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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-02-20 Daily Xml
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City of Onkaparinga Playgrounds

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:33): My community is facing an important decision and one that could change the way that our children play, grow and connect for years to come. The City of Onkaparinga are proposing a significant shift in their open-space strategy, and that could mean fewer playgrounds for our kids. Ultimately, right now, if you live in the City of Onkaparinga, you would be lucky to have a playground generally within about 500 metres of every home. With their new proposal, they are looking to expand that to 1,000 metres.

Currently, most people in the City of Onkaparinga would be able to walk to a playground within about five minutes. What they are proposing will mean a 10 to 15-minute walk for little legs, often with parents pushing prams and holding multiple children and pets at times. They will walk that 15 minutes to get to that location, which is quite likely not to have a toilet, so who knows how long they get to stay there before they have to pack everything back up, turn around and head back home.

What this will look like is that over the next five years a list of playgrounds—and if you just look at the electorate of Davenport, we are talking about around 11 playgrounds that will no longer see any renewal at all. They may have a little bit of maintenance here and there, a little paint touch up job here and there, but there will be no renewals for those playgrounds. When those playgrounds then reach their full life, they will be removed and will not be replaced.

Those spaces will be maintained as open space. But honestly, when has a child ever got excited about a patch of grass and a picnic bench? So I think it is really important that our community is aware of this. The council has been consulting on this for a few months now and have had very little feedback, and I genuinely believe that is because when they go out to consult with their community they say have your say on the Open Space Strategic Management Plan. If that were to land in my letterbox, I would not get excited either.

I popped up a post on my social media last night drawing attention to the fact that some playgrounds might be removed and I have had over 100 comments already with people very concerned about the fact that they are losing assets in their community. These are assets that ratepayers pay for and fund, and what this means is that we are now being asked to settle for less. So I am pleading with our community to hop onto the council's website and have your say. Their consultation is open until 23 February. I will also be putting in a submission on behalf of my own community of Davenport, and any comments, phone calls and emails that I receive before this weekend I will be able to include in that submission. So please reach out to me or to the council. Make sure that you let the council know how much you value your local playground, how important it is for you to be able to walk to a local playground. Not everybody wants to hop in their car and drive somewhere, and not everyone has that luxury to be able to do that.

Other things worth considering are that not every street in the City of Onkaparinga has a footpath, so if you are being expected now to walk a kilometre to get to your local playground, is the council now going to consider improving our footpath network? Will they look at the trails around the council area and look to improve those to help to connect the playgrounds that are planned to remain in our city?

Just with the time I have left, I would just like to, on a positive note, thank the City of Onkaparinga for the work that they did helping to celebrate the launch of our newly upgraded Aberfoyle Community Centre last weekend. That was an election commitment of mine. It was a $1.5 million spend from the state government, and then the City of Onkaparinga worked in partnership with us to deliver on that project. There would have been—well, I think the Lions Club said they handed over more than 250 sausages, so that goes to show there was a good crowd there on the weekend. People were really excited about the new programs that are now going to be on offer there at the Aberfoyle Community Centre.

I am particularly excited about the youth programs that we will be able to offer. There has not been a lot of a youth offering in our area for some time. With a high school right across the road, it is really important that there is somewhere for young people to go to hang out after school. I am really looking forward to seeing this space come alive and really start delivering for our community.

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