HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-04-03 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Environment and Food Production Areas) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:46): I rise to continue my remarks on this very important bill. As it happens, when I was speaking earlier, I was talking about the importance of open green space and our Parklands when talking about higher density living in our CBD. I was speaking about the fact that when there is an increase in housing density it must be matched with open green space, which is why I am incredibly proud to be delivering this for my community through the creation of pocket parks. Apologies, there will be a few repetitions from my grievance.

In late 2023, I opened the Prospect Pocket Park on the corner of Main North Road and Da Costa Avenue in Prospect in partnership with the City of Prospect. I wanted to change the thinking about the future of Main North Road as a place not just for car yards but for neighbourhoods and for communities. I commend the City of Prospect for its work in also creating a vision for this part of our community through their plans for the Prospect Lifestyle Precinct.

Council's overall goal is to create a thriving community destination which contributes to the day-to-day vibrancy of our council area. Their objectives are to build on a generational legacy that celebrates the larger oval precinct at Prospect Oval, home to the mighty North Adelaide Roosters, to create a space that can be used every day by the local community through increased quality public amenity and to create a quality health, wellness, fitness and sporting precinct that attracts the highest level of community usage and sporting participation, particularly as we see more families move into our community and kids grow up.

Objectives also include creating a destination acting as a catalyst to attract commercial and residential outcomes through taking advantage of the Main North Road frontage and Parklands setting, as well as increase connectivity between Main North Road, Prospect Oval and Prospect Road through a precinct approach. I am also very proud to say that work at this very moment is underway on a brand-new pocket park, the Churchill Road Pocket Park at Ovingham. This additional green space will support the communities along Churchill Road and Devonport Terrace, which have seen higher densities over the past decade. With that, I commend the bill to the house.

Mr BROWN (Florey) (15:49): I am very pleased to rise in support of this important bill; in fact, it is not only important but timely. Anyone who has lived in Greater Adelaide for quite a while now, as I expect the majority of members of this house have, will recognise that Adelaide and South Australia have been on a trajectory of change for some time. Greater Adelaide has changed a great deal, in particular over the last couple of decades.

This change has been remarkable to observe. Labor governments, in particular, have worked hard to guide our state and our city to grow in population and reputation. Increasingly, Adelaide and South Australia are globally recognised as a highly desirable place to visit and to live. Our beautiful regions, our stunning beaches and our captivating city attract significant international attention. Our recent spectacular successes in major events and festivals are continuing the work of expanding and strengthening our domestic and global reputation as a destination of distinction.

Of course, we are also growing in numbers. Since a brief period of relative stagnation during the late 1990s, we have experienced a fairly steady rate of positive population growth. This growth, too, is something we should celebrate because growth brings opportunity. For our economy, for our community, and for the culture of our city and state, growth is a healthy phenomenon.

However, growth also presents challenges. Amid ongoing challenges that are shared across jurisdictions around Australia, and indeed around the world, like the rest of the nation we are currently experiencing a housing crisis. Many South Australians are feeling these circumstances very acutely. In order to protect and preserve the quality of life that makes Adelaide and South Australia such a wonderful place to live, a good government will recognise the need to act. To remain one of the most liveable cities in the world, to remain a place where residents of our communities are supported to live well, we need to plan for the growth that we know will continue. We need to support and facilitate development that will meet the future and long-term needs of our community.

By 2050 Greater Adelaide's population is expected to grow by some 670,000 people relative to today's population numbers. As a state we are on track to reach two million people by 2030. We need to act now to lay the groundwork to support development that will enable Greater Adelaide to adapt and respond to rising needs for housing, as well as for the infrastructure to accompany housing growth well into the future. This means that we need an ongoing supply of development-ready land over the next 30 years.

Since coming to office, the Malinauskas government has approved 30 code amendments, rezoning 500 hectares of land to create at least 7,000 new dwellings. With the bill now before the house, we seek to take further crucial steps forward. Earlier this month, the Malinauskas government released the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan (GARP), a blueprint for Greater Adelaide's future growth. Alongside the Malinauskas government's Housing Roadmap, the GARP seeks to ensure that there is an appropriate supply of serviced land to meet current, emerging and future housing and infrastructure demand. The GARP identifies where 315,000 new homes will be built over the next 30 years and preserves important land for future infrastructure requirements.

When the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 was first drafted in 2015-16, government policy was strongly focused on urban consolidation, with a target set for 85 per cent of all growth to occur through infill development. This is no longer consistent with government policy and, as such, the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan has removed the former objective in previous versions, which targeted 85 per cent of future housing being infill projects.

While infill will remain an important element in the mix of providing for the future growth of Greater Adelaide, we can observe through a wealth of lived experience that infill carries its own significant challenges. Appropriate physical infrastructure and social infrastructure are both required to make infill work well for our community. This is why discussions around infill sometimes draw a distinction between the practice of general densification and carefully planned infill.

Mr Acting Speaker, you only need to visit my electorate and go to Para Hills or Ingle Farm to see that the infill pressure on our parking and traffic is causing problems in our state. Para Hills and Ingle Farm are particular hotspots in our north-eastern Adelaide area because people moved there 50 years ago into a fantastic planned area. They lived well, and often their families have also moved into the area, or indeed have stayed in the area, and now they are finding the houses are being knocked down and three or even four are being built on the block in their place. This is causing enormous trouble in my electorate for car parking and also for local traffic. I can say on behalf of my constituents that I am very glad the government has decided to reduce the pressure for infill development.

Infill retains the potential to play an important role in meeting future community need for housing, provided that it is carefully planned and appropriately managed. We can refer to this practice as strategic infill. The sort of infill that we will see at the West End site is a good example of the strategic infill that this government chooses to embrace and pursue. However, we know that what the Premier has previously characterised as a 'letting it rip' infill has a tendency to create or exacerbate challenges, particularly in the form of increased congestion on our roads, as well as in the form of unsustainable demand on both our physical and social infrastructure and amenity.

Residents across my own community can attest to the sort of infill whereby we see suburban blocks being subdivided to accommodate a doubling of dwellings, or a trebling, and sometimes more. This type of infill is having a significant impact on quality of life for many people across Greater Adelaide. It is also the case that South Australians deserve the opportunity to avail themselves of choice in terms of what sort of housing they want to live in. For a government to restrict development to an overwhelming focus on infill has the effect of making what is still a commonly held ambition among South Australians—that is, the ambition to live in a house with a backyard and a bit of space in which their families can grow and thrive—harder for people to achieve.

