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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-10-15 Daily Xml
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OPEN SPACE

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (12:06): I move:

That this house calls on the state government to undertake a comprehensive audit of open space in the metropolitan area and ensure, via its planning strategy, that there is enough land set aside for passive and active recreation, as well as for biodiversity and conservation purposes.

This is a very important issue. I am sure that the member for Stuart and the minister will take an interest in it. As we know, the government recently released the plan for Greater Adelaide, 2009-38, sometimes called 'the plan'.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! My apologies to the member for Fisher. Could members engaging in private debate leave the chamber. The member for Fisher.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your protection; I sometimes need it in here. I welcome a plan, because I think it is a smart thing to have a plan to try to chart where you want to go as a community. The critical thing, of course, is whether you implement the plan and attain the objectives that are set. The plan has many good features, but one that I think needs more attention is the provision of open space. In Adelaide we often think that we have a lot of open space because of the parklands. Members would be well aware of Professor Chris Daniels, Professor of Urban Ecology at the University of South Australia. He has done some research on this and has said that, based on total area, Adelaide has far less public open space than Brisbane, London or New York. He has also said that Adelaide is not a parkland city, but, rather a linear corridor of low-density sprawl.

The point to make is that we should not be deluded by the fact that we have a well-planned city, of which we are proud, with its unique heritage of 700 hectares of parkland, retained, in the main, over 170 years. Unfortunately, the Parklands have been used, or, one could say misused, to create the impression that we have lots of open space.

Obviously, when talking about open space, there are different categories—and I have never been a fan of Donald Rumsfeld, with the famous expression about what you know and what you don't know, and so it went on—and you can have open space that is not literally open, in the sense that it is not open to the public. A case in point is the Happy Valley Reservoir in my electorate. I am pleased to have it there, and so are the people of Adelaide, but it is not open to the public, and nor should it be because we need to protect the quality of the drinking water of Adelaide.

When people look at the concept of open space they have to realise that some of it might be called open but is not necessarily accessible, and I am not saying that it all should be. We also have different uses, some for conservation biodiversity, some for passive recreation, and some, obviously, for active recreation—playing tennis and other sports. In my plea for the government to do an audit, I am encompassing all of those three categories.

Public open space is an essential element of community life, and it contributes, as I said, to recreation, healthy lifestyle, social involvement and activities. Unfortunately, over time various governments have sold off government land. We currently have a proposal for Glenside. The land I am talking about now, Cheltenham, is not government land, but much of that will not be left as open space, and likewise at Glenside. However, I am pleased to say that, having a close look at Glenside proposal, I am more reassured than I was a few weeks ago in terms of the amount of open space that will be left on that site.

If you look at school sites that have been sold off, where schools are being replaced by superschools, I am sure that land will be sold off presumably for housing. What happens over time, incrementally, is that these areas of government land, and what is largely, in effect, open space, gets sold off. I am concerned to find out how much open space we have, how much is under threat, and what we need for a good quality of life for Adelaide and the metropolitan area in the future.

I doubt, and I challenge anyone to show it, that there has been a net increase in open space. I would suggest that there has actually been a decrease in net open space in the metropolitan area in recent times.

We also have the hills face zone, which I sometimes call the 'hills farce zone', because I think another 400 houses are allowed to be built there. Whilst it is important as a visual backdrop and for conservation purposes, once again, I think it creates the impression that in Adelaide we have a lot of available open space. Well, it is not meant to be space where you can kick a football or throw a netball, but, like the parklands, it contributes to this view that Adelaide and the metropolitan area in particular is a parklands city; it is not.

What we are seeing now with urban consolidation—and it is certainly not a creation of this government; it has been occurring for a while—is smaller and smaller blocks, smaller and smaller backyards (if any), smaller and smaller front yards, and the traditional quarter acre block, which we rarely see these days, is disappearing—an endangered species. That means that there will be more and more need for community open space where children and others can go for recreation, whether it be passive or of a more intensive nature.

The government is committed to a policy of creating transit oriented developments (TODS), and that will also increase the need and demand for open space. Research shows that open space and greenery is important for personal well-being. Studies show that mental health improves when people have access to open space where they can actually see and experience greenery. It has been suggested that country people tend to have a better level of mental health because they have access to open space and can enjoy the natural environment. The more concentrated people are in an urban setting without open space or greenery the more likely it is that people will suffer from various dysfunctional conditions.

The issue of biodiversity is important. People such as Professor Chris Daniels and Associate Professor David Paton have been arguing for a long time that much of our fauna in the Adelaide metropolitan area is under threat. That is the subject of another motion, so I will not elaborate much on that. It is very important that in the open space provisions we recognise that some of them are there for the purpose of retaining biodiversity. I was very pleased to hear that, in the Glenside development, there will be a significant focus on recreating some of the biodiversity, which has been disappearing from the urban setting.

The wider issue relating to open space is that one way or another you pay for it, and you pay for it if there is a lack of it. My challenge to the government is to carry out an audit and find out what is there, what is potentially there, and what is at risk of ceasing to be open space. When I have asked planners in the planning department has there been an audit of open space, the answer I get is that to their knowledge there has not been. I think it is time that that happened.

I conclude by, once again, urging the government to undertake an audit; it is not a costly exercise. It can be done quite easily using some of the latest technology of satellite imaging and so on, and other techniques. The government can quite quickly and easily have a look at this issue of open space and ensure that in the refinement of the Plan for Greater Adelaide that open space is adequately provided for, because if we do not do it now it is going to be too late when future generations say, 'Why didn't you provide more open space?'

As I said at the start, we should not be lulled into a false sense of security or provision simply because we have the Parklands. In some ways the Parklands have worked against the concept of providing more open space, and once you get beyond the Parklands there has not been the provision of open space that should occur. Open space, if it provides for vegetation, will be very important in the future in terms of issues like carbon sequestration.

The urban forest, which is currently overlooked in terms of calculations for carbon sequestration, will become increasingly important. The urban forest in the metropolitan area is currently the largest forest in South Australia and people need to realise that you can only grow trees and you can only have shrubs/understorey if you have the area to grow them. Given that our housing blocks are getting smaller and there is more urban consolidation, there is less and less room for people to plant trees, shrubs, hedges and so on, and that will have a consequence in terms of our inability to deal with the carbon that we should be dealing with.

There is not just a benefit in terms of recreation, there is a benefit in terms of mental health and there is also a benefit, potentially, in relation to dealing with the whole question arising out of carbon generation by humans and other forms of life. I commend this motion to the house and ask the government to implement what I think is a very modest and inexpensive request, and I look forward to seeing this audit carried out in the very near future.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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