Grievance Debate

Community Engagement

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:04): Today, I would like to speak about community engagement, the process of community engagement and why I think that effective and meaningful community engagement is important if we are to properly understand the needs of the community. There are a couple of elements; one is a particular example at a local level. I would like to raise an issue where my local council of Gawler decided that effective community engagement was to give some communities two weeks during the holiday period to give feedback on some major changes to parking arrangements in their local streets.

On behalf of some residents who complained to me about this, I said, 'I don't think that's very fair.' They decided to extend the period of time, which was good; that was a tick. Then I said, 'You might want to have a meeting with residents so that you can collaborate on some possible solutions to your problem.' So they called a meeting for 8.30am on a Friday, which is an interesting time to engage with your community. Either people were at work or they were driving their children to school, etc. Inevitably not a huge number of people were there; there were some, but not a huge number. But, again, it was a tick; they were doing community engagement.

Ms Stinson: Tick.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: That's right. Talking about community engagement, on the other side, Gawler council decided that it would not engage with local residents because it would breach some sort of legislative provision if they actually engaged with the community. It was about the future character of the southern Gawler rural areas. On this point, I must commend the minister for infrastructure and development, who wrote back to the council and said, 'This is not good enough. Before I approve any statement of intent to change the character of the area, I expect you to engage with your communities.'

Another important point, which gets back to a discussion we had earlier today and which I will elaborate on a bit later, is about effective engagement. We heard from the government how many times ministers have gone to regional areas. That sounds fine when we just look at the raw numbers, but what is the impact and effect of those visits? That is why engagement has to be tailored to individual communities and has to be quite meaningful.

One of the most important parts of engagement is the process that is now in the new provision of the infrastructure and development plan. Councils, or any agency seeking to amend their development plans or the code, have to go through a process of community engagement. I must confess that the new community engagement charter is an improvement on what we have had in the past. Certainly, it emphasises to the relevant planning authority the steps that must be gone through, but it also makes it very clear that the steps have to be flexible in regard to making sure that engagement is not about just going through a process, that is, 'Yes, do this, do that.'

The process is assessed by the effect or outcomes of that process; in other words, how many people turn up to meetings, how many more people think they have been heard, how many people think they have understood the process, etc., so there is a performance element. However, one of the concerns I have about this process, which will lead to the new development code next year, is that the government has now decided to delay the release of a discussion paper on people and neighbourhoods.

This discussion paper will be very important to inform what the new development code will be about, in other words, what the new policies in our communities are. This neighbourhood and people discussion paper will talk about the character of our suburbs and our future suburbs. Next to heritage, it is probably one of the more contentious documents to be put out in this process because there are a number of issues we need to address in our suburbs and communities regarding infill, consolidation, new suburbs, etc., to make sure that we get it right. It is concerning that, by delaying this document, the community and the various community organisations will have less time to interact with and influence the process. I think that we may get a lesser product as a result.

I have heard from my own colleagues, and I am sure that it is true across the chamber, that there are a number of planning issues that arise in their communities. People raised a number of issues with them when they were campaigning, and certainly they brought them to my attention. This neighbourhood and people discussion paper is critical input into the process of coming up with a code. I would have thought that the government would give the people as much time as possible to engage in this process, to have their say, to make sure that we have a product that meets community expectations.