MAWSON LAKES PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (15:48): I rise to inform the chamber about an event that I opened in July: the photographic exhibition at Mawson Lakes. Mawson Lakes is a newer community in Adelaide, established in the 1990s, and it is a living example of how community is made, and of what community is composed.

Elegant architecture and a range of housing from family homes, residences for students, and homes for retirees, and everything in between, makes Mawson Lakes first and foremost a residential development. But the design of Mawson Lakes was not to put private homes first; quite explicitly, the designers of Mawson Lakes started with the public spaces that all residents would share: the lakes, the parks and the retail spaces. This gives Mawson Lakes a sense of being a shared community, rather than just a series of houses next to each other, and sites those houses in a beautiful natural setting.

I have had occasion previously in this place to pay tribute to the volunteers working on maintaining and improving the Mawson Lakes environment through weeding, planting and litter collection. They are a great example of local people taking responsibility for their local environment for the benefit of everybody. With its adoption of solar panel technologies and use of recycled water, Mawson Lakes is also at the cutting edge of sustainability, and its residents are justly proud of this.

Mawson Lakes is also home to a major campus of one of our universities and is crucial in the diversification of our economy through a range of advanced industries, most notably defence. Research and development partnerships in Mawson Lakes, born, in part, from the co-location of education and research institutions with industry, are part of the emerging strengths of the South Australian economy.

Mawson Lakes has lovely houses, a beautiful environment and a thriving educational and economic activity, but what it has above all is great people and an active community life. This does not happen without effort. Many people are putting in so much of their own time to make Mawson Lakes a community that people feel they can belong to and have fun in.

The photographic exhibition was a visual representation of all those elements of a strong community. It had wonderful pictures of nature and some of the architecture of the area but, above all, it had brilliant pictures of the people who live in Mawson Lakes. I congratulate those involved in the exhibition, both the photographers and the people who gave many unpaid hours to make the exhibition such a success.