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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 27 October 2015.)

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (12:04): We continue our discussion at a more respectable hour.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Perhaps we will still be here at midnight tonight.

Mr KNOLL: We can only hope—if only for the pleasure of your company, Deputy Speaker. Last night, I was talking about the chutzpah of this government in putting forward what we are calling the Dennis Denuto of planning bills, where we are being asked to simply vote on the vibe.

Ms Redmond interjecting:

Mr KNOLL:The Castle was on TV last night! We are just being asked to vote on the vibe: 'Don't worry about any of the detail, don't worry about any of the nitty gritty that planning legislation and developers and planners rely upon to actually make determinations—don't worry about any of that. Just look at what you've got in front you, say yes, say no, but let's get on and just do it.' Unfortunately, I do not think that that is the way it works, and I do not think that is the way it should work.

I know that we will been getting a lot more feedback in coming days and weeks from various stakeholder groups because surely the idea of this parliament, and the parliamentary review process that we as an opposition do (and this parliament does on behalf of the executive), means that it is important for us to tease out those issues brought to us by stakeholders. That is why we have had fulsome debate from this side of the house on this issue, and we look forward to an extensive committee process, where hopefully we can give some greater clarity to stakeholders, to ourselves, to our councils and to our communities, so that we can actually get to a decent piece of legislation that does not have with it untoward, unintended consequences.

We were up to the point where we were talking about food production areas and the fact that in the Barossa this is something we have currently. We have a preservation zone that outlines quite clearly where townships start and stop, and within which housing development can occur. It sets out quite clearly what land will be rezoned at a point in the future when that becomes necessary, and it gives certainty to my community as to what they can expect, and that is a very good thing. I also like the fact that it does protect, to a degree, our farmers. It does say that this land is prime agricultural land and that we will ensure that it is there for that use for generations to come.

The original draft preservation zone bills were a lot more extensive in the exclusions they put in the preservation zone, and I am glad that in the end they were taken out because the concept of a food production area, or the preservation zone, is quite simple—that is, to protect farming land as opposed to becoming a lot more prescriptive about what can and cannot happen on that land, outside of obviously stopping housing development.

We also need to be mindful that we have locked up this land, we have ensured for farmers that they will not be able to have their land rezoned as residential at any time in the foreseeable future. There is a trade-off there. There are those, potentially, who were looking to speculate, potentially looking to get some sort of retirement income bonus, but they will not be able to do that. We need to be cognisant of that fact, and to balance that fact we need to ensure that those farmers are allowed, to the greatest extent that they can, to farm their land in quiet peace and enjoyment.

That is something we need to be very mindful of because there are issues when it comes to separation distances between farms, to competing uses between farms, and to encroaching housing development at that peri-urban interface between residential development and farmland. We need to be mindful of the fact that, whilst we have taken away from certain people the opportunity to have their land rezoned, we need to ensure that they are able to farm free from any interference. That is something that needs to be addressed in this bill, and certainly one of the things I will been seeking greater detail on, to ensure that my farmers and grape growers in the Barossa are not disadvantaged with the legislation we have.

Another thing I would like to point out is that in planning, once a decision is made, it tends to be quite difficult to unmake. If were able to unmake decisions, huge rezonings, as happened in Mount Barker, might not have gone ahead, but we cannot. Once planning approval is given, we need to give certainty to the person who has been granted that approval, and it needs to then move forward, and I support that.

This piece of legislation, as good as we can try to make it, will not be able to cover for the sins of the past. Where there have been suboptimal planning decisions made in the past, we will not, through this piece of legislation, be able to fix them. All we will be able to do is to ensure that, as far as practicable, they do not happen again.

The last of couple of points I would like to make are in relation to the process of seeking development approval. I deal with a lot of complaints around development applications from all sides of the fence, whether they be neighbours who are against proposed development or whether they be businesses that have been delayed from being able to grow their business, that have been delayed and stymied from getting development approval on expansion plans, and I have a number of cases where this applies.

