House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-05 Daily Xml

Contents

Brompton Gasworks

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:41): Another question for the Minister for Housing and Urban Development: that being the case, before doing so did the minister or anyone acting on his behalf instruct the CEO of Renewal SA not to exercise delegated authority to sign the final contracts with the MAB Corporation?

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell: Everyone in Tumby Bay has been asking about this.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Planning) (14:41): The government's policy has been quite clear. The government's policy, and it is important that you realise this, is quite clear: we wanted to have a review. This is a very, very important site, 5.8 hectares in the inner western suburbs, close to the CBD, heavily polluted, needs remediation. I will tell you the pollutants: hydrocarbons, heavy metals, arsenic. All of that is on the public record. You can google it and find out just how heavily polluted this site is.

It is of critical importance to this state that we get it right, and that is why the government is having an independent review. We are not going to just leave it to the judgement of the previous minister—

Mr TELFER: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Member for Flinders on a point of order.

Mr Brown: What number?

Mr TELFER: Standing order 128—

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Florey is called to order.

Mr TELFER: —relevance.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member has the call.

Mr TELFER: Relevance to the question. The question was: did the minister or anyone acting on his behalf instruct the CEO of Renewal SA not to exercise delegated authority to sign the final contracts with the MAB Corporation? It was not about the site. It was a very specific question.

The SPEAKER: Member for Flinders, that is a point well made. There is some force in what you say. The minister has the call.

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: I was being directly relevant because this is a very important site. It needs remediation. It has been very controversial, you would have noticed, announcing this deal in February 2022 just before a state election. I just say to the member that no development agreement was signed. All that happened was a preferred proponent was selected, so this still has to go to the board, it still has to be examined, it was not a final judgement. In any case, we won't be leaving it to the judgement of the former minister in this case. We will be putting it out to a review, we will be getting the results of that review back and we will be considering them.