House of Assembly Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3) 51 3 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Grievance Debate Glenthorne Farm GLENTHORNE FARM Mr HANNA House of Assembly Mitchell Mr HANNA (Mitchell) (15:34): I have five minutes today to inform the house of matters concerning the beautiful Glenthorne Farm. It is a beautiful piece of open space at O'Halloran Hill and a joy to residents of Sheidow Park, Trott Park, Reynella and surrounding districts. I do not have time to go into the whole history of it, but members may recall that the CSIRO held the land in the 1990s and sought to dispose of it. The South Australian government entered into a memorandum of understanding with the CSIRO. It was an integral part of that understanding that there would be no housing on the site. It was agreed that the University of Adelaide would legally take on the land and that it would be on trust. That trust is signified by a deed to which the state government and the university are signatories. The deed contains a number of important obligations of the university. I will read out part of the deed. It states: The university covenants with the minister that it will, subject to obtaining all necessary statutory approvals, do all reasonably necessary things to ensure that the land is preserved, conserved and used for agriculture, horticulture, oenology, viticulture, buffer zones and as community recreation areas, and is available for project research activities, university research activities, education activities and operating a wine-making facility. The university covenants with the minister that it will not, at any time hereafter, use or permit the land to be used other than as provided for in subclause 4.1 [which I read out] unless such other use is approved in writing by a minister acting as agent of the crown; undertake or permit development or seek to undertake development of the land for uses other than those specified in subclause 4.1 unless such other use or development (excluding urban development which will not be approved) is approved in writing by a minister acting as agent of the crown. The point that I highlight is that the university has bound itself by a deed not to seek to develop Glenthorne Farm for purposes which will not be approved and, at the moment, the university has declared that it wishes to develop 950 houses on Glenthorne Farm or, alternatively, a lesser number of houses but, in addition, a commercial precinct. This is clearly a breach of trust. It is a very serious matter and it reflects very poorly on the university. This is not the first time that it has been in breach of its obligations. The original 2001 deed specified that the university had to come up with a business plan for the for the site within six months and, if not, then the site had to be offered to the state government for a dollar. After all, the state government had spent $7 million of South Australian taxpayers' money to obtain the land from the commonwealth for the university. Instead of resuming the title to the land, the state government kept on giving the university the benefit of the doubt and let the deed be amended so that the time frame has strung out to this point. Associate Professor David Paton of the university has a vision called the Woodland Recovery Initiative. It refers to addressing the issue of species loss across the Mount Lofty Ranges. This, of course, is a state government policy where the state government has totally failed to live up to its own stated objectives. The state government has a no species loss strategy; it is failing miserably and the state government is doing nothing about it. Associate Professor Paton seeks to sell land for housing on Glenthorne so that that state government objective can be fulfilled. The university has not played fair in relation to Glenthorne. It has not provided information as requested. It has desperately fought the freedom of information applications that I have made for relevant documents. It has not lived up to the values of the university as stated on its website. it is behaving like a corporate rascal. Where else in South Australia would someone get $7 million from the government and then seek to turn that $7 into $200 million so that the institution itself would make some benefit for its own bottom line? That is not fair. That is an activity of corporate rascals. I strongly urge the government to rule out housing development on Glenthorne immediately. I strongly urge the Vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide, Professor James McWha, to quash this immediately. Time expired.