I have a case, for instance, where a cellar door waited 2½ years to get planning approval to convert a hairdressing salon to a cellar door. I have an instance where a food production facility wanted to make a very minor expansion into the plot next door and it took 18 months to get planning approval. If we want to help grow this economy, these are the decisions we need to speed up, and I look forward to seeing how this can be improved as part of this bill.

Another thing I want to say is that there is this group of people who interact with the planning system who I think often get lost and are not considered in it because they are not part of the big lobby groups: they are not part of the Property Council, the UDIA, the HIA or any of those. They are the people who will only ever make one or two planning applications in their lifetime, and I am talking here primarily about small business. When small business comes along, they are not experts in the planning system.

We need to have those people in mind, more so than those who apply for plenty of development approvals, when we put this legislation through because those who interact with the planning system on a regular basis will come to understand it quite deeply and be able to use the planning system to its full. So often, I see those who are simply seeking to invest their hard-earned capital back into growing their small business being stymied or unable to understand the process or being blocked from a speedy passage through the process because they do not understand, through no fault of their own, what needs to happen.

I think that it is incumbent on the state government and councils to do everything they can to facilitate that speedy passage, and that is one thing I do not see addressed in this bill. It may be that some of the simplification procedures may make it easier for those businesses. The people who will only ever deal with the planning system once or twice in their lifetime are the people I think we need to be looking out for because they are the ones who will help improve our economy. The recovery of the South Australian economy is going to come from small to medium businesses reinvesting their capital, putting their money on the line to grow these small businesses into slightly less small businesses and help to then employ the people who subsequently come from their putting in that growth.

To sum up, we certainly have kept our options open when it comes to this bill, and that is something we do not resile from. Shouting from members opposite from time to time, late at night—it may have been an hour at which there was a little bit more frustration in the room—is uncalled for and unwarranted. There are plenty of things that the government could have done to allow this happen more smoothly, and that is to provide us with more information, especially around the 46 areas of regulation, the charter of community participation and the urban growth boundary, a whole host of areas for which we have no detail.

I understand that negotiations are still going on with regard to the infrastructure levy and how that is going to operate. Indeed, there are concerns about the broad scope of the current workings of that infrastructure levy such that infrastructure outside of a zone from which a developer is trying to develop could potentially form part of the infrastructure levy.

If the government were to come clean and give us that further detail, we would be able to provide a more fulsome answer, but they have not, so we cannot. So, we need to use the parliamentary process and the committee stage of the bill to tease out those issues because there is a lot of angst in the community, especially in councils and major stakeholder groups, around the fact that they do not know what it is going on. Essentially, they are being asked to put on blindfold and hold the Attorney's hand—or for the Attorney to hold their hand—as we pray and are guided only by his mind as to what the planning system will look like for the next three, five, 10 and 20 years.

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (12:14): I rise to put forward my contribution to the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill which is before the parliament today. I do so as one of a long list of speakers from the opposition, and I think that in itself is telling, because there is obviously significant interest among opposition members who are here representing their communities. I think that reflects considerable concern amongst communities and amongst stakeholders about the legislation which is before the parliament today. It also reflects the importance of planning reform in South Australia.

I have spent quite a lot of time, in my relatively short period of time in this parliament, speaking about a couple of areas which I believe are ripe for reform in this state and which could trigger significant economic gains for relatively low amounts of effort and/or expenditure by the state government. One of those is local government reform, which I think is intrinsically tied to planning reform, and would like to have seen occur alongside planning reform as a parallel process.

The other item that I have talked about at length during my time in parliament is the need for planning reform in South Australia. There is no doubt that planning reform is a trigger for economic activity. If done properly, it can be a trigger for economic stimulus, and it can be used to create jobs. There is no doubt that is something that we are desperately in need of in South Australia. However, what we have before us, in my view, is something of a disappointment.

I think that the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill is undercooked. I think it has not lived up to the hopes that I had for it. I did hold out hopes that this was an opportunity for some significant reform which could really shift South Australia's planning regime into the 21st century. However, what is before us is a body of legislation which has some good parts to it; it has, in my view, some very bad parts to it; and it has some mediocre elements as well.

