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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-06 Daily Xml
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Belair National Park

Mr DULUK (Waite) (15:07): My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water. Can the minister please update the house on the consultation for the Belair National Park, including that of the old golf course and country club, which closed on Tuesday?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:08): I thank the member for Waite for his question, a question that is very pertinent to a fairly significant chunk of his electorate around the Blackwood Hills area. A consultation has been undertaken for the last couple of months in relation to a master plan for the future of the Belair National Park site and in particular a future for the former golf course site, which went bankrupt as a functioning golf course around about March/April 2018, and we have really struggled to find a coherent future for that site.

We have followed multiple pathways and followed up a lot of leads in that time but been unable to find anyone to take on the country club building and the 50 or so hectares of the former golf course, which form a very clear buffer between the suburbs of Glenalta and Hawthorndene and the broader native vegetation within the national park. I have spoken to the member for Waite on many occasions about this and we have had many really good discussions about the options for this site.

I made two things very clear: first, we would not be creating a situation where the buffer zone, which is seen as a very important firebreak between the park and residences, was extensively revegetated, largely because I have received a significant amount of feedback from local residents who feared that might occur; and, secondly, any recreational activity or infrastructure associated with that activity that would occur on the site would not, under my watch, involve the removal of any significant number of trees, and 'significant number' is hard to put a figure on, but any more than a few.

The master plan process and the consultation have been very heavily subscribed by local residents, and rightly so. This is a park that has been there since 1891 and it's a park which has some half a million visitors a year and which forms a key part of the fabric and the character of the Blackwood Hills and Belair community.

As the member for Waite highlighted, the consultation closed earlier this week on Tuesday, and we are now in a position to at least give an initial indication of what that feedback was—the number of people who responded (2,740 responses) was a significant level of response—and a way forward. With regard to a proposal that was relatively controversial, around putting soccer pitches on there, a proposal that emerged from the Sturt Lions Soccer Club, I am now clearly ruling that out going forward to the next stage. That's not appropriate for the site and I don' believe it was going to be financially viable either.

The other elements of the master plan, which include the upgrade to some facilities and the consolidation of walking trails and the like, will be moved forward into a planning stage. The future of the country club itself remains under a cloud, and we will decide what is to happen with that. I hope the member for Waite and the Belair community feel comforted by this process. It has been very legitimate engagement.

One thing that worried me was the collection of many signatures by a member of the community sometimes known as Alex Butterworth, sometimes known as Sans Butterworth, sometimes going under the disguise of a number of faceless social media platforms, collecting a petition with a huge amount of public details on there that has not been presented to parliament. I know the member for Waite would like to do that in due course, so I hope that Mr Butterworth fronts up and provides that to the community.

The SPEAKER: Order! The time for answering the question has expired.

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