CHARACTER PRESERVATION (BAROSSA VALLEY) BILL

Final Stages

Consideration in committee of the Legislative Council's amendments.

(Continued from 17 October 2012.)

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I think where we had got to yesterday was the member for MacKillop had made a very interesting contribution.

Mr Williams: And passionate.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, and passionate. I was just going to say a few words in response, and I believe the member for Mawson wanted to say a couple of words as well, then we can deal with the substance of the matter.

In very short summary, the member for MacKillop suggested that the effect of the Barossa and McLaren Vale legislation would be to push urban sprawl into other areas. I want to make the point that the government is committed, the 30-year plan is committed, and I am personally very committed to the idea that we want to actually start to rein in urban sprawl. We cannot terminate it overnight because we have a whole housing industry which has been developed around the concept of this. It is going to take some time, but urban sprawl is not the answer and, as the years roll by, it will become increasingly less the answer. I do not accept the idea that we are just saying that urban sprawl can go on willy-nilly anywhere else but cannot go there.

Mr Williams: That is what I was trying to say.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am saying I disagree with you on that.

Mr Williams: You disagree with me?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: We are trying to stop urban sprawl, full stop. The member for MacKillop also mentioned some regional centres and talked about how they might be receiving more development. I agree with him; in fact, a development plan is published about most of the regions in South Australia. The South-East, for example, has a development plan which has quite recently been published and a lot of work has been done on considering that. As the honourable member would be aware, I am sure, the regional township of Mount Gambier has been expanded to enable Mount Gambier to grow into a role as a more significant regional centre.

It was mentioned that Whyalla's population is now around 20 something thousand and had been around 30,000. You might be interested to know that Whyalla's infrastructure is built for a town in the order of 50,000 or 60,000. They have very substantial infrastructure there. However, people are not going live in Whyalla, Mount Gambier or, indeed, Port Lincoln for that matter, if they have not got anything to do. It is all very well to talk about regional population centres, and I support that, but they have to have something to do. There has to be employment as part of any development proposal.

On the last point, there was an issue raised about local communities making decisions. On one level I absolutely agree with what the honourable member said. After all, why else do you have local government other than to make local decisions. I get that, but decisions about how big our city's footprint might be and where that footprint might be are not just decisions for the people who live in one particular bit of the city. They are decisions for everybody in the city because all of us have to pay the taxes to pay for the infrastructure.

Whilst I respect the point that the member makes, it is not, and cannot and should not be ever thought that an individual council or community can make a decision about something as significant as subdivision and make that decision in complete isolation and with complete disregard of the consequences that that decision will have for other people in the state. One simple example is that if you want to subdivide your property somebody has to put a sewer to connect to that property or provide some form of sewerage. Somebody is going to have to put in electricity and somebody is going to have to put in roads, and it may not just be the roads within your development but the roads to get people to and from your development.

Somebody might have to think about schools, somebody might have to think about hospitals, somebody might have to think about childcare centres, somebody might have to think about shopping precincts, somebody might have to think about commercial areas, and so on. The fact is that a lot of local government, through no fault of its own, is not capable because it does not have the staff or the resources to go through that process. I am not criticising them for that; it is just a fact.

Quite frankly, the idea of leaving a group of local councillors to the tender mercies of a bunch of rapacious developers and there being no check or balance on whether or not they agree to the rezoning of land, and having a white shoe brigade type of situation going on, is not something that I think any of us should embrace. Whilst I support the idea of communities making community-based decisions, decisions about subdivision of land and the conversion of land from agricultural land to urban housing areas affects everybody not just the people in that community. To that extent, I think it is important that we recognise the state as a whole has a role in that, just as the state as a whole has a role in what goes on in the Adelaide City Council precinct.