In considering where the balance lies, a great fact to highlight is this: we have form in ensuring good planning where development is thoughtfully managed and is undertaken in a deliberate way. The planning system in South Australia is ranked first in the nation by the likes of the Business Council of Australia for a reason, and that is because when land is rezoned we have a process in place to drive successful planning outcomes. Whether it be greenfield development through rezoning or strategic and carefully managed infill, we approach development in a holistic way that considers the impacts on our infrastructure and on our community.

The introduction of a bill to amend the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 to vary the environment and food protection areas (EFPA) so they align with the GARP is an important step in doing exactly that. The bill also aims to ensure that the EFPAs remain consistent with the GARP for new growth areas over the next 30 years. The Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Environment and Food Protection Areas) Amendment Bill seeks to achieve the following:

amend section 7 of the act to designate a revised GRO plan setting out new EFPA boundaries based on the GARP;

confirm that any land that is removed from the EFPA on commencement of the bill has limited land division overlay applied through the Planning and Design Code to prevent unorderly fragmentation of the land, which would make it harder to develop for a residential purpose at a later date;

remove the current urban consolidation test for future variations to the EFPA boundaries, which essentially prevents amendments to EFPA boundaries unless Greater Adelaide is unable to support infill development;

ensure that future variations of the EFPA are consistent with the GARP and ensure a 30-year land supply rather than 50 years; and

insert new provisions in section 64 of the act requiring the GARP to consider population growth and to identify land to be developed in the short term.

Growth areas to be removed from the environment and food protection areas were determined through an extensive land assessment that was undertaken as part of the GARP process. The areas that are to be removed from the EFPA will still need to be rezoned before they are used primarily for residential development. This will occur in a staged manner over the next 30 years to ensure orderly development, and it will be based on demand. We will also take into account infrastructure provision and costs.

Crucially, the revision of the EFPA seeks to ensure that key agricultural lands surrounding Greater Adelaide remain protected. The changes for the EFPAs represent a loss of less than 1 per cent of key agricultural lands in the GARP area. This, together with the current character preservation districts and Hills Face Zone, ensure we retain a strong urban growth boundary. It is important to highlight that areas identified through the GARP for new homes are either already connected to infrastructure, have infrastructure commitments in place or are located in areas where future investment in infrastructure is planned.

The Malinauskas government's South Australian Housing Roadmap represents a coordinated approach to bring more housing to market sooner. We are strengthening skills and training in our state to ensure we have the trades available to construct the new homes our community will need into the future. We are coordinating and investing in crucial infrastructure. We are delivering more public housing, strengthening and protecting rights for renters, and addressing affordability, including by abolishing stamp duty for first-home buyers at eligible price points.

In recognition that planning for water is a crucially important part of overall planning for growth, it is important to note that SA Water has committed to $1.5 billion of spending between 2024 and 2028 to unlock these new growth areas within Greater Adelaide. The GARP also supports our efforts to lock in land for schools, hospitals and emergency services. The GARP also addresses the protection of key rail infrastructure corridors. The preserved railway corridors aim to ensure that we are not losing potential opportunities to alleviate demands on private vehicle reliance. These elements offer valuable strategic and financial advantages, saving the South Australian taxpayer money down the track.

It is also important to note that there is no requirement for farming activities to cease simply because land has been removed from the EFPA. I mentioned that the areas being removed from the EFPA will still need to be rezoned before they are used for residential development and that this needs to occur in a staged manner, and that is what will happen over the timeframe of the next 30 years. The government will also give consideration to updating key policies around the urban and rural interface to ensure that agricultural activities can still continue. These policy investigations will take into account issues such as bushfire protection, dust and noise between residential and farming areas.

Consideration has also been given to public amenity that will support quality of life across key emerging growth areas, including Angle Vale, Kudla and the Gawler River. The Malinauskas Labor government has committed $53 million towards the first stage of the Northern Parklands. At maturity, these Parklands will cover almost 1,000 hectares of land, which is 39 per cent larger than the Parklands surrounding the CBD.

The centrepiece of the Northern Parklands will be the proposed 70-hectare Village Green sport and recreation area. The playing fields will include ovals, courts and clubroom facilities that will provide an excellent home to local sporting clubs. Located along the electrified Gawler railway line, the Village Green sport and recreation area will feature public transport connections as well as car parking. More than 760 hectares will be preserved for natural green open space across the Northern Parklands, promoting biodiversity and securing habitat for native animals.

A key principle that underlines all of these policy efforts is that development and growth are best undertaken through careful planning. Ensuring adequate infrastructure planning and provision at the outset is crucial. The Greater Adelaide Regional Plan provides the direction, the guidance and the methodology for future development within Greater Adelaide. Our intention is that it will transform the way we approach both infill and greenfield development within our city and region.

The GARP is a crucial strategic element to our Housing Roadmap. These are significant policies that the Malinauskas government is steadfastly committed to because we are determined to support South Australians to access opportunity and choice in housing. All forms of development have a role in our future. Where infill is undertaken, it must be done strategically, and future urban and suburban growth must be planned for correctly to ensure appropriate infrastructure is in place. Traffic management and suitable access to schools, health service infrastructure, public transport and public amenity must all be taken into account.

A good government sees these challenges on the horizon and seizes the opportunity to meet them head-on. A good government acts. I am pleased to commend this bill to the house and urge members to support it. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Minister for Housing for bringing this bill to the parliament and for his ongoing commitment to making sure that South Australians have access to housing.

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (16:03): I rise to support the Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Environment and Food Production Areas) Amendment Bill, and I am enthused to be doing so because this is an issue that is critical to my electorate. In fact, I would go so far as to say that housing and planning and development are the number one issue for my electorate, and have been for the entire time that I have been lucky enough to serve as the member for Badcoe.

This legislation goes to the heart of the issue that my constituents have been raising with me over many years and, I am sure, were raising before that as well. The question that is critical for our area, which is very close to the CBD—it borders the Parklands, in fact—is the question between spreading out or up. In recent years, my electorate has certainly seen a lot of the up, and that increased density has not been without serious questions and sometimes some ill consequences for my local area.

