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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Bowering Hill Dam

The SPEAKER: Before the member for Unley's supplementary, I uphold the Minister for Health's point of order. The question was: how many complaints or letters of concern has the member for Mawson received from his local electorate?

Ms Chapman: I didn't ask that question, sir. That was not the question I asked. I asked the first question.

The SPEAKER: No? Well, it's on the sheet that I have been given.

Ms Chapman: I understand that, but what I am telling you is that I gave only the first question.

The SPEAKER: On the first question, I do not uphold the Minister for Health's point of order. The first question is in order. The supplementary, which appears on the sheet that was handed up, is most—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: If the deputy leader had asked that supplementary, it would have been out of order.

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: This question is directed—

Ms Chapman: To the Minister for Agriculture.

The SPEAKER: It really should be directed, I would have thought, to the Deputy Premier, but that's a matter for the government:

Is the minister satisfied that the community consultation in respect of the proposed Bowering Hill dam proposal has been adequate and consistent with his statement in the parliamentary report dated May 2011, which said, 'Bowering Hill has now been left as a blank canvas to be developed, with community input, in ways that best allow our region and our state to benefit from tourism and agricultural pursuits.'

If I am not mistaken, you are asking whether the government's action is consistent with something that the minister contributed to writing when he was a backbencher.

Ms Chapman: He is now the Minister for Agriculture and the parliamentary secretary.

The SPEAKER: Yes, well, it's up to the government who answers the question. The minister is not responsible to the house for something he wrote as a backbencher in a parliamentary report, but any minister may answer the question.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Can I answer it, Mr Speaker?

The SPEAKER: Of course you can.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (15:01): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Bowering Hill story, we have already dealt with the cup of tea aspect of it, and can I say through the Chair, if I might, that I would like to invite the Minister for Agriculture to compare his diary with mine because I'm keen to have a cup of tea with him and I'm hopeful that we might get around to talking about the Bowering Hill story—

The Hon. J.M. Rankine interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —because that's something I'm sure we're both interested in talking about. Bowering Hill is an interesting story because it goes back some time.

The SPEAKER: The member for Wright is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: She has been doing that all day.

The SPEAKER: She has. As the member for Newland says, the member for Wright has been interjecting all day.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Some years ago, people who lived in the two areas relatively adjacent to the City of Adelaide, who felt their agricultural way of life was most threatened by the potential sprawl of the City of Adelaide, were agitating and using the good services of the then backbencher, the member for Mawson—in particular those in the southern part of the city—to advocate for a protection of those zones from the unrestrained and unrequired, unhelpful intrusion of suburbia into what is a unique high-value vineyard area very close to the city. In fact, I was only talking at a group—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader is on two warnings.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I was at a function the other evening with the Minister for Agriculture, where there were people sitting around a table remarking—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: No, we didn't have tea; we didn't get a chance because we were expected to answer questions, which is what I'm doing now. Anyway, one of the people who was there was a person who is normally domiciled in Queensland. That person said what a pleasure it was to be in Adelaide because you only have to go for a very short drive and you were into these most beautiful wine districts. You can go south or you can go north, and it's an hour or so. You can go a little bit farther and you wind up in Clare. Or you can go a little bit farther in the other direction and you wind up in the member for MacKillop's part of the world or the member for Mount Gambier's part of the world—what a fantastic thing.

That gets us back to the point that this area so close to the city needed to be protected. Bowering Hill at the time that we were looking at the preservation zones for McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley was that part immediately south of Adelaide where the encroachment of greenfield development housing had not yet cut a swathe between the coast and the inland. It was a place where it was still possible to walk basically from the vineyards to the sea.

An honourable member: Hearing the birds call.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Hearing the birds, indeed. Of course, a lot of stuff about vines to the sea goes on down there: that is one of the themes. That is why Bowering Hill was part and parcel of the conversation we had at that time. We were all very concerned that there should be a halt to this unrestrained destruction of vineyards and a way of life so close to the city. Since that time, I have not to my recollection become aware of any particular proposal concerning Bowering Hill.

Ms Chapman: Don't you read your mail?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, I do. I do, as a matter of fact, and I take home a big bag of it every night. What I am saying is that I do not recall having in my very large bag—sometimes it is many bags, not just one—anything about Bowering Hill, but I am going to—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: What a shame!

The SPEAKER: And the 26th opposition question for the day goes to the member for Unley.

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