Okay, the Adelaide City Council represents the 22,000 people who live in the municipality—and some of them vote—but nobody would suggest that those 22,000 people, or the few thousand of them who vote, should be in a position to dictate to the whole of the people of South Australia, the 1½ million of us, exactly what happens in the city because it is our capital too. There has to be a balance between the local needs of people and the requirements of the broader community, and that is what we have been trying to strike here.

Mr BIGNELL: I rise to talk on this bill a bit more briefly than I did on the McLaren Vale one. Much of the same sentiment of the McLaren Vale preservation bill carries over for me into the Barossa bill. I would like to congratulate and thank all those people up in the Barossa who have worked so hard to get to this point where we almost have the legislation through both houses.

It was great yesterday to have Anne Moroney and Margaret Lehmann from the Barossa down for a lunch in Parliament House where we joined with people from McLaren Vale and Willunga who had also worked with Margaret and Anne, and two people who could not be here, Jan Angas and Sam Holmes, who also have done an incredible job over the past two or three years. We have had countless meetings. They went to the community in the Barossa Valley, we went to our community in McLaren Vale, and really did listen to what it was that people wanted. I thank those people from the Barossa Valley and I think it is a great example of how McLaren Vale and the Barossa working together were able bring people onside.

It is always hard when you are out there fighting for the survival of McLaren Vale or the Barossa and you are trying to convince politicians and bureaucrats and private sector people when they can always say, 'If we lose one, we still have the other.' However, when we combine as the two great wine powerhouses of Australia, it is pretty hard for anyone to say no to that sort of collective voice.

I mentioned during the McLaren Vale bill that in mid-2009 I ran into Margaret Lehmann at a function at Peter Lehmann Wines and Margaret said she liked what we were discussing down in McLaren Vale about the idea of getting up some sort of agricultural preserve and to stop the urban sprawl encroaching on their area. The Barossa was a bit worried about the 30-year plan and what the future might hold for some of their prime agricultural land as well. I said to her, 'How about I come back up and have a separate meeting?' I returned to the Barossa and did that in August 2009. We had the meeting at Langmeil Winery and Anne Moroney, James Lindner, Phil Lehmann, Sam Holmes and other representatives of the Barossa Valley region were there. We just talked through the issues. We had the maps out of the 30-year plan. They put to me the dangers that they saw to what is one of Australia's finest agricultural regions. I said, 'If you want to come on board, I will go back to McLaren Vale and ask the people down in my area whether they thought that would be a good idea.' Barossa was keen. I went back to McLaren Vale; they were really keen.

In September 2009 at a public meeting where there were about 300 attendees, I stood up and explained to the members of the public that this offer was on the table that we join forces, and it was widely welcomed by everyone at that public meeting. It was interesting that David Ridgway was in the audience that night with the Liberal candidate for the seat of Mawson, Matthew Donovan—someone who I know gets on pretty well with the Liberal Party to this day. It was interesting because, during the debate on this bill in the upper house, Mr Ridgway said that I had only become interested in this issue in 2010 when Seaford Heights became an issue. Well, you can ask the then planning minister and the then premier and several of my colleagues because I have been bellyaching on about this issue for years and years.

For David Ridgway to make that sort of accusation is clearly not right. He was there at the public meeting. There were 300 witnesses who saw me make that offer that night. I think it might have more to do with Mr Ridgway's lack of consultation with people in McLaren Vale at least. I cannot speak for the Barossa as much. I know there were people in McLaren Vale who tried to get in touch with Mr Ridgway to put across their point of view and never had their calls returned, and yet Mr Ridgway wanted to come in with all those amendments that the people that I spoke to, the people who elect us into these places, definitely did not want to see go ahead. It was an interesting way to do consultation.

