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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-02-06 Daily Xml
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CITY FRINGE DEVELOPMENT

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:24): The age of activism is not dead. Indeed, on 30 January this year, a public meeting was held at the Burnside Town Hall. Why? Because the government had announced by press release late last year that it would impose an inner rim structure plan under a ministerial DPA—I think we call them—to impose a building regime of up to 10-storey buildings along Fullarton Road and Greenhill Road without any opportunity for the Burnside council to proceed with its DPA arrangements. In other words, to cut out the local council, to cut out the local processes and to effectively destroy the usual protections that local residents have to have a say about what is happening in their district.

The Prospect council area, on behalf of its constituents, handed over that responsibility to the state government, and that is its prerogative. It will incur—clearly it has already—the backlash in just handing it over to the government. Mr O'Loughlin, of course, is the mayor out there, and he will have to rise or fall on his decision to do that.

However, the local council representing the people in the south east of Adelaide was completely removed. So I wrote to the then planning minister and said, 'You call a meeting or I will. We will not have a situation where our local people are cut out of this process. We want some explanation as to why our council has been ignored and why it has been cut out of the process.' As best we knew, it was at the table presenting proposals, and the next thing was an announcement that it was cut out. I am very mindful that our local mayor, Mayor David Parkin, has put in a request to the Premier in the last couple of months urging the Premier to meet with him to try to have some restoration of local input.

The government's position is this: 'We have prepared a 30-year plan; this is what we have decided for the people of South Australia. That includes what we are going to do along these roads, and we will decide who would live there, how that will happen and what the rules will be.' Fortunately, the minister agreed to call a public meeting. When hundreds of people turned up to that meeting, it told us that they would not be ignored. They wanted to know what the detail was. They wanted to know that if they were going to have a transport orientated development along their backyards and the government wanted to have multistorey buildings, they wanted to have a say about how that would happen and who was going to park, and whatever.

If you are going to have a transport orientated development plan, then what about the transport infrastructure that goes with it? What about the transport plan? What about fixing up Britannia roundabout? What about discussing with them what the parking arrangements are going to be for all of the people who are going to live in these multistorey buildings? What is the provision going to mean for the safety of our children? Sixty-five per cent of our local community is families. These are mums and dads and children and extended family. These people want to have a say and they want to be consulted.

What was made very clear at that meeting was that just telling people about what the government is going to do and saying, 'You can put in a written submission' is not acceptable. What is appropriate is that they are asked first: 'How do you want to be part of this in our program for Adelaide? It is appropriate that they be involved in that. It is not acceptable to say, 'We're going to do this, and you can tinker around the edges about some minor amendment.' That is not acceptable.

The government has to learn. Surely after the Mount Barker debacle it has learned that it cannot treat people this way. However, the local community made it very clear that night. One of the very good questions raised was about the social impact statement: 'What social impact statement have you done on how this is going to affect our community? We've already got huge waiting lists for our schools, we've got people parking in our streets clogging up the area.' These are basic problems that they already have. They want to know what the government has done in preparation to justify this program.

The very clear message to the government is: 'Do not think you can simply come in and identify what you say is going to happen without bringing the people with you. Surely you must have learned from the disgraceful conduct that your government undertook at the time of the Mount Barker development. Will you ever learn that you have to bring the people with you?' My constituents, the constituents of the seat of Unley, the constituents in part of the Norwood area are all willing to sit down with the government and have this done properly. The government needs to open its ears.

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