As such, we have been left with a real camel when it comes to legislation: it looks a bit odd, it does not really seem to fit together in a logical way necessarily, and I am not sure it has the outcomes that the opposition and I hoped for. I am not sure it necessarily has the outcomes that the state government and the Public Service would have hoped for as well. I think it is legislation which leaves a lot to be desired and has a lot of gaps in it. Not only does it have a lot of gaps but there is also significant level of uncertainty.

I remember when I was at law school and studied a subject called Statutory Interpretation. We talked at length about the importance of creating legislation which had certainty around it. There is no doubt that certainty is missing from this legislation. The gaps in the legislation are really open either to interpretation in the short term, by those who need to implement it, or will require government to come back and make changes to it or create a further legislative framework around regulation to bring this legislation into working reality.

I think it is telling that the government has already had to table 74 amendments before the parliament. Before we even have the bill debated on its is present form, we have 74 amendments, so I think the government's confidence in its own legislation is quite shaky with regard to this bill. I see this bill as unfortunately a thing of significant lost opportunity.

I think there was a really positive opportunity for the government here to get things moving with regard to planning reform, but from my point of view and certainly from the point of view of the people in my community who have contacted me about this legislation, that has not been the case.

We have heard from a number of my colleagues about specific examples that have been read into Hansard, letters which they have received from constituents and stakeholders. I have to be honest, I have not had a lot of representations from residents who I represent in the area. I have had a few conversations with councillors and people who have a particular interest, but I do not think I have had the same number as perhaps my colleagues have had, and that is despite the seat of Bright having had some fairly difficult planning situations, certainly during my 18 months holding this position. Planning is something I have learnt quite a bit about since coming to this role and was also a significant part of my previous role as a local councillor and deputy mayor in the City of Marion.

I want to just go through several issues that I will call threshold issues with regard to this bill and just provide a bit of commentary on my views, concerns and interests on those particular items. The first is the bill's desire to move the urban growth boundary into legislation. Some people have spoken against this and have raised their concerns. From my point of view—my opinion on this might differ from some of my colleagues—I actually am broadly supportive of an urban growth boundary and broadly supportive of it being moved into legislation. I know there are arguments that it will drive up the cost of housing and reduce housing affordability, but I would have to say that that has not been proven to me yet and I would like to see some evidence that that would be the case.

I think there is a risk with a city such as Adelaide that we become an incredibly long, low-density city which stretches from the Barossa Valley to Goolwa and Victor Harbor and really spills a tsunami of Tuscan villas across some of our prime agricultural land, particularly on the Fleurieu Peninsula. So, on that basis, I really am supportive of an urban growth boundary and would certainly give consideration to the government transferring that into legislation. I think areas such as the Fleurieu Peninsula and the food bowl to the north of the city, stretching through the Northern Plains towards the Barossa Valley and above, are really one of the things that makes South Australia incredibly special.

We should be doing everything that we can as parliamentarians to protect that prime agricultural land and also the prime environmental lands that make up this state. Perhaps the preservation of an urban growth boundary in legislation is something that will assist with that, so from my point of view that is something I am open to. I know that is not something that everyone, including my colleagues on this side of the house, will necessarily agree with, but I am definitely open to seeing that happen.

I believe strongly that there is a case for growing up instead of out. I think our distant outer suburbs can be at risk of becoming geographical underclasses, and that presents a range of social problems as well which we could do without in this state at the moment. I do see some inconsistency with this in the government's approach to planning—difficulties that they have presented around Mount Barker and obviously Buckland Park as well, and even some of the outer suburbs to the south of the city which have been put in place not necessarily with the appropriate infrastructure coming alongside them. However, as I have said and will repeat again, the urban growth boundary is something which interests me and something which I would certainly personally be open to providing some support to.