Yesterday the member for Bragg spoke for a very short amount of time, which was pleasant in a way. She got up and said that the Barossa Valley is a beautiful place and full credit goes to the people of the Barossa Valley for that occurring, that it does not need this bill and that it certainly does not need the government to go in there and bugger it up. Well, I will just say to the member for Bragg that she should come down, and I did say this when she stood up to leave after uttering those words. I said, 'You actually need to go out and listen to what people have to say and listen to what the concerns are in Barossa and McLaren Vale.' She just said that she had cousins there that she had spoken to. You have to do more than that. If you purport to be the alternative government, you have to listen to what people want.

The member for MacKillop said yesterday that the community should be able to have this debate about what it is they want for their communities, and I agree 100 per cent with that, this is what we are doing. We are actually giving it to the communities to come to their future members of parliament.

If they do want to change things in McLaren Vale or the Barossa they will have opportunities in five, 10, 20, 50 or 100 years from now if that is what they want. What we are doing here is we are taking away the eraser and the pencil that the community is so afraid of people in local government and state government having, and we are replacing it with a padlock and a key. The key to that padlock will actually be the members of this place and the members of the other place (Legislative Council). If at some time in the future people do want to see change in their community they will be able to do it. It is going to be a high bar to get over to make those changes, but if it is a change that enough people in the community want then I am sure members of this house and the upper house will listen to those communities at the time.

The member for MacKillop also said that this was just all about winning the seat of Mawson. He could not be any further from the truth. He said that this was all politically driven. It is the exact opposite of anything being politically driven. This has been driven by the community. I have been their voice in here, both for the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, on this particular issue for the past three or four years. The current Minister for Planning can attest that sometimes that has not been a pleasant experience for him. Former minister Holloway and former premier Mike Rann can both attest to that.

I have been quite a pain on this issue, because I understand the passion that the people of McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley hold for this, and it is a passion that I share. I think it is vitally important that these two great contributors to our state's economy and to our reputation internationally as wine production areas and tourism destinations—it is too important to lose those. What we were seeing over the years was this urban sprawl almost by stealth. People were worried about the towns of McLaren Vale and Willunga, that someone would extend the town boundary at McLaren Vale one year and then a couple of years later that would happen in Willunga, and over time that you would actually see the towns unite and we would have suburbia instead of agricultural land.

As was pointed out before, they are predominantly wine regions currently, but who knows what the future will hold. Whatever needs to be grown there will be grown there in the future, but one thing is for sure: if you plant houses there this year or next year, that is the last thing you will ever plant there. I know people who are outside of the areas of McLaren Vale and the Barossa are very keen on this, not just to preserve great assets of our state but also because they are worried about the food security of our state. We are a state in a nation that has always prided itself on being largely self-sufficient. The thought of importing food from overseas, apart from the exotics that do not actually grow here, is something that most people I speak to—in fact, nearly all people I have spoken to—are very scared of.

Some members opposite have talked about Mount Barker and the Adelaide Hills and have said, 'Why aren't we doing anything to protect them?' We need to go back to where this all started. It started with the people of McLaren Vale who came to me and the people of the Barossa who joined forces with us, and we were two areas that united with a common front. The local members in the Adelaide Hills should look at this as an example of how you engage with your local community and then come and engage with ministers and other people in the political process to make these sorts of success stories come about. It is not easy. It is a lot of hard work. You almost flatten your forehead out on this sort of stuff where you are just banging your head against a brick wall sometimes. You think, 'Is it all worth it?' That is where you just have to keep going and keep going. It is the really hard yards that have been done by so many over the past few years that has got us to the point where we are now.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: I want to pick up on a couple of points that the minister made earlier in his remarks as a consequence of the member for MacKillop's contribution. The minister talked about planning for schools, roads, shopping centres and childcare centres—all those services and infrastructure that are required when new housing developments are approved. Basically, he said that it is not the council's work to look at how those infrastructure services are to be provided. I am paraphrasing what he said, but the minister said that the councils do not have the capacity to carry out that work, but that is exactly what has occurred in the rezoning of that 1,310 hectares of land at Mount Barker.