What this bill seeks to do in terms of providing a much greater area of land in which future housing can be built on the outskirts of the existing greater metropolitan Adelaide area, really, even though it may be quite some kilometres away from my electorate of Badcoe, has an immediate, real and direct impact on the people who live in my inner suburban area.

I have had that many debates with people about this question of out or up. Of course, the starting point for those discussions is often previous policies, particularly those made around 2015-16 that were dictating that 85 per cent of new development should be infill development. There are certainly people in my community who are fans of this approach.

There is quite a lively contest of ideas in my area about urban infill versus expansion out of the existing greater metropolitan area, and both arguments have merit and both arguments have their detractors. But certainly my electors have been asking me for some time, 'Why is it that this policy was put in place? Is it relevant for the current environment that we find ourselves in, particularly in a housing crisis?' and of course, what does it mean for the people living in the 16 suburbs that I represent. Different people have different perspectives on that.

Regarding some of the pressures that people in my electorate are facing, obviously the density that has come due to that previous policy is undeniable. We have certainly seen in the last 10 to 15 years a much greater level of urban infill in the seat of Badcoe and probably much greater than some other electorates have experienced.

There is probably no great mystery about why that has happened. Quite frankly, our area is awesome. We are right between the city and the beach. We are close to the Airport. We have a hospital in our electorate and two others either side—Ashford in the electorate, and the Royal Adelaide and Women's and Children's to the north, and then Flinders to the south. We also have fantastic schools. Some of the best schools in the state, public and private, are in or close to Badcoe.

We also have wonderful community facilities, things like the Unley swimming pool and Edwardstown Oval. We have great shopping, such as at Castle Plaza, and Goodwood Road. These are the things that make our area very attractive, but they are also the things that mean developers are very attracted to our area and want to be building quite dense new accommodation in our area. They know that it is a very saleable area. They know they will make a profit. The difficulty has come for existing residents who are then having to deal with the consequences of some of that densification.

To be clear, there have been some projects, namely those led by Renewal SA, that have been good or look like they are going to be great for our area. There are projects at the old Le Cornu site. Construction is underway there and the plans are very well known and I think have been received very well by our area. We are also looking at Keswick Barracks. Obviously there is a land-swap agreement with the federal government in relation to that site and that has been earmarked for further development, including housing.

The Castalloy site at North Plympton has been in the news a little bit lately. Certainly there will be some development of that site after a long history as an industrial site. Quite near it, just on the other side of the road, is the old Boral site, which also has been recently rezoned for housing.

There is land down near Castle Plaza as well that is being hotly looked at as to what the future there will be. With regard to the Airport land, the Airport has been developing semi-industrial uses like the large freight and packaging companies going in there and using that land. We have also seen the bakery site at Forestville, the subject of a current planning debate as well, not yet resolved.

We have also seen a great deal of two-for-one infill throughout our suburbs. Those big planned projects on really key parcels of land across my electorate have really had a lot of focus and a lot of energy go into making sure that the planning, development, design and the way that they work within the existing community is sound, and in fact they are welcomed by the existing community. What is, I think, overwhelmingly not welcomed in my community have been the two-for-ones, three-for-ones, four-for-ones and sometimes six-for-ones on ordinary house blocks in my area.

There have been significant changes to the planning and development code since I became the member for Badcoe, and some of the excesses that have been carried out, particularly in suburbs like Kurralta Park, are actually not able to be built anymore. That is a good thing, but those suburbs have been left with the legacy of those decisions.

I might just depart for a moment to say that this is one of the great difficulties of planning legislation, because it does take some time for the rubber to hit the road. We change the rules in one spot, but then often it is five or six years, maybe longer, before we actually see the outcome of that. It can be very difficult, I think, for the public especially to appreciate that rules might have changed when they are still seeing what they may think is bad development—what may be bad development—continuing to go on because there have already been approvals granted under previous legislation.

Some of those projects that I just outlined I think will contribute quite positively to our community. I am particularly excited about that of the old Le Cornu site at Forestville, and I am awaiting what I think will be a great debate about the future of the Keswick Barracks and the potential that it holds. But the pressures that people raise with me that have to be dealt with when those projects are being considered, but even more so the two-for-ones, three-for-ones and six-for-ones, are contributing negatively to things like green space and public space.

We have seen development in our area on standard-sized blocks that has basically left no green space, not a tree in sight, barely a blade of grass. That cannot happen anymore, but it has happened too much already, and we need to compensate for that. We need more public space, more green space, more shared open green space for people in our communities, and even more so now that we have a greater level of density across our suburbs. Children growing up in those environments, if they do not have their own backyard, need to have access to a park around the corner, a decent oval at school, trees in the street.

Those are some of the things that there have recently been planning regulation changes on and that I am looking forward to seeing actually come to fruition. Parking is the other one that has really impacted my area. There are so many more cars parked on the street. Partly that is because of generational changes; we have people living at home for longer, more people with more cars needing more places to park them. Previous housing construction, especially in my area, which has a lot of old housing, was just not catering and did not need to cater for sometimes four cars in one household. That is certainly a difficulty.

Community amenities also have not necessarily kept pace, or people have been concerned that they have not kept pace, with the level of densification that is happening in my community. We are seeing more and more people move into an area, but that is not necessarily being reflected in the design of our roads, our water and utilities, our parks and gardens, and our school capacity in particular. I have done an extensive amount of work talking with my community about planning and development issues from day dot. That is everything from holding forums, particularly when legislative change has been on the table, and hearing the views of people and being able to feed them back to government.

I am pleased to see now that some of the policies that this government is coming forward with have been informed by that work that I have done in my community and have put through to the decision-makers in our government. Those people have been listened to. Instead of just whingeing about things, their coming to a forum, responding to a survey, talking to me at a street-corner meeting is actually creating real change. I know that my colleagues are doing that work across their electorates as well and that is all culminating in our government really having a deep understanding of what is going on in our suburbs and what needs to change and what the expectations of our community are.

I come back again to this question of out or up. As I said, it is not unanimous that people in my electorate all share the same view on this, but I would say that probably most of the people in my electorate have probably been advocating for some time, to me at least, that we should be looking at expanding our metropolitan area out. There are a significant number of people who are fans of going up, but I think what really has happened here is that we do not actually need to choose between out and up.