I also want to discuss another threshold issue, and that is the community engagement charter, which is canvassed in this legislation and which, like too many aspects of this legislation, does not actually have any more detail surrounding it than pretty much the title of community engagement charter. I think this was put in the bill because of the frustration that was heard by the expert panel on planning reform which helped shape this legislation or, at least, fed into this legislation in the early process around 2012 to 2014.

When the panel went out into communities and heard from people, time and time again they heard from communities that there was significant frustration with people feeling that they could not feed into the planning process. They felt shut out of the planning process; they felt that the state government was traipsing all over them and making decisions without regard to the communities' desires.

The expert panel's point of view was that we needed something in this legislation to actually point to that says that government should be engaging and that community engagement should be a central part of changes to planning in communities. However, I do not know if the government's commitment to move engagement to the front end of planning, as opposed to more towards the end process, will actually have the impact the government wants.

I think it is incredibly hard for individuals, stakeholders or communities to front up at an engagement process when there is nothing tangible for them to engage with. Often during rezoning opportunities and when areas are first being developed, without seeing plans and without seeing drawings, it is very hard for people to be able to interact with what is going to happen down the track because of particular planning changes.

While it might sound like a good idea to empower people at the front end of the planning process by engaging them in what their communities will look like in the future—and I am not going to talk against that per se—you cannot then remove engagement from the end of the process either, because that is the point where the rubber hits the road. That is when people start to envisage what a particular building might look like, what form a shopping centre might take, what particular infrastructure might be part of their community.

It is not until those plans, those drawings and the scale and density of these things start to become familiar to people that they grasp what is headed for their neighbourhoods, and it is at that point that we do need to retain effective engagement and retain the community voice actually helping to shape the end product. There is some merit in bringing some of it to the beginning, but we definitely need to see it retained at the end of the planning process as well.

The opposition supports the spirit of the community engagement charter, but our concern is: how can you pass something into legislation if you do not actually know what it will look like? There is no actual charter attached to this legislation. We have no idea what it will look like in reality.

Another threshold issue I want to briefly mention is the essential infrastructure levy. I have significant concerns about this. I know people I have spoken to in my community do, and, certainly, the councils I have consulted with had concerns about this as well. It is again something that might look good on paper. We are going to create the opportunity for these levies to be gathered by councils in order to pay for essential infrastructure, but we do not know from this legislation where you draw the line with essential infrastructure. Is it roads, is it sewerage or is it stormwater infrastructure?

We might think that it is acceptable to pass that cost on to people who are purchasers of blocks and houses through a future levy, but what about the local ambulance station or a school or a new police station or something like that? Where do you draw the line? At what point do you stop shifting those costs into a levy? If a community is up in arms about a particular issue—it might be closure of a police station or something like that—does the government come back and say, 'Well, you can have your police station, but you're all going to be paying for it for the next 10 years via your council rates through this essential infrastructure levy.'

To me, that is shifting another cost onto households, and South Australian households, to be sure, have enough costs confronting them at the moment. For the government to even suggest another cost of living pressure be hurled onto South Australian households is something that I just could not possibly support, especially when there do not appear to be any accountability measures around the essential infrastructure levy and how it is actually levied.

There seems to be a view that this would reduce the cost of housing up-front and make housing more affordable, particularly for younger people and families who are entering into home ownership for the first time. I do not buy that at all and I think that developers would simply charge the same amount but be able to offset their other costs against this essential infrastructure levy. So it just has a whole range of concerns for me and is something that I am strongly against.

Another item that I want to discuss is the role of the Coordinator-General and the $3 million threshold which kicks in and allows developers to transfer the decision-making and approval processes around an application for a development deemed to be $3 million or more in value that can be flicked from local council to the state government and, in particular, the Office of the State Coordinator-General for him to essentially clear the barriers out of the way and ensure a streamlined approval process.

