Who Does This City Belong To?
Adelaide is cutting down a hundred years of living history for a golf course, and the government doesn’t want you to know the details.
The killing started on Monday.
If you live in Adelaide, you may have driven past Possum Park this week without realising that 585 trees, some of them older than a century, have been marked for removal.
A $45 million golf course redevelopment needs the space.
The Possum Park Protection Platoon has been fighting this since Premier Malinauskas first floated the idea. They held rallies. They tagged trees on National Tree Day. To date, they have gathered more than 42,000 signatures. On Mother’s Day, around 300 people wrapped yellow ribbon around the trees at Montefiore Hill, standing there with their children and their signs, choosing to spend that Sunday with what they are about to lose.
And still the chainsaws rolled in.
This past week, Adelaide City Council voted unanimously to call for a federal investigation into whether the development breaches national environmental protection laws. The Lord Mayor described this as “the last possible” attempt to halt proceedings. She is writing to the Federal Environment Minister today.
This is our last chance.
So what is actually being built here?
The $45 million redevelopment is designed to prepare the North Adelaide Golf Course for the LIV Golf and Australian Open tournaments scheduled for 2028. The North Adelaide Golf Course Act was introduced to fast-track site upgrades for the event and granted planning and building consent for the project before the plans were publicly released. InDaily
Yes. Consent was granted before anyone could see the plans.
The government’s released diagram identifies a Championship Course, a Short Course, and a Driving Range, but fails to identify which trees are earmarked for removal, or where the car parks, maintenance sheds, the new clubhouse, and storage for major event infrastructure will be placed. When the Adelaide Park Lands Association asked the Premier to release the full list of trees to be removed, the government declined. Adelaide-parklands Golf
International golf course designer Peter Dalkeith Scott, himself a LIV Golf supporter, warned that 60% of the park’s trees would need to be removed to build the kind of championship course the Premier has in mind. The government’s official number is 585, or “6.5%.” Both numbers cannot be true. Adelaide-Parklands Blog
And the replacement offer. The government has committed to planting three new trees or seedlings for every tree removed. Premier Malinauskas has repeated this assurance in almost every public statement on the matter. Premier of South Australia
Consider the “tradeoff”.
A 100-year-old River Red Gum is not a seedling. It’s living history. It holds within its branches, trunk, and roots a century of carbon, rainfall, and habitat. Its roots shape the soil around them, its canopy has lowered ambient temperatures in its vicinity for decades, and it is home to numerous species that cannot simply relocate because a politician wants a bigger golf course. You can plant 3 seedlings for every tree you cut down tomorrow, but you cannot get back what you are destroying.
What does the loss of 585 mature urban trees mean?
Mature trees in urban parks function as heat sinks. They absorb solar radiation and release water vapour through transpiration, reducing temperatures by measurable amounts, sometimes several degrees in close proximity. In a city like Adelaide, which experiences heatwaves above 40 degrees, that thermal buffering has direct consequences for the health and mortality of elderly people, children, and outdoor workers. Remove 585 mature trees from a park adjacent to the River Torrens and the CBD fringe, and you increase the urban heat island effect in one of Adelaide’s most densely used green corridors. Nature.com
Citizen scientists have already recorded 127 species in and around Possum Park. Not just birds passing through. They are species whose habitat, nesting sites, food sources, and movement corridors exist within this specific patch of urban parkland. When a mature tree comes down, the species that depend on that tree’s hollows and canopy do not simply find another tree. In a fragmented urban environment, there is often no other tree. Adelaide-parklands
And then there is the question of what gets built in place of the trees. The redevelopment plans include commercial buildings, meeting rooms, restaurants, function spaces and bars operating seven days per week, alongside permanent fencing that will exclude the public from portions of their own park lands during major events. Sign the petition at Change.org
This is public land. Held in trust for all of Adelaide’s citizens. Not for LIV Golf, or only those who can afford a tournament ticket.
What about the other side of the argument?
The government says this is already a golf course, so nothing is being taken that was not already restricted to golfers. They say the redevelopment will improve amenities, make the course more accessible, encourage younger people to take up the sport, and bring economic activity and international attention to the city. They say 585 trees out of 9,000 is a small price to pay. They say the Park Lands will be better for it.
These are not unfounded. World-class sporting facilities do generate economic activity. Adelaide does benefit from hosting major international events. Investment in public recreation infrastructure is broadly a good thing.
But…none of that changes the core problem.
The Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith puts it plainly: the legislation allows the State Minister to override Adelaide City Council entirely if the council fails to act in the direction of the minister, granting the minister the power to act as if they were the council itself. That means, “If the Council doesn’t do what the Minister wants, the Council loses its say entirely.” She called this “a very troubling precedent for how the third tier of government, the closest to the people, will be treated.” InDaily
The government has overridden the municipality. It has granted itself planning consent before releasing plans. It has refused to identify which trees will be removed. It is sending security and police to manage protesters watching their park being felled. And it is doing all of this to host, primarily, a golf tournament backed by Saudi sovereign wealth.
Here is what you can do today
The Possum Park Protection Platoon is the community group at the heart of this fight. Join them on Facebook or contact them through the Adelaide Park Lands Association at exec@adelaide-parklands.asn.au. The petition has over 42,000 signatures as of this morning. If you have not signed it, sign it.
If you are a South Australian, write to Premier Malinauskas. Ask him to release the full list of trees to be removed. Ask him why planning consent was granted before plans were made public. Ask him what species-level environmental assessment was conducted, and when, and by whom.
And if you are not a South Australian, share this. Because a state government deciding that public green space has more value as commercial infrastructure than as open, living land is not unique to Adelaide. It is happening everywhere throughout Australia.
The killing started on Monday.
Let’s do something about it.
If you found this piece useful, consider sharing it. The Possum Park Protection Platoon needs more voices, not just more signatures.