South Australia's Labor government has launched what it is calling an urgent review into the previous government's plans for a new Indigenous art gallery and cultural centre in Adelaide's CBD after a cost escalation.
Building work has been put on hold at the planned site of the Tarrkari – Centre for First Nations Cultures building until the outcome of the review is known.
The project was a promise of the former Liberal government ahead of the 2018 state election for part of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site on North Terrace, known as Lot Fourteen.
The former Labor government had proposed a contemporary art gallery for the same site next to the Adelaide Botanic Garden.
Work started in December after $115 million was allocated to the gallery in the 2020 state budget, with another $85 million coming from the Commonwealth.
The review led by businesswoman Carolyn Hewson and former politicians Ken Wyatt and Bob Carr is due to be complete by Easter next year.
Speaking at the Purrumpa: First Nations Arts and Cultural Gathering at the Adelaide Convention Centre, Premier Peter Malinauskas said experts had advised the government that the $200 million budget would deliver a centre of state significance, rather than the international-level project that had been envisaged.
The current plans would cost at least $250 million, the premier said.
"A centre celebrating the longest continuous culture on earth, celebrating 60,000 years of history, situated within one of Adelaide's most significant locations, must do justice to the cultures that it seeks to represent," he said.
"In that context, good isn't good enough.
"South Australia's First Nations cultural centre should be truly magnificent."
Tarrkari – Centre for First Nations Cultures had been due to be completed by 2025.
Opposition arts spokesman John Gardner said the project was likely to be delayed like the North-South Corridor and the Women's and Children's Hospital.
"I think there will be many South Australians, including Aboriginal South Australians, who will have seen this announcement and will be concerned this is going down the same track," he said.
"I think many people would be questioning whether the government does have any commitment to this project and indeed if the Premier is committed to the project as he's said in the parliament, as he's said in the public that he is, then he needs to do a lot more than he's done this morning to reassure people that this review isn't just a mechanism to cancel the project."
Mr Malinauskas said the project would still go ahead and be located at the current site.
"We want to build an institution that people get on a plane to come and see," he said.
Work is also underway to build a National Aboriginal Art Gallery in Alice Springs.