That does sound good on paper and there definitely is, in my view, a place for this in legislation and in the development industry. However, the $3 million threshold is something that I have a significant problem with because it is too low. There are properties in my electorate, along The Esplanade—houses, residential homes—that would be captured by this threshold. No doubt there would be those sort of properties all across the state. If you have a residential property which could potentially be captured by the $3 million threshold and be fast-tracked through the Office of the State Coordinator-General, that is something that just does not sit well with me at all. I think a better threshold for that would be $7 million, $10 million or perhaps $12 million—I am open to suggestions—but much higher than $3 million

I recently had an issue in my electorate in the City of Holdfast Bay in South Brighton where a Hungry Jack's development was proposed to the council: the council knocked it back. It had a value of around about $1.9 million at the time and the council knocked it back. The developer appealed to the ERD Court that said, 'No, this development is not going to work in this area. There are major traffic issues; we are going to reject it.'

It was rejected by the council and rejected by the ERD Court and so the developer looked around—as the developer is entirely entitled to do and should do from a good business point of view—and said, 'We can go to the Office of the State Coordinator-General'—but they could not because their value was $1.8 million $1.9 million to start with.

I do not know what happened but through the process of getting rejected by the ERD Court and then making an application to the Office of the State Coordinator-General, the value of this project rose to $3.1 million. I am not sure if they added the Whoppers and chicken wraps and things in for the first year or two to boost that value, but the value did rise from a 1 million figure to a 3 million plus figure. The Coordinator-General welcomed them through his front door and gave them the stamp of approval, having been rejected by the council and the ERD Court.

You can imagine how my community felt about that. There was a significant level of angst about a fast food establishment coming to that part of Brighton and there were a whole range of arguments around what the market will allow should something like that be allowed in that area. I am going to leave the arguments of the marketplace to one side and just look at the fact that this project rose significantly in value after having been rejected by two planning authorities, and construction will start in a few weeks' time. That is a significant concern for me.

Finally, I want to briefly canvas in my remaining seconds the removal of local government members on development assessment panels. I think that local councils, obviously, have significant concern about this, and we have seen a public campaign from the Local Government Association. Having been on local council but having not served on a development assessment panel I am open to local government members being removed from development assessment panels. I think that it removes the concern of conflict of interest, and also I have always got capacity concerns about local councillors on these matters. Again, I am open to seeing that happen.

I will conclude my remarks, and I look forward to this bill progressing so it can be given freedom of analysis.

Time expired.

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (12:35): I too rise and express some concerns about this particular bill, the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill, which is before the house, and I am glad that I did not have to wait until the end of last night to make the contribution.

In beginning my remarks I want to talk about a couple of issues, because up in the Hills where I live and the area that I represent planning has always been a very significant issue. Indeed, when I was on council—which is now over 30 years ago—it was impossible for the council to form a planning subcommittee to make decisions about planning that came before it because every member of council wanted to be on the committee; so, it was always a committee of the whole council. It has always been an issue of great concern in the area that I represent, but you do get situations which are just nonsensical.

I just want to run through a couple of them in giving some context to the comments that I want to make. The first of these relates to a chicken farm that existed in Mount George, which is just near Bridgewater across the freeway. In fact, Alexander Downer used to live in the Mount George area. The main road that goes through happened to dissect the two halves of this chicken farm, although it was only on a single title.

Now, the chicken farm had thousands of truck movements every year to bring in the little, tiny chickens and then to take them out again when they were grown, to bring in food and to remove waste—all sorts of truck movements—which were of concern to the people who lived there. As I say, this was in a watershed, and the people who owned the chicken farm—there were, I think, three sheds on one side of the main road and three sheds on the other side of the road, and on one side of the road had the house in which they resided—proposed a subdivision of their property so that it would be on two separate titles and thus they could sell off the other title.

The plan was that they would close down their chicken farm and then relieve the community of not only the smells, which often led to complaints in the area, but also these thousands of truck movements every year of feed and chickens, and so on, in and out. They were prepared to enter into all sorts of undertakings to ensure that not only was the 11 acres on the other side of the road developed in an environmentally-sustainable way but that there could be any number of limitations, and so on, on that property.

