Premier Peter Malinauskas casts doubt over $200m Adelaide First Nations Cultures Centre

Premier Peter Malinauskas has cast doubt over the future of a much-vaunted First Nations Cultures Centre on Adelaide’s Lot Fourteen.

Premier Peter Malinauskas has cast doubt over the future of $200m plans for an Adelaide First Nations Cultures centre, vowing to hunt for more funding if “the project goes ahead at all”.

Asked if the flagship arts and cultures centre on Lot Fourteen would go ahead, Mr Malinauskas said the rare, precious land parcel must be best-used for the state’s long-term interests.

“There isn’t a parcel of land coming up between the (Adelaide) Botanic Gardens and the railway station really in any of our lifetimes,” he told parliament.

Mr Malinauskas last October rejected “substandard” $200m plans for the First Nations Cultures centre after a $50m cost blowout, froze the project and ordered a review by “eminent Australians”.

Tarrkarri Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre design credit: Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot. Image courtesy Lot Fourteen.

Responding to a question from Liberal deputy leader John Gardner on Tuesday, Mr Malinauskas told parliament that review had been received by Cabinet last week and would be “under active consideration” ahead of June’s State Budget.

“Naturally, the government will be turning its mind to any opportunities to attract other revenue in the event that the project goes ahead at all,” Mr Malinauskas told parliament.

“So that’s what we have to work through. As it currently stands, the government’s policy is to pursue the project. But we now have to contemplate that in the context of a full suite of recommendations from the expert review panel.

“And then, in due course, we can also turn our mind to other opportunities around funding.”

Echoing his statements when freezing the project, Mr Malinauskas said the $200m funding “was already seeing curtailment to the previous design in a way that compromises the project”.

Plans for the Aboriginal Arts and Cultures Centre at Lot Fourteen. Picture: Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot

Mr Malinauskas last October insisted he was determined the Liberal-initiated project at Lot Fourteen go ahead, but argued he saw no sense in investing $200m of public money “for a substandard outcome” that failed to deliver something of “international significance”.

The Centre for First Nations Cultures’ managing contractor had advised sticking to the $200m budget would require a significant building downgrade, he said at the time, which would deliver a centre of “local state-level standard”.

Construction on the landmark indigenous art gallery started in December, 2021, when the centre was named Tarrkarri, meaning “the future” in Kaurna language and symbolising “the setting of strong foundations for the Centre and where the Centre is located on the Adelaide Plains”.