What we need are policies that are flexible enough that we can make the right choice for the right environment, that we can have a level of densification of height, and that that is being done sensibly and with respect to the existing communities while also providing for others who may be quite happy to live a little bit further away from the CBD and utilise our transport system, and the people who want to be able to live in a property, with a backyard, with a bit of space, as opposed to those who may be way more comfortable having an apartment or living in city-living environments.

My area also has character areas like Glandore and this policy goes to the protection of areas like that too. There are certainly people in my community who would like to see more character areas established. We are very lucky in having quite a lot of 1900s housing, but even more so some very special housing from the 1930s and 1940s in the Art Deco era. I do have significant numbers of people asking that more of those character zones are established because people do fear that we will lose that beautiful heritage that we have in our community. I think that this policy allows us to have some of those debates and to entertain the possibility of that happening.

We are obviously in the midst of a housing crisis and our top priority should be making sure that people have safe and affordable housing for themselves. Surely that is what governments are here to do, to make sure that we are looking after our most vulnerable, but also that we are looking after people who are working hard and who aspire to own their own home or, at the very least, be able to rent affordably in our community. Sometimes we are finding that the desire to preserve heritage clashes with the need to be building more housing.

So through this bill, the EFPAs will provide, as I am informed, the possibility of 61,000 new houses being built. There is no question that if pressure is alleviated on areas like mine then that gives us greater flexibility to be able to do some of the things that people are advocating in terms of preserving heritage, in terms of putting in more parks and gardens, in terms of expanding our schools, and in terms of building new schools and new facilities. Those things cannot happen if the primary pressure on our area is housing and we are needing to use all of our available land for housing.

I am hoping that this might provide some relief in time, that we will meet the challenge of building homes for people and then we may be able to turn our minds to lifting the standard of living, the quality of our suburbs, and making them everything that we want them to be. Certainly, I think that that is the aspiration of people in Badcoe.

As I said, the question my electors ask me is why we cannot build out from the established metropolitan areas. For quite a long time, one of the answers to that question, which is put to me at street-corner meetings, at forums, in letters, in emails and on social media, has been: what that requires is infrastructure. It requires water pipes, it requires electricity lines, it requires local and major roads, it requires the extension of train lines, it requires new schools and hospitals and health clinics. It requires councils investing in infrastructure as well.

For a long time, it has been put to people that we cannot do this because we cannot facilitate the infrastructure or that providing the infrastructure would be too expensive. Under this government I think the answer to that question has now well and truly changed. What this government is saying with this legislation and also with the GARP is that this is possible. We can go out and up. We can build infrastructure in a timely way, ahead of and in concert with the development of new housing. The investments that are being made by this government to ensure that the infrastructure is there and that housing can be built efficiently and quickly is really the cornerstone of what is trying to be achieved here.

I commend the minister and the government as a whole. Instead of saying, 'No, that's something we can't do. No, that's a barrier to being able to build our suburbs out,' the government is actually tackling the hard questions, doing the hard work and providing the infrastructure so that we can say yes to building further out. That does not mean that we are not into building up as well. What it means is it provides a greater level of flexibility to put the right developments in the right places and to develop areas like mine in a sensible and strategic way. It ensures that, as we have greater housing in the inner suburbs, it is done in a way where it is a place that people want to live.

You may choose to live in an apartment, but you will know that there will be infrastructure in your community to support you. You know you will have a place to park your car. You will have a spot to put your rubbish bin out. You will have a park to take your children to on the weekends. Your local sporting club will have grounds for you to be able to participate in sport. You will be able to get a park at the shops. You will be able to go to the hospital nearby. And you will be able to send your kids to a nearby school rather than right across the other end of town. That is made possible by this legislation but also the policies of this government to make sure that the infrastructure is in place to achieve the housing that we want to see developed and developed rapidly.

Nothing breaks my heart more than when constituents come in to my office to speak with me or give me a call to express to me that they are facing down the barrel of homelessness, that they cannot afford a home no matter how hard they are trying, and that they cannot afford the rent and the rent increases that are impacting many in my community. It is absolutely heartbreaking to me to have those conversations. The truth of it is that the only way that we are going to alleviate the situation for those people, or at least the primary step, is to provide more housing. Supply is the problem.

That is why this is incredibly important legislation not just for the amenity and enjoyment of people in my community but also for the survival of people in our community. No-one should be going without a roof over their heads in South Australia in a privileged place like Adelaide, and we are making sure that that is not the case by providing 61,000—it is an incredible number—more homes through these policies. What we are doing is making sure that our suburban areas are beautiful places to live but, even more so, that people from all backgrounds have a place to call home. That is a good thing, and that is why I commend this bill.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (16:23): I also rise to support the Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Environment and Food Production Areas) Amendment Bill 2025. I would have to say a lot of this is a long way my from my electorate, but it is important as a state that we get this right. As other members have indicated, there is going to be a lot of population pressure over the coming years. The anticipated population of Adelaide is 2.2 million by 2051, so there is a need to act. There is a need to act in a very coordinated fashion when it comes to providing the houses that are needed for people and providing the houses that are affordable in a genuine way. Sometimes the word 'affordable' is used in an incredibly loose way. For a lot of people I know, the current definition of an affordable house—well, I tell you what, it is not an affordable house. There is a need for affordable houses that people can purchase or affordable rents that are not going to break the bank of tenants.

There has been that emphasis on urban consolidation, and you need some of that. Some of that has been pretty good; some of it has been very ordinary, to say the least, and has generated a lot of angst in the suburbs. If you do get it right, that is a good thing because you are utilising existing infrastructure to a degree, but when you get it wrong, you really get it wrong. It cannot just be left to consolidation, so we do need to have greenfield sites opened up in order to permit housing developments.

What is proposed here with these changes is creating that capacity for 61,000 additional dwellings within the environment and food production areas. I know that there has been controversy. Grain producers and others have had something to say, and I am mindful of the fact that we do not want to see productive farmland disappear. But I think it is also important that we have a degree of perspective.

