Walkerville YMCA

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:17): I rise today to speak in support of the north-east area's YMCA and the ongoing battle that it is experiencing at the moment with the Town of Walkerville. Mr Speaker, you might be aware that the YMCA and its premises at Smith Street in Walkerville have enjoyed community support since 1965, when the first of the buildings there were built thanks to community fundraising and donations. Over the following 17 years, those premises were extended and turned into what we know as the Smith Street premises today.

This is an important facility that provides services to over 68,000 participations each year, whether it is vacation care, the health club, stadium sports or sporting programs, programs for older adults, programs involving gymnastics or even birthday celebrations. There are also training courses, martial arts, badminton, dodgeball, futsal, volleyball, helping of cultural groups and so on. Attendees range from the very oldest in our community through to schoolchildren and even, I am told, children in state care. This is an important facility.

Ownership of the site was transferred to the Town of Walkerville in 2000, and the YMCA was provided with a new 10-year lease after it was transferred. Unfortunately, almost as soon as that lease was over in 2011, the Town of Walkerville's process of trying to push the YMCA out of those premises started. There was the first of a succession of short-term leases that the YMCA have been forced to accept. In 2015, the Town of Walkerville (the Walkerville council) cooked up a proposal to redevelop the site with new premises up to five storeys high, involving commercial facilities. Fortunately, the community stood up, and that ridiculous plan was knocked on the head.

Unfortunately, it seems that this same effort is now being resuscitated by the current council and the current mayor. The community land designation of this site is in the process of being revoked by the council. This is causing community backlash. Everybody in the suburb of Walkerville understands just how important this facility is, yet we have a council and a mayor, who has been both an elected councillor and now elected mayor over the last two terms of the council, who seem intent on redeveloping this site into a commercial property.

They refused to continue a lease arrangement with the YMCA beyond next December. It will cast them out into the cold, as well as those 68,000 or so participants who enjoy the use of that facility. They have been offered a place in a completely unfunded, uncosted master plan at the Walkerville Oval, which does not have one dollar attached to it and which, if the YMCA were to take it up, would involve, I am advised, the destruction of the Memorial Gardens at Walkerville Oval. This is a result that no-one in the community would want to see.

The question has to be asked: who in the council is so intent on the commercial redevelopment of the YMCA site at Smith Street, Walkerville? Why does this continue to be reagitated every three to four years? It seems clear that if it is not the mayor, Elizabeth Fricker, member of the Liberal Party, and I assume close confidante of the member for Adelaide, then perhaps it must be the council leadership. It must be Kiki Magro who continues to resuscitate this issue. This would be a dreadful thing for that local community.

Pressure should be put on the Premier and the member for Adelaide to make sure that they do the right thing, even pick up the phone to their fellow Liberal Party member, the mayor, Elizabeth Fricker, and get her to desist from the commercialisation of these premises. The Liberal Party begged for the suburb of Walkerville to be part of the electorate of Adelaide at the last election.

It is now up to the Premier and the member for Adelaide to make good on that. They have to do the right thing by the suburb of Walkerville. They have to make sure that that Town of Walkerville does not succeed in its commercialisation of this site. I urge the council tonight to do the right thing, maintain this as community land and make sure it is not commercialised.