30-YEAR PLAN FOR GREATER ADELAIDE

The Hon. M. PARNELL (14:52): Is it correct that, in the 2006 iteration of the planning strategy, the land around Mount Barker and Nairne was specifically excluded from urban development precisely because it was valuable farming land, and what has happened in the four years since then for the government to change its mind?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (14:52): There is some land around Mount Barker that has been protected, but to the west of Mount Barker is the Totness national park, which is a national park because no-one ever cleared it, as the land was not valuable. That is why we still have vegetation in that area and why we still have a national park there, but there is land to the east of Bald Hills Road which is used for intensive agriculture, and that land, following the consideration of the 30-year plan, has been retained because there are some areas out to the east of Mount Barker that are still productive.

However, that land is threatened. I have spoken to the owner of that land, who is one of the biggest brussels sprouts producers in the state, and the greatest threat to his production is the rural living allotments opposite his house: very low-density housing, they are all blocks of 1,000 or 2,000 square metres and above, but they are all complaining about spray drift and the incompatibility of it. That was not a development that was permitted by this government, and these are the sorts of issues that going forward and planning we need to avoid.

So, if one looks at the most productive land near Mount Barker, and that includes the area where subterranean clover was first discovered in this state—one can see the commemoration of that on the old highway just near the Bald Hills Road intersection—one sees that that land, which is now used for agriculture and which is still appropriately zoned, is under more threat from that sort of farmlet/rural living type of subdivision than it is from the more dense residential version. So, I think that, if anything, Mount Barker proves the point.