For the area that we are talking about today to the north of Adelaide—and someone with more knowledge about primary industries than me can correct me if I am wrong—the grain producers were saying that we are going to lose around about 28,000 tonnes of grain production through the loss of our cropping land. I think that has to be put into context. I think over the last 10 years of grain production in South Australia, the average has been around about eight million tonnes. I agree that there is a bit of a sacrifice there, but there is this really pressing need to provide land for housing and, in providing that land for housing, to ensure that there is a fairly rigorous process attached when it comes to identifying the areas.

It is my understanding that there has been a degree of rigour applied. They have looked at factors such as good quality agricultural land, land subject to natural hazards, environmentally sensitive land, land of cultural heritage value to Aboriginal people, and land located near to existing services and infrastructure. They are all important elements. Often, the really costly element is the existing and nearby existing infrastructure, so the more we can build near to existing infrastructure, the greater the savings when it comes to development.

Obviously, water provision and the infrastructure needed for that has been a live topic, as has the disposal and treatment of effluent. That is incredibly important infrastructure. When it comes to the transmission and distribution of electricity, that is incredibly important as well. But there is a whole range of other factors that come into play when you are doing big developments on greenfield sites, and that is ensuring that the services are there: the health services, the school services.

One of the other incredibly important pieces of infrastructure is transport, ensuring that there is transport available to move people around in an efficient way—and not just between outlying areas and the CBD but more laterally as well. Of course, there seems to have been a lot of job growth in the northern parts of Adelaide, so having housing developments near where there is employment is also very important.

When I drive into Adelaide sometimes and see some of these new subdivisions, I just shake my head. When you have subdivisions where housing is crammed in, almost gutter to gutter, and a sea of black roofs, I say, 'How far have we advanced?' When you look at housing, you look at the lack of appropriate orientation and a lot of other basic features when it comes to designing houses to be more energy efficient.

I do not think we have progressed as well as we should have. I say that because I think I initiated the first energy efficiency standards in residential developments in South Australia way back in the 1990s, when I was on the Whyalla City Council. To see the slow progress since then has been, to me, quite frustrating. I know that this is now tied up with national COAG decision-making, but it is often the least common denominator approach.

I know that developers express some angst when we talk about energy efficiency, and what have you. They will argue that it adds costs. But we are condemning people to live in housing that will have high ongoing costs because they are not efficient. It would be good, with these developments to the north of Adelaide, to see an improvement in energy efficiency, and that is just going to become more and more important as time goes on. There is all this pressure in Adelaide for development. As I said, it is this balance between infill and doing that right and greenfield sites that can be developed to accommodate current and future needs.

Coming from a regional community, some of our challenges are somewhat different. If I look at my electorate, Whyalla is prime for infill. There is so much Crown land internally within the current urban envelope of Whyalla that could be developed. Sometimes, council say, 'We need to do this, we need to do that,' when it comes to significant subdivisions. I say to council, 'Show me the demand,' because the private sector is not going to step in and do significant subdivisions if they cannot have a degree of confidence about future demands, and that always gets back to something incredibly basic, and it is the economic foundations of a community and the job growth in that community.

At the moment, we are relatively stable; there is some new build. It is good to see some new Housing Trust build in Whyalla, and it is also good to see the Office for Regional Housing looking at some of the issues around accommodation for essential workers. In Port Augusta, there have been some subdivisions, and some of the infrastructure has been not up to scratch. Some people have had to depend upon septic tanks, and what have you, to handle their waste. Once again, there is not massive demand for growth.

Look at a community like Roxby Downs. Assuming Northern Water goes ahead, assuming the desire of BHP to expand copper production threefold and turn Olympic Dam into the hub for a potential mine, such as Oak Dam, it is a very promising prospect indeed. You have Prominent Hill and you have Carrapateena. There could be significant job growth, but how much of that is going to be accommodated by fly-in fly-out? There is already a significant number of fly-in and fly-outs in Roxby. Time will tell.

You can look at some of the smaller regional communities in my electorate, for instance in Quorn or Hawker. There is a little bit of growth in Quorn. A few tree changers have moved in. One of the issues in places like Quorn or Hawker is attracting and retaining—and it can be nurses and others—essential workers. One of the challenges is often the quality of housing. That goes for police as well in our regional communities. It is going to be difficult to get people to move out to regional communities if the standard of housing is not up to scratch, so it is good to see the Office for Regional Housing with a number of their pilot projects across the state looking at how we can develop models to accommodate essential workers.

There are challenges out in regional communities. I guess one of my bugbears, and the minister has received a letter on this, is the risk that you have in communities like Whyalla, which probably on a per-capita basis has more Housing Trust properties than any other regional community. We have probably got about 10,000 properties in Whyalla, of which just over 2,000 are Housing Trust properties. What that tends to do is concentrate people with multiple and complex needs in a regional community. That is probably, from a social planning perspective, not a good thing to do.

That has been happening because we had that massive legacy of public housing in Whyalla, far more than 2,000 in its heyday. I think over 60 or 70 per cent of the properties in Whyalla were public housing. We have still got a significant legacy of public housing, and because of policy, the way it is at the moment and the understandable emphasis on category 1, you end up concentrating a number of people with complex needs in a regional community without the services. It is not good for those people and it is not good for the broader community. So I am keen to see a little bit of a shift in policy when it comes to the Housing Trust areas in Whyalla, otherwise we are going to get ongoing growth and some quite disturbing antisocial behaviour in some of those areas in Whyalla.

We have met those changes over the years as old working families drop off the perch to be replaced by other people. This is not to stigmatise people on category 1. It is just to say that a regional community, like Whyalla, should not disproportionately have to bear the burden of a number of challenging social issues. That needs some attention when it comes to regional communities like Whyalla and indeed Port Augusta, which has over 700 Housing Trust properties. It is not as many on a per-capita basis, but it is still significant.

Getting back to Adelaide, clearly these changes are needed and they need to be well planned, because one of the things that happens—and you do see it when you have that very significant growth in some of the other cities in Australia, whether it is Melbourne or Sydney, population growth outstripping the infrastructure that is available and all the issues that it then generates. So there is an opportunity to plan this and get it right in Adelaide.

There can be a bit of a tendency at times to say the whole 'north of Gepps Cross' stuff, where we try to play off the regions against Adelaide. Well, we work best if we treat it as a cohesive role. Some of the people that are going to be living in those northern suburbs are going to be working in regional South Australia. They are going to be fly-in fly-out workers in the current mines and the mines that are being developed in the years to come. It is important that we accommodate those workers.