However, that proposal to create a separate title was rejected, and it was rejected because it was creating a separate title, a new title, in the watershed zone. So, even though it was clear as could be that it would be an improvement to the environment it was actually the Environment Protection Authority that managed to stop that particular proposal. So, instead of getting the chicken farm moved out of the area, the watershed zone, we had to leave it there because these people could only afford to close it down if they could sell off the property across the road.

That was just one example of the stupidity of the way our planning regulations were working. Another example relates to Mi Mi Road at Aldgate. I had some people who purchased 20 acres of land, and they engaged an environmental architect/designer to design them a sustainable house, and, having proposed to put their house on that block of land, they were unable to do so because between the council, the native veg people, the EPA, the CFS and every other organisation that got a say there was nowhere apparently on their 20 acres of land that a sustainable house could be put.

My third example is a lady who purchased a block of land in Stirling. When she was looking at the block of land she was told that it was going to be subject to CFS requirements because, obviously, Stirling is in the heart of the bushfire zone of the Mount Lofty Ranges. So, with that in mind she proceeded with the purchase of the land, and she engaged very strongly with the CFS in terms of coming up with an appropriate design for her house.

Eventually, after long and very amicable consultation with them, she was more than happy. She wanted to make sure she built a house that was going to be bushfire resistant, and so on. So, she came up with plans which were sent to the CFS who said, 'Yes, that's fine.' They sent her back a letter saying, 'Yes, they're fine,' and she took the plans and the CFS letter to the council who said, 'Oh no, we can't rely on the letter that you've got from the CFS. We have to make our own application to the CFS for a letter.' A different person in the CFS dealt with it, and the person's response was, 'We will only ever allow an underground house on that site.'

They are just three quick examples of the sorts of outcomes that I have had to deal with since I have been in this place in terms of the difficulties with the planning system that we have. Therefore, I have to say I was quite keen when I saw that we were going to be dealing with the Planning Act and coming up with some alternative methods for managing things. That said, I also come from very much a laissez-faire attitude. In fact, I think I am known as the libertarian of my side of the parliament, because I actually believe in the freedom of the individual, and I believe that if you buy a block of land you should reasonably be able to do reasonable things on it.

If you have a block of land in Stirling that is zoned commercial, to me it is not unreasonable that it should be allowed to put a commercial structure on it. But as I say, in Stirling things are a little different at times. In fact, when Subway was taking over two existing shops in the heart of Stirling at the corner of the street that my office is in, there were protesters outside because they did not want a Subway store, notwithstanding it was a perfectly lawful, perfectly healthy business that was being proposed, and they were going to employ local people. They are very much engaged in the community, and it is a very successful shop. But people protested about that, and equally there were protests when Foodland proposed to build on commercially zoned land behind the Stirling pub and they have created there what I think is probably the best supermarket in the state. I am a big fan of Foodland, but I am also a big fan of the idea that people can do generally what is reasonable to do as long as they are not interfering with anyone else's right to live on their adjoining or nearby land.

I think there is a balance to be achieved, but I do have concerns about whether this bill will actually achieve that balance. I want to refer to just a couple of little things, and I will not go through the bill in detail, you will be pleased to know, but when you go, for instance, to what I think is the fundamental clause of the whole thing, clause 94, it says:

Subject to this Act, no development may be undertaken unless the development is an approved development.

When you follow over to clause 99, basically, to get approval there are various categories of development. The first is 'accepted development', and a subsequent clause says that 'accepted development does not require planning consent'. Then, very curiously, after 'accepted development' there is 'code-assessed development'. Under the categorisation for 'code-assessed development', we then find there is this particular category called 'Deemed-to-satisfy assessment'. Clause 99 under 'Deemed-to-satisfy assessment' states:

(1) If a proposed development is classified as deemed-to-satisfy development, the development must be granted planning consent.

There is no problem with that. However, (2) then states:

(2) If a relevant authority—

and I have some comments to make about the relevant authority—

is satisfied that development is deemed-to-satisfy development except for 1 or more minor variations [then they] must assess it as being deemed-to-satisfy.

