Adelaide's first skyscraper criticised as ‘profound mistake' and ‘hugely questionable' by opponents
Adelaide's first skyscraper will be a 'phallic' construction overshadowing the birthplace of women's suffrage, critics say.
The Walker Corporation has begun work on a 38-storey commercial building next to Parliament House on North Terrace, which is known as the city's cultural boulevard.
The planned building will be 160m high – the threshold for a skyscraper is 150m. Adelaide's tallest building is 138m, although there are also plans under way for a 183m building.
Walker Tower 2 will span almost 50,000 sq m, accommodate up to 5,000 office workers and 100 retail workers, and will include a rooftop bar and restaurant. The Walker Corporation has already built a tower in the Festival Plaza precinct.
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But Adelaide resident Robert Farnan, who has convened a working party composed of planners, architects, lawyers, residents' groups, the Greens and others to raise awareness of the issues and lobby state and federal governments to intervene, said it was a 'hugely questionable' development and a 'state-supported skyscraper on public land'.
'The word is spreading about the significance of the site [as] the place where full democracy first occurred,' he said.
In 1894, the parliament passed world-first laws allowing women to both vote and stand for election. Aboriginal women were also enfranchised – although they faced multiple barriers.
Both old and new parliament houses are on the national heritage list because of 'a series of radical reforms to political laws and processes that Australians now take for granted'.
'It was here that the democratic ideals of all men and women having the right to vote, secret ballots, and one person/one vote were first introduced,' its listing reads.
Stewart Sweeney, a retired academic and public policy advocate who worked with SA's famously reformist premier Don Dunstan, described the proposal as a 'phallic logo-ridden tower of exclusion'.
'It's the wrong building in the wrong place,' he said. 'It's next to the parliament, but that's not just any old parliament, it's a special parliament in a global sense.
'It's the parliament where the breakthrough on women's suffrage, for the right to vote and to stand for parliament was first legislated, and it's hard to think of a place where erecting a tower whose main claim to fame is the highest tower in Adelaide is the right place to do that.'
Loine Sweeney – daughter of Stewart and former executive officer of the Women's Suffrage Centenary – said the tower would be a 'profound mistake' that would not just overshadow a building but a legacy.
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Adelaide city council is opposed to the development because of its impact on Parliament House and because the site is part of the Adelaide Park Lands. The Adelaide Park Lands Association called it a 'monster', a private high-rise development that undermined what the Park Lands represent – being 'free, green, and public'.
Historian Samuel Doering said on social media that the space was 'hallowed' and agreed it should be used for 'suffrage storytelling'. The outgoing History Trust of SA chief executive officer, Greg Mackie, responded to Doering, saying it was a 'shameful grab of priceless public Adelaide park land for private profit that destroys the deserved sense of place of SA's parliament and our proud democracy'.
Work has already started on the site, although the current design does not yet have formal approval from the State Commission Assessment Panel (SCAP). The planning minister, Nick Champion, said it would be up to the SCAP to assess the development application.
'It's important the SCAP remains an independent authority to assess and determine major development proposals in South Australia and not be influenced by politics,' he said.
Announcing its design, the state government said it would be set back a minimum of 9m from Parliament House to 'preserve its visual integrity, heritage value and to preserve view lines to Parliament House'. The premier, Peter Malinauskas, has said the development showed the 'state's economy is growing, and our city is growing up', and would bring in $1bn a year in economic activity.
'This will be an iconic building that will define Adelaide's skyline,' he said when the building designs were revealed.
Guardian Australia has approached Walker Corporation for comment.
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She wanted to study journalism, but her father persuaded her to do commerce – there was no way Australian media companies would hire a Chinese reporter he said, half-joking that the popular and long-serving SBS TV presenter Lee Lin Chin wasn't retiring any time soon. But unfulfilled, she ended up doing an internship at the Chinese state media company CCTV, before heading to Singapore and then back to the rebranded state network CGTN in 2012. Her life in Beijing was big and fast, she was a glamorous TV presenter, her show watched by millions. She interviewed everyone from the Australian ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, to David Beckham. She visited embassies and rubbed shoulders with China's elite. On 13 August 2020 she went to work thinking she was going to meet her boss about a new show proposal but instead walked into a meeting room filled with 20 people. 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But it wouldn't be a life-changing crime. The original document Cheng had been given did not have an embargoed time on it. A year later, the prosecutor told security officials gathering evidence against her that they had to have proof it was embargoed for the case to go ahead. 'So they got the classification bureau to do up a document. Which they did, because they're all on the same side, and the state must win at all costs.' In China, national security trials are often conducted in secret, with sentences announced sometimes months after the trial. The conviction rate is more than 99%. Months after her arrest, she was charged, and told how long her sentence would be two weeks before her trial was due to finish. Her friend Haze was also imprisoned, and Cheng could hear her down the corridor. By then, agents had combed through their 60,000 texts and interrogated her for hours on end about their friendship. She began to wonder if their friendship had been a dangerous transaction. 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I switched my thinking from 'Oh my gosh, this is horrible! Even my hair feels like it's on fire', to I imagine I love the heat. 'I was like, OK, I'm going to make chips. We got these horrible steamed potatoes and I would flatten them between bits of plastic packaging and then lay them out in the sun and check them every hour. It didn't really work, they were still a bit chewy. 'But it was something new and something fun.' She now spends less time on Instagram and more time thinking about the people she loves. If someone honks at her, or she gets a traffic fine, she doesn't feel the stress she might once have. She shrugs and moves on. 'I love that I got to a space where I can see adversity for what it is. It's just a counterpoint,' she says. 'You never feel happy if you're happy all the time. Each annoyance is a chance to adapt.' Cheng Lei: A Memoir of Freedom is out now through HarperCollins