The Mount Barker council has had to toil away for months and months, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on forming up what it calls a 'structure plan'. The government, in making that decision, in one fell swoop of rezoning that farming country—1,310 hectares (over 3,000 acres in the old measurement), a big area of land—absolutely neglected the requirements of the Mount Barker council and the pleas the council made to the government at that time.

It is all very well for the minister to have said previously, 'There'll be no more Mount Barkers on my watch.' I have heard him say that on a number of occasions, but that is not good enough, minister. I have a close working relationship with the Mount Barker council. You know that they have come to see you and they have come to see the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. I have written letters to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure asking questions about how the negotiations with the developer consortia are tracking, how much funding you have negotiated with them as part of the development contributions and to what infrastructure projects is that money attributed.

I can tell you, minister, that I wrote that to your colleague, he handballed it to you, you responded to me and I can say that I am less than satisfied with the response because it did not actually answer the questions that I asked. I am happy to take it up with you again. It is all very well to come in here and make all these good explanations, which all sound very plausible, but this government is not helping the situation in Mount Barker.

You made the decision, and basically the community up there thinks that you have cast them aside. The council made some public comments recently raising some concerns about how the process is tracking, and what we see as a consequence of that is the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure publicly attacking the council. That is not the way, in my opinion, that things should be dealt with. You work things out in a conciliatory manner and not actually criticise the council that has had all the work and all the responsibility thrust upon them.

As I said, it involved months and months of work, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to come up with a structure plan, and the community rightly thinking that they are getting very little assistance from the government in trying to sort things out there. I could go on for a long time on this matter, but it is relevant.

The minister raised the issue about providing infrastructure services, and it is not the role of council to work out how that is managed. Well, that is in direct contradiction, if you like. It is directly opposite to what the government has done in Mount Barker. I am asking the government to get on board with the problems at Mount Barker and sort them out. A development application was just lodged a couple of weeks ago with the Murray Bridge council for a wastewater treatment plant to be constructed in the Mount Barker council district to deal with the wastewater that will be generated as a consequence of the government's decision to rezone this land in the Mount Barker council district.

What sort of situation is that to bring on a community, to bring on two councils? The government makes the decision to rezone all this land without any plans for infrastructure services, and so what you are looking at getting is a private company putting in a development application to build a wastewater treatment plant in another council area to treat the blackwater and the greywater from Mount Barker out the other side of the Hills in the Callington community. I can tell you that those people are irate. They have been to see me and I am following up on those issues.

The government can make all the platitudes they like and say, 'It's all good. We have learnt from our bad mistakes,' blah-blah, but I can tell members that the reality of the situation does not reflect what you are talking about.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I did listen to that: I appreciate the honourable member is articulating a matter of importance for people he represents and that is why I did not stand up earlier, but it is not directly relevant to this. Can I just say to the honourable member out of respect for the fact that he is, I know, genuine in what he says that I have met many times with the Mount Barker council and have indicated to them I will continue to meet with them. I would be very pleased if we could resolve all the infrastructure issues at Mount Barker but can I say this: the Mount Barker story is a longer and more complex one than some people might imagine. The council has had various roles at various times about being a proponent of development and not being a proponent. They also may or may not be interested in running their own water treatment plant, so they are playing in that space as well.

I am not casting any rocks at anybody in this, because I do not think that is very helpful. What I want to do is solve the problem. I am happy to keep meeting with the Mount Barker people, and I can assure the member for Kavel that I am doing the best I can to encourage all of the players to just get on with it because, the sooner it is resolved, the better, from everyone's point of view. There is no question about that. I am positive my ministerial colleague the Minister for Infrastructure is likewise very keen to have the matter sorted out. You and I can have a talk over a biscuit and a cup of tea one day about some of the details and can we just get back to this bill.

The ACTING CHAIR (Hon. M.J. Wright): Could the minister give us an indication about the amendments? We have a range of government amendments and some from the opposition, I think.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Basically, the position is that I do not support new clause 6A, which is amendment No. 12. All of the amendments up to that are fine and the amendments after that are fine.

