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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-10-28 Daily Xml
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Badcoe Electorate

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (15:54): Imagine waking up on a sunny Sunday morning, collecting your paper from your driveway, unfurling it over a hot coffee to see images of your own neighbourhood looking nothing like your own neighbourhood. You splutter your coffee as you realise that outside your home you will soon have, not just the 50 metre-wide sunken roadway that you were expecting to be built in place of the existing South Road, but additional at-grade roads, three tunnel exits and, most surprisingly, an elevated flyover road right in front of your home, all spanning some 120 metres wide.

That would have been a surprise to anyone. It was certainly a shock to those who just escaped being scooped up in last month's compulsory acquisition notices in Glandore to find they are now facing this triple-decker highway, severing them from Black Forest. It was an even bigger surprise to people in Everard Park and Ashford along Anzac Highway itself who had no idea this was coming at all seeing as they do not even live on South Road. They were simply stunned beyond words.

It was also a pretty big shock to veterans in Badcoe whose memorial boulevard will be forever changed by an aerial roadway touching down and plunging into the centre of this tribute to our Diggers. It came as a big surprise to the many residents in my area who have long fought and continued to fight for more tree canopy in our area to find that 120 fully grown and towering old trees will be lopped down.

Put simply, the artist impressions show an expanse of my electorate completely transformed. Is this a proposal? No, seems not. This is what the government is telling us will happen. They are not asking. Those artistic images are rather flattering. Compared to the concept diagram, there are some rather notable things missing like the fact that there are two elevated roadways, not one; and there is a 15 metre-high exhaust stack which is not highlighted in the pretty pictures either.

This is no doubt a necessary project. Labor was pleased to commence all other stages of the north-south corridor. But it is very difficult for my community who are the ones sacrificing their homes and sacrificing their way of life in Glandore, Black Forest, Ashford—and soon Kurralta Park, Marleston, Everard Park and Keswick—to understand the rationale, the alternatives that have been explored and the eventual consequences amid so little communication and, indeed, misinformation. Put simply, if this was happening to you, it is not the way you would like to be treated.

I listened intently to the minister's address on this topic yesterday and there was not a word of sympathy or understanding in his address for people in my area. Nothing. What that says to me is that this government simply does not give a stuff about people in Badcoe, and it is another kick in the guts. This government is not interested in how we might feel about these really wideranging impacts on us, from land acquisition, to our communities being split, to the loss of trees, to impinging on our veterans' heritage, to the way we move around our community, to the impact on property values.

The minister is happy to tell the media of significant developments before the affected residents, which directly contradicts his comments on ABC Adelaide radio on 29 September when he said, and I quote:

…that's why we've always said we wanted to do was deal with the people impacted first, not do it through the media…

Am I surprised about this treatment by the Liberal government of my community? No, but I am disappointed. I did think that after the outcry over reneging on their CBD school zone promise in 2018 and then the disgust over suddenly allowing up to eight-storey buildings for selected developers on Anzac Highway, also at Glandore, without any consultation, I thought maybe this government might have learned. But clearly they simply do not care.

Tough decisions have to be made in government, and it is not easy. But the way you deal with people at these times matters. The lack of information, the lack of a genuine conversation and the lack of compassion for local people who are humans with their own complicated lives to lead is absolutely galling.

At an expert forum I recently held to help my community get access to high-quality information about South Road, considering the vacuum of information that has been presented so far, one woman said, 'What has this government got against Glandore? It's like they've got it in for us,' and she is not the first to say that.

We need genuine consultation from this government, we need the reference design released so that our community knows what is going on and can actually make informed decisions and, above all from this government, we need some compassion.

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