So, if it is 'deemed-to-satisfy', or even if it does not quite get there, it is a bit like AFL where you get a point for not quite getting a goal. You have 'deemed-to-satisfy' but then you do not quite satisfy that requirement so we are going to deem that it is going to satisfy anyway. Then it says that if you have that situation:

(3) A planning consent under this section must be granted without undertaking a process for public notification or submissions in relation to the proposed development.

So, I do have some concerns about just what the impact of that sort of section will be, particularly when one looks at the definition of 'development' in the definitions clause. The usual things are in there—change of use of land, building work and so on—but it also includes construction or alteration of a road, street or thoroughfare on land. On my 10 acres, if I want to put an all weather surface along it, which when I studied local government and planning law would have been an allowable thing to do without actually seeking planning consent, that now classifies as I understand it under this definition as a development.

It then also has a couple of provisions in relation to both state heritage places and local heritage places, and I express a concern about the rigour with which these state and local heritage rules are applied because it seems to me that we have reached a sort of bottleneck in terms of redeveloping properties which classify either at local or state level as having a heritage value. We have failed to adequately address the need for adaptive re-use and the consequence of that is that people who have a property which is classified as having heritage value can often find that they are so stymied in their attempts to adaptively re-use the property that they simply let it fall into disrepair.

It seems to me that we actually need to be a little more flexible than we have been in the past. For instance, there was a building in the city where there was a proposal for redevelopment for a relatively small building in the square mile of Adelaide city. It was a heritage listed building but because of the conflict between the obligations to provide disability access and the obligations not to disturb the heritage value of the property, and the fact that they were not allowed to discriminate against people with a disability by having them enter via another access around the back of the building, the fact was the building could not be redeveloped. The consequence of that is that we end up with a large number of buildings across the state which, because of their heritage status, cannot be redeveloped in any reasonable way, and I think we need to be far more adaptable in the way we deal with those things.

As I said, I came to this bill with a view that there is something to be said very much in favour of trying to address the planning issues in this state but my fundamental concern with the bill overall, I guess, can be expressed in terms of what the member for Bright was alluding to towards the end of his comments, and that is this idea of the Office of the Coordinator-General being able to take over the decisions for anything over $3 million in value. I absolutely endorse the comments made by the member for Bright in terms of the threshold of $3 million being far too low.

There are now many examples around Adelaide and its suburbs of properties which are simply private houses which would exceed that threshold. The consequence of that is that developments can too easily be introduced and, as was the case with the example given by the member for Bright, a proposal which does not meet the local guidelines and is rejected by the local council or the local development assessment panel, even rejected by an environment and resources court, can nevertheless simply then go through another door and gain a legitimate approval which, to my mind, is really an inappropriate approval.

Like the member for Bright, I have examples of those sorts of things happening, most recently in Strathalbyn which is in the electorate of Heysen, and a very beautiful part of the world it is. If you go out there it is a lovely town, but it has already two main streets. There is High Street which has the antiques and coffee shops and all that sort of stuff. While there are coffee shops down further and other antique shops in the town, down on Commercial Street there is the more regular retail area with the supermarket, hardware store, real estate agents and so on. There is a bit of a mix with them but there is plenty of retail space available in Strathalbyn.

Recently, there was a proposal to create yet another (a third) retail area by creating, on land which is currently zoned rural, yet another development. The people of Strathalbyn, overwhelmingly, did not want this to happen and the Alexandrina Council—which I have to say is by far the best of the four councils I have in my electorate—did not want it to happen and, indeed, just before we had the winter break, we prepared a petition and that petition went out in the community in Strathalbyn, and in two weeks we had 6,000, or thereabouts, signatures on the petition that was put into this parliament. Hopefully, they had the effect of swaying the minister to not agree that that proposal should be allowed to go ahead, given that the land was zoned rural and that what was going to be put on it was a massive development.