The ACTING CHAIR (Hon. M.J. Wright): We will deal with amendments 1 to 11 inclusive. Do you wish to speak, member for MacKillop?

Mr WILLIAMS: I just want to make a couple of very brief comments and then I think we can get through the matter very quickly. Let me say that there is a broader issue here and, yesterday, I was raising a number of matters which pertained to that broader issue.

Having listened to the minister earlier, I take his point about trying to control broad subdivisions and developing housing estates in McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley, but I want to mention one of the unintended consequences which I think the minister may well have overlooked that is going to be a problem in the Barossa Valley, because it is something I have experienced myself quite recently. I want to relay a little story just to make the point.

My son is in the process, as we speak, of building a home on part of our farm. For his wife and him to access finance from their bank they had to have a title to the land they are building their house on. I was not of a mind to hand over a substantial part of the farm to him, but the local development—

Mr Goldsworthy: It is a big paddock.

Mr WILLIAMS: It is a big paddock. The local development plan says that I cannot create a new subdivision in that particular zone unless it is at least 40 hectares (100 acres). I was not of the mind to give him 100 acres, even though he is a pretty decent chap. Eventually, fortunately, we had an opportunity to—I will not say circumvent the local plan—come to a position and, through a substantial rearrangement of boundaries, we had a title that we were able to make available to get the outcome that we desired. This is a genuine day-to-day fact of life in the rural community.

I am sure that it will not be long before the member for Mawson and the member for Schubert start to get inquiries from constituents about this very matter, where children of a grape-growing family, or whatever, may want to be coming into part of the business and may want to establish a home on part of the family property, a part of the property which is not necessarily under grapes; it might be used for grazing or some other purpose. They will go down to the bank and see if they can get a loan to establish the home, and the bank is going to say to them, 'We are not going to give you a loan unless you have got a land title to back you up,' or, 'Are you prepared to build a home on mum and dad's piece of land?' I can tell you, kids these days aren't real keen on doing that either. So there is a problem.

It is not just about subdivisions where you are having housing estates with developers, it is about organic growth of rural communities. That is an issue that I wanted to bring to the minister's attention. It is one of the reasons why I make the comment—notwithstanding the member for Mawson's passion for this, and I do not deny that he has been working on this for a long, long time. I understand his passion. That does not necessarily mean that makes for good planning law, and I repeat that argument.

Only yesterday I made the point about what this government did with regard to wind farm development, which had been overturned. The development authority had been overturned by the courts and then we had a DPA, about 12 months ago, almost to the day, which allowed re-application. Some approvals have now been gained, and today we get an announcement in the house by the minister that he is bringing in another statewide wind farm DPA.

I repeat what I said yesterday in the house on that particular matter: I think it is an abuse what this government has done, particularly with wind farms in this state. It is an abuse of our planning law and it doesn't bode well when governments use that sort of process.

Planning law should be about orderly development, it should be about confidence in what you can and cannot do. It is not about ad hocery—if there is any such term—it is not about that, and I am even more concerned today than I was yesterday. But I can say that the minister is going to have his evil way with this matter, we are going to allow him to adopt these amendments and have his evil way, but I am somewhat concerned about the abuse of the planning and development processes in this state.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Before we go on, I cannot let that one go entirely. We have been a bit flexible, so, Mr Chairman, if you do not mind, can I be indulged—

Mr Williams: I think he has had three goes on this clause, Mr Chairman.

The ACTING CHAIR (Hon. M.J. Wright): No, this is his third go.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: As always, the member for MacKillop raises interesting points. I understand his point about the family farm where a child, or even a parent for that matter, might wish to come in, but with the example he gave of requiring a 40 hectare minimum subdivision lot, that is a local community imposed decision, not one imposed by me, and, secondly, it is a primary purpose test here. What is the primary purpose? Is the primary purpose to create another viable agricultural unit which will require being able to have a house on it, which is one question. Another question is: is it really a way of subdividing?

