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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-10-18 Daily Xml
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Greater Adelaide Regional Plan

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (15:24): I rise to speak about a topic that is very important to my local constituents, which is planning and urban infill. It is particularly timely to be talking about these issues, with the South Australian State Planning Commission currently seeking feedback on their new Greater Adelaide Regional Plan discussion paper. This is a discussion paper that has been released and is intended to help determine what the Greater Adelaide region might look like over the next 30 years for the needs of our current communities and our future communities and where and how we should grow as a region and a city.

The paper includes some suggestions about how we can reach the estimated 300,000 additional homes that Adelaide will need by 2053 and where and how these will be built. That is a mammoth task: 300,000 homes by 2053 to be built right across South Australia. I am the first to recognise that the only way we can solve what is a housing crisis is by very quickly and very dramatically increasing the supply of housing across the state. So I do not think this debate should ever be lazily reduced to labelling people nimbys or yimbys or any other form of imby.

Indeed, it should be about encouraging a discussion about how we can encourage the right development in the right places, and to that end I wanted to make some comments on what this discussion paper means for my constituents locally in the eastern suburbs. The paper identifies Glenside, which is a suburb in my electorate, as a strategic infill area. It also identifies Greenhill and Kensington roads, which are two major thoroughfares through the middle of my electorate, as corridor investigation areas.

What this means—strategic infill areas and corridor investigation areas—is the potential for more urban infill and more high-rise development in suburbs like Glenside, Frewville, Rose Park, Eastwood, Dulwich and Heathpool. Indeed, on 28 August, the chair of the State Planning Commission told parliament's Environment, Resources and Development Committee, and I quote: 'Height is no issue, so you could build 30 storeys in Glenside and not upset anyone.'

I put that quote to the minister today in question time and I asked him whether he agreed with those comments, and the response I got really was quite extraordinary. First, he labelled me and my constituents as nimbys for merely asking a question about what his own State Planning Commissioner stated only a couple of months ago. Then he said that they have to go somewhere, these 30-storey buildings have to go somewhere. Seemingly, what this Labor government have their eye on is Glenside for the first of their 30-storey towers to try to solve their housing crisis.

I think the minister is very badly mistaken if he assumes that no-one will be upset with 30-storey high buildings in Glenside. It is about 20-odd storeys more than the current planning rules allow for, by the way. I think many in my community will be upset at the prospect of 30-storey buildings in Glenside because we know that unrestrained urban infill, which is the policy of successive Labor governments, can erode the character of our neighbourhoods.

But perhaps more importantly it can also put very significant pressure on public infrastructure around that area, whether that be our roads where we already see significant problems with congestion and particularly car parking, whether that be our open space where we are already desperate for more in the City of Burnside, or whether that be our schools where I note that every single school in my electorate is currently at or over capacity, and that is before the minister's 30-storey building in Glenside goes into place.

This week, I have written to all my constituents in the local area to bring their attention to this current consultation. I am encouraging them to read the paper, to understand what the Labor government is proposing for our area and to have their say. I encourage everyone to have their say now before the planning rules are rewritten by this Labor government, just as John Rau did in 2017, and their neighbourhoods are changed forever.

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