Development Act

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (17:31): I move:

That the regulations under the Development Act 1993 concerning SA Motorsport Park, made on 28 April 2016 and laid on the table of this council on 17 May 2016, be disallowed.

At the outset I would like to put on the record that this is not some crusade on my part, or on the part of the Greens, against motorsport. In fact, when I first heard that Tailem Bend was being promoted as a spot for motorsports, it seemed to have a lot of merit. There had been an existing motor testing track there for some years. I think that was where Mitsubishi would take their cars. It is certainly outside the metropolitan area, so it does not suffer from the same issues in relation to the close proximity of many neighbours, and, as a person who lived for a brief period at Eastwood during the time when the Formula One was on, I know what it is like to live close to a motor racing track. Tailem Bend, at first blush, seemed to have a lot of things going for it.

But what I think is unacceptable is for this government to abuse the statutory processes that have been set out in relation to pollution, in relation to development and planning, and also in relation to the protection of native vegetation. There were three lots of regulations that were tabled in this place on the same day. I have moved to disallow two of them. I will speak now about the development regulations, and I will speak in a few minutes, in the next motion, about the native vegetation regulations.

I might just say initially that I have not moved to disallow the regulations that relate to noise, and my reason for doing that is that I sort of figured that motor racing is inherently a noisy activity and that standards in relation to noise would be very unlikely to be satisfied by a motor racing facility. We are used to having exemptions for noisy activities. The Grand Prix originally, and the Clipsal, have a statutory exemption from noise standards, but you also have events such as WOMADelaide, or The Big Day Out, a number of events, that get case-by-case exemptions from having to comply with noise laws. So I did not trouble the chamber by moving to disallow the noise regulations, but I will just say that, having said that, it does not mean that there is no problem.

When I had a look at the submissions that were made to the Development Assessment Commission from neighbours, some of the comments that were made included comments from those who live very close to the facility. One person says, 'My block is only about 100 metres from the planned V-8 racing track.' In an environment like this, with a fairly open landscape, that would obviously make for a very noisy environment. Another person wrote:

With the current race meetings that have been held at this premises, the sound of screeching tyres and the smell of burning rubber that often wafts over our house has already been concerning. What will this massive development create? I'm sure that smelling burning rubber is not good for one's health. We would like to know how many meetings per year are envisaged for this application? One weekend a month, every weekend, weekdays, times? Our quiet, relaxed weekends may well become a thing of the past.

Having said that, I am not proposing to disallow those regulations, but I will now turn to those that I am moving to disallow. I will start with the regulations under the Development Act. This is quite a remarkable regulation. It is only very short, and it basically says:

Pursuant to section 7(3) of the act, section 33(1)(a) of the act does not apply in relation to development within the SA Motorsport Park if the development has been approved by the State Coordinator-General.

Those words are gobbledygook to most people, but we need to tease them out. Section 7 of the Development Act does enable specified provisions of the act to not apply in certain parts of the state. Basically, the mechanism for that is through regulations. Section 7 says:

The regulations may provide that a specified provision of this act does not apply to a part of the state specified by the regulations.

So, then when you look at the regulation, it specifies the part of the state, being the SA Motorsport Park, and the section of the act that does not apply is section 33(1)(a). That section is at the heart of our planning system. That is the section that says:

A development is an approved development if and only if a relevant authority has assessed the development against and granted a consent in respect of each of the following matters insofar as they are relevant to the particular development:

(a) the provisions of the appropriate development plan.

Again, for those who are not steeped in planning law, that might not make a lot of sense, but, effectively, I will paraphrase what this says. It says that, if the Coordinator-General reckons that it is a good idea to approve a motor racing development at Tailem Bend, he does not need to have any regard to the planning scheme. The planning scheme is at the heart of our planning system. That is the document that says what you can and cannot do in different parts of the state. It is at the heart of it. To have a provision that says that the Coordinator-General is not obliged to follow this provision, which talks about assessment against the planning scheme, is absolutely remarkable.

It is even more remarkable when you consider that the planning scheme was rewritten to accommodate the motor racing facility. There is a special zone—it is a motorsport zone. They created a zone for this activity to go ahead, and now they have passed a regulation to say, 'Oh well, the zone we passed doesn't quite let them do everything they want, so therefore the Coordinator-General doesn't have to have regard to it,' which I just think is remarkable.

When you look at the planning scheme and you look at this motorsport park zone—and this is a bit of a hint to where the government is coming from—it includes a principle of development control, and that principle of development control says: 'Important areas of native vegetation should be protected and, where necessary, restored.' Just one single line in the planning scheme talks about protecting and restoring important areas of native vegetation. I believe that it is that provision that has caused the government, notwithstanding that it has created a whole zone for this, to basically decide that the rules for planning that they themselves have written are not to apply to development applications in this zone, and that is because they have messed up the native vegetation arrangements.

I will now conclude my remarks on the planning disallowance motion, and I will continue very shortly on the next motion, which is to disallow the native veg regulations, because that ties all of this together. I am making the point that, what confidence can we have in a government that not only rezones a parcel of land for a specific single purpose but then passes a regulation to say that the rezoning they have just done does not count for anything? It is absolutely bizarre. No doubt the minister will give the Hon. Tung Ngo, or someone, some notes to read out which try to make sense of this, but it is an absolute mess. It is a sham. It has nothing to do with whether motor racing is a good idea or not, but it is an incredible abuse of the planning process.

Is it any wonder that the system has been brought into disrepute, especially when we look at the brand new bill that we have just passed which tells the community that we (the government) only want you to engage in writing planning policy. Then when they do write planning policy, they pass a regulation which says the planning policy does not count. What a ridiculous way to conduct a system. With those words, I conclude my remarks and I will continue shortly in relation to native vegetation regulations.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.W. Ridgway.