Planning and Design Code

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:27): Today I would just like to make some comments and follow up on some issues I raised back in a grievance in this chamber on 8 February, when I talked about some issues regarding the Planning and Design Code of South Australia. I note in today's InDaily that the minister has made some comments regarding that and the role councils play. I think the minister's comments are important in the context of what I wish to raise today.

At that time, I raised concerns about the lack of engagement by the local council, namely the Gawler Council, with the community over a proposed code amendment at Evanston Park. The code amendment was to rezone a local neighbourhood zone, which is essentially just a residential area, to a local employment zone, which is essentially commercial.

It is a proponent-driven code amendment. That in itself is not the problem. The problem arose when the council asserted that it had no role in this process, and it was up to the community to be heard. Further, the council would express no opinion about the code amendment itself.

The council asserted that the position it adopted was based on legal advice to the council, namely that the council had no role, but the advice went even further, as I understand it. It meant that local councillors, elected members, had no role to play to communicate with their communities or engage their communities over this very important and controversial code amendment.

As a result of that, I did raise those matters in this place on 8 February, and I appreciate the action taken by the minister since then. The minister responded to my grievance and advised that the council did have a role to play and outlined the role it could play. Since then, council has adopted a new position, and I congratulate the council for doing so. But this matter does raise some serious issues because the council asserts that their original position was based on legal advice.

Legal advice was given to council and it was considered in camera. We do not know as a community what the legal advice was to the council. One issue that arose was that the legal advice was in camera so we actually do not know whether the advice was appropriate or not. Was the advice to the council faulty in some way, and was the council misled by the legal advice? That is something that we do not know. Or the alternative: was the advice actually misrepresented by the council or misinterpreted by the council in this matter?

The second issue is that the advice is said to have said that councillors were not able to engage with the community. I think it is a sad day when we have a situation where local councillors, or any elected official, whether state, local or federal, is unable to engage with their communities on issues of importance to them. This was actually attached with a legal threat. The councils were told that should they engage with the community they could be subject to legal action. So they actually were gagged by the council.

Given that the minister has now corrected that, I think the issue regarding legal advice has to be explored, because how can either the council get it so wrong or the lawyers giving the advice get it so wrong? Secondly, I think that advice needs to be made public, because this is a code amendment. It should be an open and transparent process. The process itself should be subject to accountability, and part of that process should be that any legal advice given to the council should also be made public so that the community can have confidence in what the council is doing. I will follow that up and we will see how the council goes.

Very quickly in the time left, I would just like to put on the record my congratulations to the Gawler Relay For Life Committee. The committee has raised over $1 million since 2009 through the events they have annually. The event this year had 300 participants and 23 teams. It has added to the vast amount of money it has raised. Congratulations to the Gawler Relay For Life Committee for raising funds for cancer prevention and cancer research.