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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-08-24 Daily Xml
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Davenport Electorate Sporting Facilities

Mr MURRAY (Davenport) (16:33): There is something strange and deeply concerning occurring in the City of Onkaparinga. It involves grassroots sporting organisations being actively prevented by council from applying for state government facilities funding grants. Let's just read that back: council does not want clubs applying for funding from the state and is using its position as the landowner to prevent it from occurring.

Curiously, this appears to be a unique problem for the clubs and facilities in my seat of Davenport. Elsewhere in the council, clubs are encouraged to apply. They are just being denied the opportunity in my area. We even have a situation where previous written support and permission from council for a funding application for unisex change rooms at the Happy Valley Sports Park have now been reneged upon. Council has then sought to claim that there is no evidence of that support and, when copies of that written support have been pointed to, the council has described that as 'unfortunate'.

In a completely separate situation, the Hub Gymnastics Club had proposed an application for a 50 per cent contribution for a KinderGym extension to a council facility, the other 50 per cent of which the club would fund itself—the club. Despite being asked for no money, the council did not want to support the proposal and eventually constructed a series of conditions designed to achieve just that.

I have hundreds of women and children denied an opportunity to use safe, compliant change room facilities at the Happy Valley Sports Park. I have hundreds at the Valley Vikings Netball Club, who are forced to play their home games at Meadows because their council will not just not support an application for funding a few courts: they will not permit an application. I have 600 members of the Hub Gymnastics Club who are prepared to put their hand in their own pocket to enhance the facility they leased from the council so as to provide child care, and thereby enhance and grow the club, effectively prevented from doing so. I am hearing the term 'immoral' used to describe the council's action in this case.

Council takes three years to approve a drop-in change room facility at the Flagstaff Hill Community Centre and one year to approve building a coaches' box at that ground, whilst around the corner Telstra can get approval to build a mobile phone tower in nine months despite residents in the area objecting. Frustration with this council is not new. In my newsletter of winter 2010, I pointed out how we need reform, how from 1997 to 2019 my rates for my home in Onkaparinga increased 152 per cent versus an inflation rate across the same period of 69 per cent.

Rates increases of over double the rate of inflation have been a hallmark of the council since it was formed by a merger of the Happy Valley, Willunga and Noarlunga councils in 1997. In 1998, a DPTI report provided a justification for that merger on the basis that staff numbers had dropped in three councils, from 550 staff in 1997 to 515 in June 1998. As at 30 June 2020, Onkaparinga employs 803 people, which is a 60 per cent increase on the 500 staff council started with just over 20 years ago.

The tale of the take continues with rates comparisons against the Marion city council, where a $540,000 home will cost $322 more in rates in Onkaparinga every year than the same home in Marion. Another example is the assessment by the final inquiry report into the Hallett Cove Joint Venture, prepared by the South Australian local government boundaries commission. It detailed how the same block of vacant land would generate $4,000 in rates for Marion, whereas if that land were in the Onkaparinga council area the rates for that same piece of property would be $9,000.

Easily, the most galling part is the fact that, of a recent $9.4 million capital works funding contribution made by the federal government to council, only $830,000 (9 per cent) was spent in the area, which will comprise my seat of Davenport, yet that area has, according to council, 19 per cent of the rateable homes in the council: 19 per cent of the ratepayers are getting 9 per cent of the funding. In rates, that equates to about a million dollars a month heading south from my community.

My community deserves better. The volunteers at my sporting clubs deserve better. The vast majority of the people on the council are great. That is why, notwithstanding that, it is time to replace the landlord. That is why I am pleased to announce the launch of the Glenthorne council. There will be plenty of details to come. It will be a community focused on parks and lifestyle, sweeping from the Hills down through to Hallett Cove. It will have 55,000 people, sensible rate structures and be responsibly locally accountable.

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