THE GROWTH OF THE CITY FROM 1840 UNTIL 1900

The South Australia Colonisation Act 1834 (UK) provided for the operation of local government in the colony and the Municipal Corporation Act 1840, passed by Governor Gawler, made Adelaide the second oldest City in the British Commonwealth outside Britain itself. Only Toronto in Canada, established in 1834, is an older local government.

The first elections for the ACC were held in October 1840 and James Fisher was elected as Mayor. The economy became depressed and the ACC failed financially after little more than a year. The affairs of the City were transferred to a City Commission consisting of five persons nominated by the Governor. The Commission had the power to levy rates and was responsible for maintaining the streets and bridges as well as constructing sewers and establishing waterworks.

William Light's original plan had identified some uses to be located in the Park Lands, as described in Chapter 1. Schedule J to the Municipal Corporation Act for the City of Adelaide 1849 clarified that the Park Lands were under the care, control and management of the ACC except for Government Reserves, which included West Terrace Cemetery.

By the 1830s there were substantial railway lines in Britain and one criticism of Light's Plan for the City was that he made no provision for the inevitable impact of a railway. However, Mary Thomas has noted that Light considered a railway to the port would be required. The Adelaide City and Port Railway Act 1850 allocated land for a railway to be built to Port Adelaide which would go through the Park Lands to the west of the City from a terminus on North Terrace. Construction started in 1852 and the railway was the first major alienation of the Park Lands.

THE CITY OF ADELAIDE AND THE STATE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

In Scene I of Act III of William Shakespeare's play Coriolanus, Sicinius asks:

‘What is the City but the people?’

and the citizens reply:

‘True, the people are the City.’

I come from a long line of Welsh Methodist Ministers, which meant going to Chapel in the valleys twice every Sunday for services. At the beginning of his sermon my father would provide a text for the congregation to focus on while he was preaching. But before starting his sermon he would repeat the text for emphasis. Thus, ‘What is the City but the people?’ ‘True, the people are the City.’

In this book I argue that there was a particular relationship and balance of power between the Council of the City of Adelaide (ACC) and the State government of South Australia (State), mainly because of the influence of key individuals. I focus on the interplay between personalities and the politics behind the scenes of strategic and statutory planning in the City during the 21-year period from October 1972 until December 1993. During this time the City had its own planning and development control system separate from the rest of the State. But I ground my analysis of this period in an historical perspective of the founding of the City of Adelaide and the Province of South Australia in 1836 and their development until 1972.

CITY/STATE NEGOTIATIONS

The Whitlam Federal Government was dismissed on 11 November 1975. At the time, John Mant was Whitlam's Principal Private Secretary, although technically Mant was an Assistant Secretary in the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC). Mant had got to know Hugh Hudson when Hudson was the South Australian Minister for Education and visited Canberra to see the Prime Minister and others about educational projects in South Australia. Mant resigned with the change of federal government, intending to return to Sydney and set up a law practice. But Hudson invited Mant to become an advisor in South Australia, as Hudson had become the Minister for Planning. Mant reflected:

A period of intense negotiations to finalise the plan and legislation that would be acceptable to both the State and the ACC then began. During this period of negotiation, the ACC decided to advance some of the action projects and programmes that George Clarke and USC had recommended. As the City Planner I invited the Town Clerk and all the Heads of Departments (the Executive Committee of the ACC) to participate in the action projects where they had an interest and to nominate a staff member for the relevant project team. The co-ordination of the action project programme was delegated to Gilbert Currie, the Deputy City Planner.

PLANNING THE CITY IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BANNON GOVERNMENT

When he became Premier, John Bannon considered the City of Adelaide Planning Commission (CAPC) as a unique instrument of governance and that part of its brief was to view the City in the broader context of the metropolitan area and indeed the State. He was not aware of any similar joint bodies in Australia.

From Bannon's perspective Adelaide was different and setting the pace in its innovative approach to planning. The City was the front door and showcase of South Australia and if the City was not working, then not much else did. Bannon considered there may have been some flaws in the system but there was a duly constituted ACC and his government had to find ways of working with it: the CAPC provided this opportunity. Elected members could ‘look at the bigger picture’ and not just deal with local and parochial matters. The State ensured the appointment of high level officers as they were in a position to exert influence and make a contribution.

CHANGES IN THE ACC

This chapter examines the changes in influences in the ACC, the State and the City of Adelaide Planning Commission (CAPC). I discuss the background to the first Heritage Study of the City and analyse the review of the City of Adelaide Plan 1976–81, together with the subsequent statutory amendments resulting from the review. In 1972 Lord Mayor Bill Hayes had instituted the policy that the Lord Mayor would only serve two one-year terms and that the senior Alderman would become the next Lord Mayor. This meant the Lord Mayor of the day enjoyed the support of the rest of the elected members of the Council during a limited term of office. Thus, when George Joseph chose not to comply with the policy and tried for a third year in 1979, he lost to Jim Bowen, who was then the senior Alderman. Bowen had the support of the other elected members and, as a member of The Adelaide Club, the support of the establishment. Bowen was also appointed as the Chairman of the CAPC.

Ian McPhail came to South Australia in 1979 as Director of the Office of Local Government. McPhail recalled the one thing that Bowen emphasised on him was the ‘Olympian and separate status of the Adelaide City Council’. The ACC had retained the position of Aldermen as well as Councillors, and had its own planning legislation. McPhail wondered why was there such a piece of legislation that created a hole in the centre of the metropolitan plan. While this was a valid question, there were no pressures within the State to change the situation. It was just part of the structure of the City, clearly defined by the heritage of Light’s Park Lands, which acted like a cordon sanitaire. Thus, there could be a different approach to governance in the City compared to the rest of the metropolitan area without it being a problem. However, McPhail contended the City’s separate status meant it could be resistant to social issues, including housing, transport and accessibility.