Obviously, I would give priority to accommodating those workers, as much as we can, closer to the mine sites. As I said, a place like Whyalla or a place like Port Augusta has a lot of land within its current urban envelope that can be developed. They are far closer to the mine sites than Adelaide, and it would be good to see those communities get some of that benefit. In order to get that benefit, affordable housing, whether on a rental basis or a purchase basis, is something that is needed in those communities, but of course those developments are going to reflect the anticipated demand.

A big lesson, especially with Whyalla, is that that dependence upon one industry in a regional community is both a strength and a massive vulnerability, so anything we can do to diversify communities like Whyalla, Port Augusta and Port Pirie—and mine developments to our north is one way of doing that—would be a real plus. I have to say that I am greatly encouraged, obviously, by the commitment of the federal and the state government to Whyalla and to other major regional communities when it comes to securing our future. That is a very positive thing.

As time goes on, I also want to see the Office for Regional Housing, when it fully hits its stride, initially start to address some of those essential worker challenges in regional communities, and that is not just confined to my electorate, that is across the board in most regional communities. Indeed, some regional communities are in decline. In the cropping areas, we have seen farms get bigger and they employ fewer people. When you look at the number of footy teams that used to be on Eyre Peninsula and you look at the number of footy teams now, it is an indicator of that decline on Eyre Peninsula. However, communities like Port Lincoln and others are growing.

When we were on Yorke Peninsula just recently looking at the health needs of the Yorke Peninsula, one of the issues there was about housing and housing growth, because there is a population increase, especially on the northern part of Yorke Peninsula. That is made up of two components: retirees moving to Yorke Peninsula, but also young families because there is partly more affordable housing and a good lifestyle to boot.

There are obviously some areas of growth, and the South-East and other parts of the state are growing. Anything we can do as a government, through the Office for Regional Housing and other initiatives, to support housing developments in those areas is a real plus. Sometimes the private sector will just get on with it if that demand is there and the complexity is not there, but in some communities there is complexity. When you build in some regional communities there is a real premium to building, and it could be up to 30 per cent, so it is very significant.

I commend the bill. We do need to have greenfield sites to develop on and, as I said, there needs to be that degree of perspective. Yes, we are losing some cropping land and some horticultural land, but it is in order to address a really big need. Indeed, when you look at horticulture, there are other options available now. Sundrop Farms in Port Augusta is a capital intensive example of high-end horticulture, and there are some other alternatives that have been looked at.

In semi-arid areas and arid areas, you can get horticultural development based on desalination, or indeed based on photovoltaic fuels being used as catchments, so you are providing both electricity and water as a catchment to high-tech greenhouses. There are options for other ways of growing horticultural products if they make financial sense. With those few words, I will take my seat.

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (16:43): I rise in support of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Environment and Food Production Areas) Amendment Bill 2025. This bill represents a really important step forward in our shared commitment to the future of South Australia. It is a future that will accommodate our growing population, it will drive economic opportunity, it protects our environment and it will ensure that we remain one of the most liveable cities in the world. And why would you want to live anywhere else? I look around when I walk around town, when I walk around my own community, and I think that with everything going on in the world there is nowhere else I would like to be, and that is the same for many in our community: they do not want to go anywhere else.

It was only probably seven years ago that I remember someone asking a group of young people if they planned to leave Adelaide when they finished university, and a big proportion of them put their hand in the air. Well, that has changed. They are all wanting to stay here. They are wanting to stay close to family. We saw during COVID that a lot of families came home and they are staying, and they want to raise their kids here because it is safe and because it is a beautiful place to live. In terms of young people, the opportunities are endless, whether that is within shipbuilding, engineering, space, the health system, carpentry—the opportunities are here for young people and they are going to stay, and we need to find places for them to live.

South Australia is experiencing significant growth. Our population is set to reach 2.2 million by 2051. Like I said, we need to find places for people to live. We see older people who are living longer and they are living in their own homes. They want to stay where they grew their families. They want to stay where they have established their lives, where they have church, where they have their gym—I talk about my mum, who cannot move anywhere because she needs to go to her gym all the time. They have friends, they have their normal practice, they go to their favourite shops, they know where everything is and they are staying in place and ageing in place. That means bigger houses are not coming up as often to be taken over by other families, so we need to find new places for families to grow, to put down their roots and to really grow their family and create new communities and new memories.

Our businesses are also thriving because of this, with almost 12,500 more businesses operating in our state since the 2022 election. We need to continue to support these businesses with workers and with opportunity for them to be able to sell their produce, their product, and to support their local community as well. There will be opportunity for them through this bill.

In just a few years we have seen the creation of 73,000 new jobs, with over half of these being full-time positions. It is really hard to find someone who cannot find the job that they are looking for, or at least something to tide them over until they can. We have an incredibly low unemployment rate and we need to continue to be like that because it means that people are in work and they are able to support themselves.

The growth is not just economic, it is also cultural, social and demographic. We are witnessing an exciting and really positive transformation in South Australia, and people can feel it. They talk about it on the street. You can see that they are excited about what is coming. However, growth comes with the need for planning. As I already said, we need to find homes for people to live in. We cannot simply afford to just build randomly, either. We need to ensure that the plan for growth is done in a way that benefits everybody: the people who call this place home today and the people who will be coming in the future, whether that is through being born here or moving here. We need to make sure that we are planning and making sure we get it right.

The Greater Adelaide Regional Plan, which this bill aligns with, is the blueprint for our urban future. It identifies the construction of 315,000 new homes over the next 30 years, planning for infrastructure that will support that as well—not just the housing but the services and resources that are needed by thriving communities, and the green spaces. We know that when you look out the door, if you see concrete everywhere it is really hard to feel great in your head and feel great about your family's future, but if there are green spaces where you can get outside and enjoy nature it definitely improves mental health.

This bill aims to make sure that we align our growth with the GARP, ensuring that we have ample land available to meet both the current and future housing demand, while also safeguarding our environment and food production areas. It is not a bill about cutting away agricultural land or undermining the environment, it is actually the opposite: it is about creating a more balanced approach to land use and development.

