Grievance Debate

Mawson Electorate

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:35): I rise today to talk about legislation that is very important to the area that I represent in the seat of Mawson, and that is the character preservation legislation for McLaren Vale.

It is something that grew out of the local community back in 2009. I attended a community meeting and promised that 6,000 houses would not be built on Bowering Hill, which was land owned by the government. I thought that people would have been very excited about that. They were kind of excited, but they said, 'What happens if there is a change of government? How do we lock that in?'

From 2009 through to 2011, we worked and we got together the environmental groups, the grapegrowers, the winemakers and the business associations. We got everyone around the table. We used butcher's paper and we worked out what the legislation should look like to protect what we have because we had seen urban sprawl march southwards since the early 1960s. It had taken the wonderful agricultural and grape-growing lands of Marion and then moved further south, through Reynella, Morphett Vale and what is now Woodcroft, and we were very worried about that.

In 2012, it became law that you could not subdivide for any agricultural land in between the towns of McLaren Vale, McLaren Flat, Willunga, Aldinga and Sellicks. There was some scope to build within the town boundaries, but the agricultural land in between them was off limits. When we got the legislation through there was a proviso in there for a review to be held after five years. That review was done and it was handed to this parliament in June 2018.

Some comments were made in that review saying, 'There are eight anomalies in here that we think should be further reviewed.’ Two of those anomalies included a combined total of 40 hectares of agricultural land on the southern boundary of McLaren Vale. We wrote to the Premier after we had 500 people attend a community meeting, and anyone in this place knows that 500 people turning up in a town of about 1,500 is a massive number of pretty angry people.

The Premier did not answer me. He got the then planning minister, the member for Schubert, to respond to me, and in those weasel words that we are used to from this Marshall government he said, 'We have no intention at this stage to do any further review.' People were white hot at this meeting. They wanted to march on Parliament House. I said, 'They're a new government. Let's give them a break.’ I also believe that we should try to work together. Nothing happened—silence, silence.

They said there were no plans at this stage to do a review, but we kept watching and we looked at the fine print. We then found earlier this year that under a review of a different piece of legislation they had stuck these eight anomalies in to do a review, so we had another meeting. We had 400 people turn up to that meeting on a really cold Wednesday night in the middle of winter—400 people, again a massive turnout for a community meeting. I handed out this document that I put together, and I said, 'This is a dot-to-dot book. You read it and I'll join the dots where these people are trying to lie to you.'

They had sneakily put this review under a different review. In a letter that I wrote in early June to the planning commissioner, Helen Dyer, I indicated that she had referred to these pieces of land as anomalies. So apparently these 40 hectares are anomalies: 'We're going to have a review. We might decide to change it so that we can cut it up for a subdivision.'

I put out a flyer to the people of McLaren Vale asking them to come along to this meeting. I get a letter the very next day. This all stinks. There is a whole lot of political involvement here with the Planning Commission. I get a letter the next day. Despite saying on 4 June that they were anomalies, she said that to date the commission had not formed any view on the merits or otherwise of the eight locations, nor had it specifically identified these as anomalies. So then we get to the meeting and I joined the dots like everything else. The next day, on the Planning Commission's website they made a statement saying that misinformation had been put out there, pointing the finger at me, without naming me.

This is a disgrace, that the Planning Commission is engaging in politics because the Attorney-General in this place is directing her to do it. Guess what happened last week? The planning minister, the Deputy Premier, also put something out saying that it is misinformation. It is not misinformation. All the information has come from the planning commissioner. It has come from statements that the planning minister made at a Planning Institute session on the couch at a breakfast in mid-May. All this information is from the government and from the Planning Commission.

If they do not start listening to people, they will lose absolute credibility in not just Mawson but everywhere else where they try to hoodwink the local people who fought hard for this legislation and do not want it weakened in any way.