TOWN PLANNING IN THE CITY OF SYDNEY

This chapter provides a brief history of town planning in the City of Sydney as background for the City of Sydney Strategic Plan 1971 prepared by George Clarke and Urban Systems Corporation (USC). This work was important because it was a primary consideration in the choice of consultants for the City of Adelaide Planning Study. In this chapter, I also reflect on my own role in Sydney, particularly in relation to the Woolloomooloo Action Plan.

The history of the City of Sydney in terms of governance and the relationship between the Government of New South Wales (the State (NSW)) and the Council of the City of Sydney (SCC) is relevant to this book about Adelaide, and this chapter will later discuss the lessons learned. The State (NSW) created the city in November 1842 and established the structure of the SCC and its boundaries. In 1853, the State (NSW) dismissed the elected SCC and placed the city under the control of unelected Commissioners because it was concerned that the SCC was not providing basic services. Conflict and power have been the dominant themes in the planning of Sydney. The struggle for governance between the State (NSW) and the SCC demonstrates the connection between social and spatial outcomes and the city's political economy. A conservative State government dismissed the Laborcontrolled SCC in 1927 and the reasons given were that the SCC was open to bribery and corruption and was administering the city badly. The three appointed Commissioners reduced expenditure and improved efficiency by reducing the workforce and simplifying the administrative structure. The State (NSW) passed the Sydney Corporation (Amendment) Act 1929 (NSW), which gave the vote to nonresident property owners and changed the ward boundaries, which ensured the Labor party did not win the 1930 election.

EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT IN AUSTRALIA

The judicial thinking in eighteenth century Britain was that harsh punishments were needed to deter potential criminals. The existence of a ‘criminal class’ was one of the prime sociological beliefs. The Industrial Revolution had seen a dramatic rise in the population of cities and petty crime had become a major problem. Crimes against property attracted severe penalties and stealing was a serious offence. Summary offences included vagrancy, poaching, petty theft and drunkenness. Jails became overcrowded and the British Government started to use transportation of convicted criminals to the colonies as an alternative. Britain was forced to look at other locations for its convicts when it lost its American colonies after the War of Independence. Lord Sydney, Home and Colonial Secretary in 1783, needed to solve the problem of overcrowded criminal confinement. During his voyage to the South Pacific in 1770 Captain James Cook had made landfall on a new land and claimed the new land for Britain. The Transportation Act 1784 (UK) authorised transportation to places other than America and in 1786 the Pitt Cabinet made a decision that Botany Bay would be such a place. Captain Arthur Philip was chosen to lead a colonisation expedition to the eastern coast of this recently claimed land and govern the new colony to be called New South Wales.

THE UNIQUENESS OF ADELAIDE

The history of William Light's plan for Adelaide, particularly its siting and the Park Lands, is a very important element in the growth of the City and the State and is the ‘creative tension’ in the political relationship that developed between the ACC and State Government from 1840. In Bill Peach's view, the free-settled nature of the colony of South Australia contributed to the civilised qualities of Adelaide that has made the City different and special. But it is the continuous belt of Park Lands that makes Adelaide unique and which gives the City its distinctive character as a city in a garden. The City of Adelaide is one of the few cities in the world whose boundaries have not altered since their foundation. The Park Lands provide a clear boundary and sense of identity; whether walking, cycling or driving, you have to pass through them to get to the City. Of all the Australian capital cities, only in Adelaide is there physical evidence separating the centre from the surrounding other local government areas. A good example of this distinctive quality is to compare the boundaries of the City of Adelaide (Figure 1, Introduction) with the boundaries of the City of Sydney in 1971 (Figure 22, Chapter 4).

THE STATE PLANNING REVIEW

Premier John Bannon was influential in the development of the State during the 1980s. He combined the Savings Bank of South Australia (founded in 1848) and the State Bank of South Australia (founded in 1896) to form the new State Bank and this was part of a substantial period of expansion in Adelaide. Bannon also created the South Australian Finance Authority to assist the private sector with developments. Further, he brought about the ASER development, despite opposition from the ACC, and in 1985 secured the Grand Prix motor race for Adelaide with the support of the ACC.

However, by the late 1980s there was mounting public criticism that the Bannon Labor Government was failing to deliver major projects. There was a community feeling that the planning system was to blame and the Government believed the existing planning system did not serve the community well. The problem was the philosophy of control behind the City of Adelaide Development Control Act 1976 and the Planning Act 1982. There had been a perception in the 1960s and 1970s that government under Dunstan's influence could bring about change and achieve reform through legislation. This attitude had changed and Greg Crafter observed that what was needed was legislation with some vision that empowered communities and facilitated rather than controlled development.

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONDOUS LORD MAYORALTY

This chapter examines the period from May 1987, when Steve Condous was first elected as Lord Mayor. I also review the decline in the status and importance of the City of Adelaide Planning Commission (CAPC). Jim Jarvis maintained the informal ACC convention of not seeking a further term as Lord Mayor and Steve Condous, the senior Alderman, was elected unopposed to the office in May 1987. At this election Jim Jarvis, John Watson and Bill Manos all retired from the ACC. Thus, there was a considerable loss of knowledge and expertise about planning the City and the ACC's governance arrangements with the State. Condous was first elected as a Councillor for the south-west of the City in 1968 and had served on various ACC committees, but he had not been involved in any of the strategic discussions with the State about the governance of the City.

Condous was appointed as Chairman of the CAPC in July 1987. Ian McPhail, Derek Scrafton, Judith Brine and Rob Nichols remained as the State members. Table 6 shows key individuals who had influence during the period from May 1987.