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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-08 Daily Xml
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BAROSSA VALLEY AND MCLAREN VALE

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:29): I rise today to inform the house about a very important announcement made late last Friday by the Minister for Tourism and urban planning at the National Wine Centre. I was very pleased to be there because it was the latest chapter in many years of work that has been done to preserve both the McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley regions. This has been something I have worked hard on for—

Mr Venning: I didn't get invited.

Mr BIGNELL: The member for Schubert says he was not invited. I might tell the member for Schubert that I have been working very closely with his community for the past 18 months. He has never shown much enthusiasm for it, but we hope to get you on board now, member for Schubert, because it is a very good idea and there are a lot of people in your neck of the woods who are very happy with what the government is doing.

The minister announced that a discussion paper would be out until 22 July so that people could make submissions on what they think the agricultural and tourism preserve should look like, both to the north of the city in the Barossa Valley and to the south in McLaren Vale. It is very important that we preserve these agricultural and tourism lands, not just for the sake of the local economies and the state economy, with hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into our state's coffers through both regions, but also for the sake of our state in terms of food security.

Both areas are well known for their production of grapes and wine, but I think what we will see over the next few years and decades is perhaps even more crops being planted and different horticultural pursuits as people cash in on the great names associated with McLaren Vale, the Fleurieu Peninsula and also the Barossa Valley.

When the Premier announced his reshuffle earlier in the year, I think the addition of a food marketing portfolio was very much aimed at telling people just how much we value food in South Australia, how important it is to reward primary producers now and also into the future, and to just say that, as a government, we are right behind them. So, I think both McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley will benefit from that.

We have had a lot of victories along the way in trying to preserve McLaren Vale. Bowering Hill is land owned by the Land Management Corporation which sits west of South Road, in between Maslin Beach and Port Willunga. It is a very big open piece of land that has been cropped for the past several years. There was a plan to put 8,000 gutter-to-gutter houses on that land. Many of us in the local community stood up to the government about that. We were very pleased when, in 2009, the Land Management Corporation and the minister announced that those 8,000 gutter-to-gutter houses would not go ahead. So, that was seen as a victory.

We also had a victory in the 30-year plan when we locked in the town boundaries around McLaren Vale, McLaren Flat and Willunga. The local community down there is happy to see growth within the town boundaries, but what we did not want to see was the edges of each of those towns being extended on a year-on-year basis. So, McLaren Vale would grow one year and then Willunga would grow the next year and, in a few years, you would have no vines at all between the two towns; they would just be joined up. That would just absolutely ruin our area. As we all know, people do not go to suburbs for their holidays; they like to go out and see open spaces, get involved in pursuits like tasting wine, eating great food, eating at fantastic restaurants. That was one of the wins.

What I found out, though, was that people were a little cynical in terms of how politics work. While they were happy with those victories, they said, 'What about when you're no longer the local member of parliament or we no longer have a Labor government? What's to stop a future politician or future bureaucracies redrawing the lines on the map?' So, that was when we decided to put our thinking caps on towards some legislation. Originally, I was going to do a private member's bill here after discussing with the people from the Barossa about what we wanted. What we needed to do was lock in—

Mr Venning: I never got invited to those, either.

Mr BIGNELL: Well, I will tell you what happened. The people in the Barossa came to me and said, 'You're doing a good job down there. We can't get much interest out of our bloke; can we join your project?'

Mr Venning interjecting:

Mr BIGNELL: You asked for it; I am telling you what happened. My plan was to lock it in so that it would have to get past both houses of parliament, with plenty of notices to the local people who have been pushing for these protections. So, I look forward to lots of people putting in their submissions to this discussion paper between now and 22 July, and I hope that one day people will look back at the leadership that has been shown by the group here with the same affection they have for Colonel Light for protecting our Parklands.

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