. It is actually one of those issues that arises in government from time to time where, from the outside looking in it looks relatively simple, but in actual fact it's rather a complex problem to solve. Nonetheless, we are committed to resolving it very quickly.

I made a statement earlier in the week that the government had set itself a target of trying to resolve this at some point in the next two to three or four weeks. We don't want to extend this beyond that, for a range of practical considerations, not least of which we are getting on with the job of building a bigger, better, brand-new Women's and Children's Hospital for South Australia.

On this side of the house we made a commitment to think about the long term. It struck us as being very near-sighted to spend over $2 billion on a hospital that would be too small the day it opened, so we were willing to make the tough decision to think about the long term. That's why we are building a bigger hospital with a lot more beds than what the previous plan afforded.

The consequence of that was a tough decision that had to be made about its location. The government arrived at choosing the Thebarton barracks site. But I tell you what, Mr Speaker, when the Minister for Health and I were adjacent to a locked-up Old Adelaide Gaol site, surrounded by rusted Cyclone fencing, it gave me a lot of excitement to know that that's going to be turned into open and accessible parklands that I guarantee will be celebrated when that is completed in the early 2030s. The olives are staying as well.

The other thing is that we were there with clinicians who were celebrating the fact that they are now going to have a hospital that meets their clinical needs. Hot floors will be accommodated at the appropriate clinical size to stop people having to move up and down elevators, treating patients in their most urgent moment of need. We believe women and children in this state deserve a plan for the long term, and this government is delivering exactly that.

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