Grievance Debate

Housing Industry

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley) (15:09): There is no doubt that this place, the parliament, works so much better when the members of this place reflect the communities they represent. They share the aspirations and issues that may also happen throughout the community.

Today I want to talk about an issue that affected me that has implications right around the inner suburbs in Adelaide. In my electorate of Unley, in the electorate of Dunstan, in the electorate of Bragg, in the electorate of Colton and, of course, in the electorate of Morphett, we are seeing high-rise developments popping up through SCAP applications. Councils do not have any say or any input. Of course, they can place a submission at the time of the SCAP hearing, but the decision is made by Labor's six-year project and that is the planning rules that apply today.

There is a property next to a property I have an interest in in Glenelg, and I gave evidence at the time of the hearing in September 2023 supporting the development, which is a 13-storey development on 426 metres of land and certain things were approved and others were not approved and the building has been built. Then a number of months ago it was discovered that there were substantial variations in that building that nobody was made aware of. As a matter of fact, the builder had not even put in an application for variations but continued on with that project.

The council asked for information about those variations; they wanted an explanation and wanted to know what they were. The builder has refused to hand that information over until the council threatened legal action and then they were given the information.

What we see is that what were originally approved as open-air ventilation vents for a first and second-storey car park have been converted to full outlook and engine rooms for air conditioning for the entire 11 apartments that are in that building. They are on the boundary ventilating into the 17 residences, balconies and courtyards. This is the only source of fresh air for many of those apartments.

How did this happen? It happened through a variation that was described as a new practice. If we look at Practice Direction 19, which gives additional context to section 42 of the act, minor variations no longer require notification to neighbours. Not only that, the council cannot even get the detailed information. They only had oral information about what was going into that space.

On top of that, the basement of that building now requires a pumping station because of the water that is coming into that building—this is at 19 St Johns Row and being constructed by Lucy Commercial—so it appears now that permanent pumps, without any consultation, will have an impact on those living nearby where people's bedrooms are within 2½ metres of those pumps.

The issue that we have here is that this is now all done in secret. Any documents are exempt from FOI and so, if you want to follow up after the event and make sure that things were done properly—that there was no corruption involved and that there was a proper process in the assessment of these variations—you cannot do it. Labor's changes have meant that the public are not allowed to know. This has massive implications for any of those suburbs, whether it be Unley Road, whether it be Magill Road, whether it be The Parade or Fullarton Road or whether it be Greenhill Road. We have seen an increase in the social licence for these types of developments, but this is going to mean that nobody is going to know what is going up next to them and what impact it is going to have on their property.