Up in the Hills, we do have the issue (and, again, it is something the member for Bright alluded to) that we need to protect our food bowl. Adelaide is in the heart of an area which is relatively rich and relatively clean and green in terms of our agriculture, and I think it is important for us for the future not just to maintain this city with its own food bowl but to tap into that resource (and it is a huge resource) for our future in terms of potential export markets, and so on, overseas.

Because we are surrounded very much by relatively less than productive land in a lot of the areas of the state, we only have this area, really, close in that can be our food bowl. It is not as though we can keep pushing it ever outwards. I guess I might have some difference with the member for Bright in terms of whether we move to apartment living and putting boundaries on where we can build, but we do need to have some rational basis for making sure that that food bowl around Adelaide is protected.

I am not in favour of social engineering. I do not think that most people in Australia, and particularly in Adelaide, anticipate that they are going to be living in apartments. I, for one, have spoken to numerous developers and said, 'Could you please build some more outdoor area,' which should be the cheapest part of the apartment to build, 'because I don't want to live in a box'. I know I would feel a bit claustrophobic living in a box without a sufficient area where I could go outside.

Even if we doubled the population of Adelaide city from what it was—in 1915, there was about 46,000 people living in the City of Adelaide and there are now about 23,000, I think—and got it back to its 1915 level, from a century ago, that would be a massive increase but the vast majority of the 1.1 million people who live in Adelaide would still be out in the suburbs.

I think there is something rather glorious about many our suburbs. I recently attended a wonderful talk by Professor Chris Daniels, who had a lot to say about urban ecology—many members would have heard him on the radio talking about that topic—and our old backyards were environmentally friendly. He pointed out that, in fact, although we are known as a city with a park around it, we have relatively a small amount of parkland compared with many other major cities in the world.

What makes us different is that we do have these backyards, and I think that is something to be treasured. We need to spend a fair bit of time and focus concentrating on the fact that we have some assets in this state, we have a wonderful climate and we have the ability to have these backyards which give us that greenery and ecology and level of sustainability that we do not have by virtue of our parklands.

I reiterate that my big concern about this, and no doubt it will be teased out in the committee stage, is the fact that the government seems to be, as it does in so many other ways, centralising unto itself the capacity to make decisions about the future of our suburbs and our planning regulation.

People get elected to local government for a reason, and I have some concerns about that. I do believe that it is appropriate for us to analyse in detail what this government is doing because, in my view, it does centralise too much and, particularly because of that very low threshold on what can be referred to the office of the Coordinator-General, it takes away from local management what should be, I think, the right of a local community to have more say in determining what its future will look like.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (12:55): I was here until close to midnight last night, waiting my turn. I understand I am the last, but by no means the least, speaker on this bill on behalf of the opposition during the second reading stage of the legislation. I do not intend to canvass, repeat or go over what many members on this side of the house have raised in relation to concerns and issues with this bill, but there is one important element that has been raised that I do want to repeat, and we see this as a fairly common trend with this government—that is, the centralising of control.

The member for Heysen has just spoken about it, other members on this side of the house have raised it as an issue, and I know the member for MacKillop raised this yesterday, too—this trend or focus, or whatever you want to describe it as, of centralising control to give power to a few senior people within the government and to the minister.

I do not want to exaggerate things to the extreme, but this is the path to socialism, where the state controls everything. The supposed intellectual capacity is locked up and delivered in the senior levels of government. That is not the way South Australia or Australia as a whole should operate. We know it is a failed model because, when it is taken to an extreme, as we have seen occur overseas, in Europe and in other places, eventually that model fails—and it has.

I am not going to compare what is happening in South Australia with the USSR, but we saw that the model failed because basically the population was being plunged into poverty and onto the brink of starvation, and some of the population were starving. I am not going to exaggerate the situation to that extent; however, it is a concern that we are continuing to move down this path of centralisation of control.

In saying that, I know that the Attorney-General has had a bee in his bonnet about local government over quite a period of time in this place, when he sat on the backbench a number of years ago. I think it was in our first term because we all came in together—the members for Heysen, Morphett, Bragg and myself, and the Attorney-General, the Premier and others—when we were all first elected in 2002. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.

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