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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-02-23 Daily Xml
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Adelaide Electorate

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:29): I rise today to talk about some really exciting things that are happening in my community. I often speak about growing up in the South-East, in Naracoorte on a farm, in Bool Lagoon and along the Naracoorte Creek. I guess as a child I probably took for granted the fact that I could spend my afternoons after school and weekends climbing trees and really just running around and playing in so much open green space. Now I am a member of the Adelaide community, and whilst we live in the city and raise our kids in the city, we should still have those experiences of being able to climb trees and run around in open green space. That is why I am so incredibly passionate about greening our neighbourhood.

Over recent weeks, I have been making some really exciting announcements about how we are increasing our tree canopy and increasing the open green space in our community so that my children, my neighbours' kids, the rest of the community's kids and, one day, our grandkids can enjoy the open green space and trees that we are going to plant today.

One of the projects that I am really passionate about is a new Prospect pocket park, basically on Scotty's Corner, on the corner of Main North Road and Da Costa Avenue. That is a really exciting park that we are going to build because, really, it was just an empty dirt block. Rather than see another group of cement apartments, what we are going to see instead is more trees, more shrubs and more open green space for the community to enjoy.

Not far away, at RL Pash Park, on the border of Collinswood and Nailsworth, I am upgrading the beautiful park. What is really important is that we retain that open green space but upgrade the exercise equipment and the play equipment for the community to enjoy.

A bit further west you will find an empty block, at the southern end of Churchill Road. Recently, I had some community members come to me. They said, 'What's happening with this block? We would love to see it turned into open green space for the community.' So I partnered with those local residents. We met with the City of Prospect and I advocated to my colleague, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, and just last weekend we were able to announce that we were turning this empty block into open green space for our community to enjoy.

We made that amazing announcement at the Ovingham community day, to celebrate the completion of the Ovingham level crossing removal project. We had hundreds of people from our community there to celebrate the completion of this significant project. What made it even better, the icing on the cake, was that I was able to announce to my community that we were not just going to be creating one pocket park at the southern end of Churchill Road but we were creating another two pocket parks just across the railway line, in the Premier's electorate: the Drayton Street pocket park and the Chief Street pocket park. That was an incredible afternoon, to be able to announce three amazing pocket parks for our community, which they had been fighting for.

I want to shout out to a couple of locals who really were the driving force behind these community campaigns. The first was a local resident in my community, James Maybank. We really should recruit this guy because he has really taken it on board to doorknock the community, letterbox the community, get them involved, get them behind this project and advocate to me as their local member. Also, on the other side of the railway tracks, Iolanthe and Steve Sutton were driving forces behind the Drayton Street and Chief Street pocket parks.

I would also like to give a shout out to the City of Prospect councillors Trinh Nguyen and Kristina Barnett, who also advocated strongly to me, and through the council, for the establishment of these pocket parks, and also to the Mayor of Prospect, Matt Larwood, who was a big support as well.

What this means is not just a little bit of grass and a couple of trees: it actually means we are increasing the tree canopy in our community, which cools our suburbs and creates biodiversity. Also, having these open green spaces means we are increasing the physical and mental wellbeing of our community and having more places where we can connect. These are some really exciting announcements, and I cannot wait to continue greening our neighbourhood. Thanks to everyone in my community for being a part of it.

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