Ministerial Statement

GLENTHORNE FARM

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:22): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: In June last year, the University of Adelaide advised the South Australian public of plans to investigate setting up a woodland recovery initiative based at Glenthorne Farm in Adelaide's south. Glenthorne Farm, near O'Halloran Hill, has a special relationship with the community in the southern suburbs as well as the winemaking industry at McLaren Vale.

This historic property was first settled in 1839 by Major Thomas O'Halloran, the South Australian colony's first police commissioner. In 2001, Glenthorne Farm, the former CSIRO research facility, was handed over to the University of Adelaide by the state government for use as a vineyard and winemaking facility. This followed the former state government's decision to purchase the 200 hectare property from the commonwealth in 1998 after the CSIRO's decision to quit the site.

A plan to establish vineyards and a winemaking facility at the farm, as originally envisaged at the time of the land transfer, has since stalled. Instead, the university has proposed using the farm as a base for a woodland recovery initiative. This project aims to help re-establish native vegetation to 30 per cent of the Mount Lofty Ranges and prevent further species loss in the region.

As part of the woodland recovery initiative, the university aims to establish a world-class environment research centre at Glenthorne, reclaim about 100 hectares of farmland at Glenthorne and reconstruct a suitable habitat that encourages the return of native species, develop educational programs so that young people are engaged in the project and see it as important to the future of their community, and employ about 30 people including scientists, technicians, teachers and managers.

From October last year, the university has held community information days and sought public feedback in an effort to build support for the recovery project. As part of the funding model for this initiative, the university had requested permission to sell 63 hectares of the farm to developers as a way of generating seed money for a $100 million trust fund. This trust would provide ongoing funding during the next 100 years which the university estimates is required to establish the revegetation project. However, this proposal to sell land to raise funds fails to meet the terms of the deed and land management agreement signed at the time of the transfer in 2001. Taking that into consideration, the government has declined the university's request.

The state government's view remains that the land was transferred to the university on the basis that there would be no housing on the site. Notwithstanding that decision, the concept to reafforest 150,000 hectares of woodlands in the Adelaide Hills face has some merit.

The government has offered to work with the university to find alternative sources of funding for its aim of reafforesting the property to create native woodland. Therefore, I have written today to the university Vice-Chancellor and President, James McWha, offering to work with his staff to identify alternative funding through research grants that can finance the woodland recovery initiative without requiring any of the land to be sold off for housing.

This government supports the retention of open space within the metropolitan area. We remain committed to ensuring that the pressure to develop land within the urban growth boundary is balanced by the retention of sufficient public open space for community use.