The areas being removed from the environment and food production area represent less than 1 per cent of key agricultural areas within the Greater Adelaide region, and these are not the lands that serve the backbone of our food production. We are still protecting the lands that are vital for farming, food security and the cultural and natural heritage of our state. This is about choice. One of the key benefits of this bill is that it creates more choice for housing development. By providing land for greenfield development, we are not just expanding Adelaide's footprint, we are offering people the opportunity to live in communities where there is space for growth, space for infrastructure and, importantly, that green space.

It is an approach that ensures we are not merely crowding into the already built-up areas of Adelaide but creating new neighbourhoods where people can thrive, where they can put down their roots, where they can grow their families, where they can create memories.

More choice also means less pressure on infill development. For too long, we have been pushing the urban consolidation model with a target set for 85 per cent of growth to occur within infill development. It does not lead to good outcomes. Infill development will continue and it does have a role to play in the growth of Adelaide, but this bill acknowledges the need for a more diverse approach to the land release. It ensures that we are not forcing development into areas that are already struggling with congestion or limited infrastructure. By providing land for greenfield development, we help reduce the pressure on our existing urban areas and ease the strain on our roads, our schools and our local services.

The bill, in essence, ensures that we meet the growing demand for housing without compromising our quality of life. By supporting greenfield growth, we can help to prevent the issues often associated with overdevelopment in existing neighbourhoods—congestion, strain on services and loss of community character. The growth areas identified for release have been carefully chosen based on comprehensive assessments that include the environmental opportunity and agricultural and cultural values. These areas have access to infrastructure or are earmarked for it in future investment, ensuring that they are sustainable, well planned and provide the necessary support for new residents.

Environmentally, this bill is forward thinking as well. The plan to remove land from the EFPA is not a callous decision: it is a strategic move to ensure that Adelaide's growth is properly managed and surrounding agricultural and natural lands are protected. Importantly, the Northern Adelaide Parklands project will cover almost 1,000 hectares of land—significantly larger than the Adelaide Parklands. This project will serve our emerging growth areas, with more than 760 hectares dedicated to preserving natural green open space. This space will provide greater biodiversity, provide recreational opportunities, and ensure that our communities are living in harmony with nature.

Moreover, the GARP sets ambitious environmental targets, such as achieving 30 per cent tree canopy cover across Adelaide by 2055. I cannot stress enough how important it is to make sure we have tree canopy, to ensure that we do not clear all of the trees because not only do trees provide shade but they actually make it cooler. They make our areas cooler and better for biodiversity. We have more native animals and more undergrowth as well. Being able to live in that kind of environment, as I said, is especially good for your mental health.

We are ensuring that new developments are planned in a way that supports low emissions and enhanced liveability. This bill supports those targets by ensuring that all new housing developments are structured in a way that integrates these green spaces, the parks and the sustainable infrastructure. The bill's provision also acknowledges the need for ongoing reviews of the EFPA boundaries, ensuring that they remain flexible and responsive to the needs of our ever-growing population. Every five years, a commission will review the EFPA, ensuring that we can continue to adapt to changing circumstances while protecting vital agricultural and environmental lands.

The bill is not just a piece of legislation, it is a lifeline to local communities across Greater Adelaide. It ensures that the growth of our city is orderly, sustainable and conducive to creating vibrant communities. By providing a mix of greenfield and infill opportunities, we allow people to live in the kinds of neighbourhoods that suit their lifestyle and their needs, whether that be a quiet suburban street, a community near key services, or a green, family-friendly space.

As we look to the future, we also ensure that this growth does not come at the expense of our environment. The strategic planning outlined in this bill helps us preserve the important agricultural lands and natural spaces that have always made Adelaide a beautiful, liveable city. You only need to look out the door and look up to the Hills to see exactly what protecting a Hills Face Zone does. It ensures that we create an urban-rural interface that is respectful of farming activities while allowing growth and development.

Within my own community, I often hear from concerned residents about large housing blocks having the existing home demolished and two to three new residences being built in their place. This usually results in trees being cleared from the block so that developers can get maximum bang for their buck. Creating opportunity in new greenfield locations creates choice. I often worry about my son, who is now 21. He has told me he is going to just build on the end of my block. At 21, that is a nice dream. I am sure at some point he is not going to want to live next door to his mother.

Ms Savvas: You won't, either.

Ms HUTCHESSON: You are probably right. But where is he going to live within the Waite community? There is very limited space for infill. As we said, it is usually only one or two here or there. He will grow, he will meet the love of his life, and he will need to find a home and a place to set up his own family, hopefully not too far away from his mum. These opportunities will be there.

Within Waite, we also live in a high bushfire risk area with very limited egress roads out of the area if an evacuation is called. Continuing with the old urban infill adds to congestion, as I said, and in doing so that adds to risk. It is important that we find new ways to accommodate our growing population, and the GARP is doing just that.

In my area, I also have an existing environment and food production area that skirts the southern end of my community, including the back of Upper Sturt. This area is filled with native bushland, and with no mains water or sewerage, it is not easy or desirable for creating more housing areas. The GARP took this into consideration. The growth areas to come out of the EFPA were determined following an extensive land assessment as part of the GARP process that considered many factors, including good quality agricultural land, land subject to natural hazards, environmentally sensitive land, land of cultural heritage value to Aboriginal people and locating land near existing services and infrastructure.

All of this was taken into consideration, and the revision of the EFPA still ensures that key agricultural lands surrounding Greater Adelaide are protected. The changes to the EFPAs were based on a comprehensive analysis, and it represents a loss, as I said, of less than 1 per cent of this key agricultural land. Together with the current character preservation districts and Hills Face Zone, particularly where I am, this ensures that we retain strong growth boundary areas, such as Upper Sturt, and we make sure that they are protected.

This bill is about making sure that South Australia grows in the right way, a way that ensures that we have the land, the infrastructure and the environmental protections needed for a prosperous, sustainable future. It is about making sure that the people of South Australia today and tomorrow have the housing choices they need while maintaining the green spaces, the heritage and those agricultural lands that make this place great.

