Question Time

TRANSPORT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:26): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Urban Development and Planning a question about transport-oriented developments.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: About four to six weeks ago the Minister for Urban Development and Planning and the Minister for Infrastructure went on an extensive tour of the world, focusing mainly on the United States and Europe. In particular, they were looking at transport-oriented developments. A number of public servants accompanied the two ministers on the tour, as well as a number of industry stakeholders.

I participated in a UDIA debrief a few days after their return, and it was interesting to note that the view of the participants at that debrief was that, of the transport-oriented developments that they had seen in the US and Europe, the only ones that actually worked were CBD or very near CBD; not one of them had been profitable for the developers and every one of them had required significant underpinning or anchoring by the government.

Given the knowledge gained on that trip, I note with interest that in the 30-year plan released by the minister last week—incidentally, released when the opposition was preoccupied with other things, so I guess it was trying to sneak it under our radar—the government plans to create 13 new transit-oriented developments, with only one of those being either near or in the CBD. My questions to the minister are:

1. How does the government expect to successfully establish TODs that are not CBD or near CBD?

2. With what activity does the government intend to anchor or underpin the first TOD planned at the Clipsal site?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:28): This is absolutely extraordinary. I am being accused for releasing the 30-year plan, the preparations for which have been underway for some time, because the Liberal Party happened to be going through the middle of a leadership crisis. If the government worried about the Liberal opposition every time we released a policy, we would never release any policies at all, because there is always so much internal strife.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: The leader was the one who raised it in his question; it was part of his question and I am answering it. The Leader of the Opposition in this place accuses the government regarding the timing of the release of a major report such as this simply because the Liberal Party happened to be in the midst of a crisis.

I know the preoccupation of some of those members; they were working out who to vote for, because obviously some of them who voted for Vickie Chapman on Saturday decided to vote against her when it came to Wednesday's ballot. Clearly, there was a lot of confusion, but to say that that preoccupation should mean that the government ought to delay the release of such an important report is quite extraordinary. In any case, that 30-year plan will be available for public consultation until the end of September, so there will be plenty of time for discussion. In relation to TODs, the honourable member also—

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink: How much are you spending on advertising?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: What is your problem? Do we have a problem here?

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink: Millions of dollars on advertising it.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: Millions of dollars on what?

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Ms Lensink will come to order.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: You want people to have a say in it, so you put out a major report for 30 years. When you put out a plan for Adelaide for 30 years, you place advertisements at bus stops and other areas advising people where they can get the plan so they will comment on it. It is a plan that affects every South Australian—the most significant planning document since at least the 1960s—and members opposite are saying that we should not advertise it. The priorities of those opposite are really extraordinary, but while they are having their leadership squabbles this government is getting on with the business of governing the state and putting up real policies and platforms that will guide the state's future. This state does need to move away from its reliance on the motor vehicle, which was the essential element of the plans that have guided Adelaide since the 1960s. One of the key reasons we have transit-oriented developments is to start steering the development of Adelaide away from—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: I do not think anyone on that tour would have said that the total transit style development—that is, the shift away from motor vehicles towards the use of light rail in cities—had not been a success. If you are looking at the funding of these TODs, yes, there are a number of issues. The United States had one particular model in which the people who went on the tour with us were obviously interested. Of course, the US has a somewhat different system in relation to funding these models, and that will not apply within Australia. The first TOD which this government has chosen—of course, a list of 13 have been put out in the plan—and which, of course, was foreshadowed earlier in the planning review, is at Bowden/Brompton, which is on the fringe of the city. That should be an absolutely ideal site and I would be surprised if anyone who went on that tour would have suggested otherwise. What we saw in other cities—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: I would encourage the Leader of the Opposition to go on his own fact finding mission. Perhaps he should go to San Francisco. In relation to the city of San Francisco, the Bay area rapid transit system (BART), at the time (and I remember when I was a student at university in the 1970s), was the state-of-the-art public transport system. The BART system was designed on much the same model that we have—car dependency. It provided underground transport through San Francisco and relied on park 'n' ride to feed into that public transport system. What we are seeing now is that high density is developing at the stations where formerly there were park 'n' rides, because the value of the investment that those cities made many years ago is now being greatly appreciated. As well, in the 1981 San Francisco earthquake, the freeway that was built around the edge of the city (rather like Brisbane's) collapsed. There was significant debate in that community about whether they would go back to the motor vehicle. They did not. They went to light rail and no-one would question that.

In relation to the economics of it, yes, of course, if you are to have high quality development, it will be expensive. It goes without saying that high quality urban form is more expensive than lower quality development. There are models within this country like at Subiaco in Perth. Subiaco is a former industrial site, not unlike the Port Road corridor. It is a former industrial corridor, which the development authority set out to redevelop. It was under the Keating government's Better Cities funding. Money was put in to underground that rail line as part of the Better Cities funding. It was expected to cost the government money. If you look at what happened, the value of the land has increased so much, as a consequence of that development over the 15 years or so of its life, that the development authority has now made a significant amount of money. So what was meant to be a redevelopment—and the government was putting in money to deal with degraded urban land—has turned out to be quite a profitable exercise for that particular development. That is one in Australia of which I am aware.

In relation to overseas, yes, there are some different experiences. It goes without saying that, if we are to put transit-oriented developments on low value land, it will not be as profitable with the densities in those areas as it will be in the inner city areas where the land is more valuable—that goes without saying. Of course, those TODs that had the highest level of development were those where the land value was high—it makes more sense. What we saw in those other cities—and I have alluded to it in relation to San Francisco—in further out transit-oriented developments they will often begin as park and rides, there will be some development over 20 or 30 years, and ours is a 30-year plan, so we will build that development over time. We have a 30-year plan for Adelaide and, if you come back next year, Adelaide will not be full of transit-oriented developments, but we are concentrating the focus of development along the transport corridors. Over the 30-year period it will become increasingly viable for medium-density developments in key sites.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: I will be happy to have a discussion on this with those people who were on the visit. Some of the cities we looked at in Europe, because they had more significant investment in transport expenditure over the years, generally had one CBD, and that is why the development focused very much around that CBD. With a city the size of Adelaide, which is larger than many of the cities we looked at, clearly there will be regional areas.

It may surprise the honourable member that in terms of shopping, as the mayor of Marion told me on the trip, more people shop at the Marion shops than shop in the CBD. Already these regions have developed, so our model will be different from the model in Europe. Those who went on the visit—and I invite any members of this council to look at what is done over there—found that we are at a crucial turning point in the development of our city and whether we can afford to go on assuming that the motor vehicle will be the dominant mode of transport and petrol will be as cheaply and readily available in future as it is now. It would be a stupid policy if we left ourselves vulnerable. We have to develop our own model in accordance with the strengths of Adelaide, and that is exactly what we will be doing. Planning for the Bowden site for the first TOD is underway.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: What do you mean by anchoring it? That site is a key part of Adelaide, and it is adjacent to the biotechnology precinct, so there will be a lot of demand. Channel 7 is just across the road from it. It has all the capacity as it is right on the edge of the city. It is a site that is ripe for redevelopment. Its location is absolutely crucial, given the close proximity of the bioscience precinct and other related activities in the region. Again, we are talking about 20 or 30 years of development.

The one lesson from those sites, if the honourable member likes to go back and confer with members who were on that tour, is that these sites did not develop overnight. With a site this size—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: That is the sort of stuff you people trade in—gossip. You are not interested in the substance or the quality. The Bowden site is eminently suitable. From my impression on the trip, everyone would agree that Bowden has all the qualities necessary to be a successful transit-oriented development.