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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-10-29 Daily Xml
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INNER CITY REVITALISATION

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (14:28): My question is to the Minister for Planning. Can the minister please inform the house about the government's plans to revitalise our inner city and the importance of design to this reform?

Mrs REDMOND: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Yes, point of order, member for Heysen.

Mrs REDMOND: The member has used the term 'please' and, as we know, Speaker Lewis ruled that that was unparliamentary.

The SPEAKER: My strong advice to ministerial assistants is to dispense with the word please. Could the message go out: we shall sever the word 'please'. The Deputy Premier.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:29): I thank the honourable member for her very important question. Can I say that one of the interesting things that have come back to me very clearly over the last year or so in conversations I have been having—

Mr Pengilly: Have you got the numbers yet?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —around South Australia, and in particular in the city, the member for Finniss might be interested to know, is the number of people who initially are concerned or sceptical about having two or three-storey buildings in their precinct. When you actually drill down and speak carefully to those people, what they are concerned about is not that the building is two, three or even five storeys or whatever, for that matter: it is whether that building is going to fit in with the environment in which that building is being placed.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine: Quality.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: It is quality—exactly. It is quality and it is design. That is what people are really interested in. The message I have got is that most of the people out there who have concerns about higher density are not saying that they are flat earth society fanatics who do not want any development. That is not what they are saying, although there are some that fit in that category, and I think they often write letters to the editor. The rest of them are actually people who are open to change and development, but what they are concerned about is that that development adds value and does not become a sort of blight on their community. That is what they are on about.

I remember from very early on, driving, as I used to do from where I was living at the time, through parts of our city where, at some time in the early 1960s, a particular individual got hold of a block and then built some large, cream brick thing with a series of stairs up the outside with 10 dwellings in it. I know these are very prized elements in every community, but normally the neighbours do not look at them and go, 'Wow, isn't that the most attractive building in the street?' Some people have in their minds that, if we do the rezone work we are doing, all we are going to do is have a lot of them spaced around the suburbs. Well, that is not true.

Today, with the Premier, I was pleased to be at the unveiling of the first phase of our inner metropolitan rezone, which has been an extremely cooperative exercise with the relevant councils, with one notable exception. The outcome has been very good. Part of what is underpinning that is to say design is very important and, for that reason, I would encourage people to have a look at the material.

First of all, the Premier unveiled a series of exemplars of what that medium density accommodation can look like and how it can be very attractive. There is some of that work being done at Bowden, which is very good work, and there are other examples around the city. In fact, I think at the awards I was at with the member for Davenport the other evening, there were some prizes given to people who were doing work in Gilbert Street for that sort of density of building.

The other thing that we announced today is that there is going to be a design centre in Adelaide to assist people in becoming more familiar with what the design opportunities are, and that would include ultimately an inner city model so people would be able to go there and actually look at what the city looks like. Sydney has got one, Berlin has them, Singapore has them; they are a really important tool to enable people to physically understand what is going on.

Then, the other thing, of course, which was announced today, which was very important, is that, in that rezoned precinct around the inner metropolitan area, if there is a building that is going to be five storeys or above, we have said that that will now be mandated to go through the same design review process and the DAC approval process that occurs within the city for $10 million-plus buildings. So, those people in the inner metropolitan area can have confidence that the government is doing everything it can to mandate good design, and they will get buildings—

The SPEAKER: The Deputy Premier's time has expired. Supplementary, deputy leader?

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