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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-06-29 Daily Xml
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BLACK HILL PONY CLUB

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (15:26): Today I draw the house's attention to the plight of the Black Hill Pony Club. Before question time, I lodged a petition signed by 3,239 residents of South Australia: members of the Black Hill Pony Club, plus supporters and friends and, importantly, hundreds of local residents with no connection to the pony club but who support the retention of that land as open space for community use through the pony club's activities. The federal member for Sturt, Christopher Pyne, has been working particularly hard for the Black Hill Pony Club and I acknowledge his support.

Although the pony club sits geographically in Morialta, the largest contingent of signatures on the petition come from the electorate of the member for Hartley. I urge her again to speak up for her local community and the pony club in the cabinet room in which she sits. However, at least the people of Hartley can be assured that they have a federal representative who is working hard for them in Christopher Pyne.

The pony club has had its home at Woodforde since 1984. It sits immediately above the Magill Youth Training Centre. A significant proportion of the land was a tip, full of car bodies, other scrap metal and thousands of bricks. Volunteers from the pony club and the local community worked tirelessly for months and years to turn a dump into an arena. The land was reclaimed and the whole community has benefited. Hundreds of local children in the metropolitan area of our electorates are living healthier lifestyles. Poorer children, many from single parent families, are subsidised by members who can afford to pay a bit more. Parents of a number of children with behavioural problems have written to me about how much their children have gained emotionally, socially and in their education since being involved with horses.

On a broader front there is the question of open space and the increasing pressure being placed on local infrastructure as urban infill and new development in the eastern suburbs are significantly increasing our population. Some development is inevitable, but a balance has been overshot by this government. The pony club's fate has been tied by the government to the Magill Youth Training Centre next door, which the Minister for Families and Communities is selling to pay for the new centre to be built at Cavan. As the government also owns the pony club land, the minister is taking the opportunity to sell it, too.

I am on the record many times as being in strong support of a new youth corrections facility and it is fair enough that, if the training centre land at Woodforde is surplus to requirements, then it may as well be sold. I have no doubt it will fetch a good sum. However, that is not enough for the government—it wants to sell the pony club land, too. The minister wrote to me a couple of weeks ago saying:

The Magill land is a high value site and as such the Government cannot ignore its value to the South Australian community and reinvesting the proceeds of sale in new Government infrastructure.

It is true that the land (at Woodforde, not Magill) is a high value site. In fact, its value to our community is far too high for it to be just another lot sold off for housing. At a time when other government ministers are spending millions of taxpayer dollars trying to get kids involved in sport and recreation, this decision will destroy a facility that is supporting those very activities.

How many hundreds of millions of dollars is the government currently throwing at creating a better venue for two elite football teams? How much money do we spend on programs to produce Olympic gold medals? Yet a community club that supports not only the early development of those champions and those gold medallists but also promotes healthy lifestyles amongst so many others seems to be considered without value by the government. Where will the future champions come from if they have no facilities to get them started as kids?

In her correspondence, the minister has said that the LMC and the Adelaide Hills Council have been working to find the club a new piece of land and that the club was yet to respond to those offers. I am told that this is, in fact, not the case. However, to save any more going back and forth, I can clearly inform the minister that the sites offered at Lobethal and Oakbank are not feasible for the mums—and occasionally the dads—living in Hectorville and Campbelltown who have to take their children twice a day to the facility.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Campbelltown council has now written to the minister following a resolution of that council. He states:

I sincerely hope that you will reconsider your position on this matter for the benefit of the local community.

The federal members, Christopher Pyne and Jamie Briggs, have been publicly calling on the minister to have mercy. The opposition in this place has been clear. Today, more than 3,000 people from our community have officially petitioned the parliament and the minister. On behalf of my community, I now beg the minister to revisit this cruel decision to sell off the land of the Black Hill Pony Club.

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