Urban Development Plan

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Planning. Can the minister advise the house if the government supports the approval of buildings on Unley Road which are higher than the council and government agreed five-storey limit and which don't meet council requirements for resident and visitor parking? The member for Unley is extremely interested in this matter, but appears to have a complaint with his voice right now.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (14:56): Member for Unley, I will speak to you because I'm taking this as your spiritual question rather than the member for Morialta, who is on the other side of the city. I'll do my best to answer the question, and I'll provide you with something in writing afterwards, if that would help as well, okay?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Of course the hearing is okay! Sorry. The situation is basically this: in the planning system as it presently stands, if you have a zoning which says, for example, that a permissible use is five storeys or seven storeys, or three storeys—whatever it might be—that doesn't mean anything larger than that is prohibited. That means something which is more substantial than that has to be assessed on merit to ascertain whether, notwithstanding the fact that it is outside the automatically acceptable envelope, there is some reason why the merit of the development is such that it warrants going more than that. If I'm not very much mistaken, that's exactly the process that has been gone through in respect of the properties we are talking about on Unley Road.

As I understand it, there has been an assessment—and it's not by me, I might add; the assessment occurs completely at arms length from the minister—that the proposals had sufficient merit, notwithstanding the fact the elements of scale were greater than the scale which was automatically within the envelope of acceptable development for the development to be approved. That process is an independent process. It's not a process governed by me; in fact, I have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that process and nor should I. That's what I understand has occurred in respect of those developments on Unley Road.

I do wish to add, further to this, Mr Speaker, that if we aspire to have a city which has good public transport linkages, has good facilities, makes maximum use of existing infrastructure, and so forth, it is necessary for us to contemplate the idea that buildings, which are three, four, five storeys, six storeys, will be able to be built on areas where there is good access to public transport and where it is fairly close to the city.

Anybody who has visited some of the European capitals would realise that a city that has that sort of scale is not intimidating and, in fact, it is a very interesting place. It's a place which is a safe place because there are always people there. You have mixed use developments, and that is good from a public safety point of view and it's also good from a range of choice in housing opportunity point of view as well. I will check that the answer I've given, member for Unley, is sufficiently complete, and if there is any element of that that needs to be added to, I will do that.