You are going to be shocked at what I am about to say, member for MacKillop, but there are some slippery people out there. You know, there are some people so slippery that they would chop an acre off a quarter of their property and say, 'That's for my mum to live in,' and then—I can tell you're going to be shocked by this—a few weeks later mum is going to sell the house because she is sick of it, but then, a few weeks after that, 'Mum's changed her mind, she wants to come back, can I cut another acre off please?' Then mum moves into that one and Auntie Gert wants to come and live there, too, so we chop off another acre for Auntie Gert and she comes in and, goodness me, Auntie Gert is sick of living here and wants to go to Tasmania, so off she goes and we have to sell Auntie Gert's place. In no time at all, what started off as a farm has turned into a bunch of houses.

I am being a little flippant, as there is usually an intermediate point to this, and the intermediate point is usually, 'Mum wants to come here and just have a few acres so she can grow camellias and wander round her garden and not see a house next door, so I want to have five or 10 hectare blocks,' so then the whole place is suddenly turned into five or 10 hectare blocks, which are useless, as you know, from an agricultural point of view—absolutely useless, unless you have bees on there or something, and even then you are probably stretching it.

So you have these completely useless things and then—and this is what happened in Mount Barker—somebody says, 'This is useless for agriculture. I'm sick of mowing these lawns. It's too big for me. Can I chop it up? I don't want to chop it up into little bits. I just want to chop it up into two bits,' so they chop it into two bits and sell one half to their mate, who says, 'Hang on, I want to build a house on my bit, but I think I will build it just in this corner here.' You think, 'I wonder why they want to build it just in this corner there; is it because you want to chop it into four bits and your corner is in one of those four?' I know you did not come down in the last shower and I know what I have just told you is shocking but, believe me, it happens out there, so we have to be vigilant about that.

I just want to make something clear about wind farms. Whatever you might say about me, you cannot say I have not listened, and 276 people—

Mr Williams: I was astounded by the speed, but then you said you actually signed off on it last Friday.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I did, before I had even—

Mr Williams: Before you heard my speech.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Before I heard your speech, I had already come to that conclusion, so at least I have that going for me. I have listened to 276 submissions. I have taken them into account and can I say to you, my belief—and I stand to be corrected on this—is that during the time the interim DPA was there, and noting all the objections that have been made by you and others around the place about how laissez-faire that DPA was, I do not believe there was a single council approval sought or obtained—not a single one. So, the suggestion that that DPA has opened up the floodgates and a bunch of windmills has suddenly turned up in everyone's backyard—

Mr Williams: There was approval gained in the South-East.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, I think there was one down there, but I am saying to you that I think that was under the state development provisions. It is not under the DPA. Do you understand?

Mr Williams: That DPA denied the right of a number of my constituents.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am just saying that the DPA would have denied their right had the application been made through the council, but it was not. It was under a different process. That is all I am saying. You may be unhappy with what happened down there—that is a separate issue—but I am just saying that the interim DPA is not the cause of your unhappiness; it is something else.

Mr Williams: I think it is.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Either way, the good news is I have listened, and in your case I listened to you before you even said it. How good is that? If that is not listening, I do not know what is. I must have been channelling you last week.

Mr Bignell: Doris Stokes was in the room.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Doris Stokes was here; that's right. It is a happy ending, so to speak.

Amendments Nos 1 to 11:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I move:

That the Legislative Council's amendments Nos 1 to 11 be agreed to.

Motion carried.

Amendment No. 12:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I move:

That the Legislative Council's amendment No. 12 be disagreed to.

Motion carried.

Amendments Nos 13 to 29:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I move:

That the Legislative Council's amendments Nos 13 to 29 be agreed to.

Motion carried.