Our government is making decisions for the future of our state, for its people who are here now but also those who will be here in the future, creating once again opportunity for young people to reach the goal of home ownership, laying down their roots and growing their families, new communities with new journeys to begin. It is an exciting time to be South Australian as we all work together for a bright future where we can say goodbye to the housing crisis and where houses create communities, creating opportunities. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (16:57): It is a real pleasure today to be speaking to this bill in acknowledgement that South Australia, like the rest of the country, is going through a housing crisis. That is no surprise to any of us. I am sure I am not alone in saying that I am constantly contacted by residents unable to find a home or friends asking what options are available to help them enter the housing market. Of course, a key initiative of the government's Housing Roadmap and the GARP more generally is both to ensure that we have an appropriate supply of serviced land to meet both current and emerging housing demand and also to make sure that we have options in the way that we do so.

We very much, as members of parliament representing different communities across our great state, love living here in South Australia. I think we are unfortunately perhaps having to now account for our own successes because other people love living here, too. We are a city that will reach 2.2 million people by 2051. Today, I really want to speak about what that means for us and the ways in which we as a government are tackling this good problem. It is a good problem to have. Of course, the economy here is very strong. Events are booming, and we have more jobs than we have ever had before.

On 17 March, the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan was launched. It does identify where 315,000 new homes will be built over the next 30 years, but also preserves important land for future infrastructure requirements.

I, of course, am a young person and I am at this particular stage of life where there is a wedding one weekend and a baby shower the next. I am constantly being contacted by young people, not just my constituents but my friends, school mates and uni mates, about housing affordability and location. I am not ashamed to say that I am someone who has well and truly benefited from government policy with respect to housing.

My mum grew up in co-op housing and in public housing and she was the first and only person in her family to have ever purchased a house. We certainly did not have the means available to us for me to be supported by the 'bank of mum and dad' when it came to getting into the housing market myself. Although I would have absolutely loved to buy my first home in my community, close to my two family homes in Tea Tree Gully, I was not able to. That definitely was just not an option available to me. I needed to look elsewhere in order to build or buy and eventually come back home where I belonged.

It was, of course, building a house off the plan, pointing at a spot on a field that was not yet a housing development in Mount Barker, with the support of a building grant that helped me and my partner at the time to get into the housing market. It was also the sale of that same property that assisted me to eventually buy my own property in St Agnes.

I think that those two things are really relevant. It was not only the fact that there was an option for me to get into the housing market that would not have been available to me otherwise by building in a development in a community I did not know very well but also the fact that the sale of that property post-COVID, noting that I built there pre-COVID, meant that I had the opportunity to go and buy a house of my own in the community that I wanted to return to. I think that is very significant when we talk about individuals getting into the housing market. It is not just, of course, where they start that journey but what it means for the next stages of their journey as well.

We know that Mount Barker, where I first built a home, has, of course, continually sustained incredible growth. We, as a government, need to ensure that opportunities like the one that I had exist all over our great state. I am incredibly pleased to see that the GARP has identified areas for new homes that are either already connected to infrastructure or have infrastructure commitments in place or, of course, are located in areas where future investment will be planned. My experience with moving to Mount Barker was not, in fact that. I think it is an example of where we have seen sustained growth but perhaps not the infrastructure to keep up with it at times.

When we first moved into what is now a very well serviced part of Mount Barker—it was at the back, towards the direction of Wistow, not far from the current Mount Barker hospital, not to be confused with the new Mount Barker hospital—there was not the option to walk to a shop or to walk to a cafe. We were literally in the middle of nowhere and it would have taken probably an hour to walk into Kmart or into Coles in the centre of Mount Barker and that was at the time when there was only one centre with a major supermarket.

We have seen now significant changes with respect to that, but when we moved in we were moving into developments that could not quite keep up with themselves. I think that the GARP is a really important example of government policy that stops those things from happening. We want people to move into areas, we want them to build in those developments, we want our areas to expand, but we want to do so in a way that is actually conducive to living a happy, healthy life and being part of a community as well.

I would also like to speak to, of course, what is a great win for those of us in my section of Tea Tree Gully who at times considered ourselves the next frontier in terms of general infill. I note that we are, of course, in the chamber next to the member for Torrens. When I was a local councillor I represented the suburbs of Gilles Plains and Holden Hill, which have, of course, been the subject of significant infill over time.

I know that although so many individuals were pleased to have the opportunity to buy newer, smaller homes at accessible prices, there were, and I assume continues to be, major issues with parking in those communities. When I was a local councillor, I was consistently called on to assist with parking complaints. We do not quite have that issue yet in the portion of Tea Tree Gully that I now represent, and I must say I am pleased.

We love living in Tea Tree Gully because we have the city and the country at our doorstep—10 minutes on the O-Bahn to town and five minutes to the kangaroos at Anstey Hill. I am not sure why anyone would live anywhere else. We also very much in my community value the opportunity to have a garden if we want one, and this is a housing plan that gives those options to families. It provides options to residents in my community who are looking for family homes close to the incredible array of sports clubs and public transport infrastructure that we have but also options to young people, like I was, perhaps moving out of their community either temporarily or longer term, in a new build in a developing area without the need for a family home.

I myself live in a knockdown rebuild—I think it was the fourth knockdown rebuild—and do not have a significant garden of my own, but at this stage of my life I do not need it. Again, I have that option there on my street in my community, but I know that I also have the option two minutes up the road to have a bigger property and a garden if I so want one. I think that is why I am incredibly pleased to know that no general infill development areas have been planned and that the plan removes the former objective in previous versions, which targeted that 85 per cent of future housing would be infill projects. This will make a difference.

I often talk about politics that touches people. A lot of individuals, particularly living in the burbs, perhaps rushing around, taking kids to school and to sports clubs and those sorts of things, do not necessarily see that politics touches them. But what a lot of them can see is when they are stressed and they cannot get out of their driveway, or when they are running late and struggling to get through their street because there are cars parked on either side.

Again, with significant infill, the parking issues have been a significant problem. For people in my community who are busy, who have families, who a lot of the time are working full-time jobs, with kids at two or three sports clubs and after-school commitments, that is something that actually they do see and can see in their day-to-day lives. I think that a plan that takes that into consideration is one that people will see the impacts of.

Many people talk about examples, not in the community we live in but others that they go to visit, and they ask me the question, 'Are we going to be next? Are we going to be the ones who can't get out of our driveways to the same extent as those in other communities?' I think this is a plan that takes that into consideration and makes sure we still have options. In order to coordinate the growth, we need to retain options, as I have said.

I am so pleased that I can tell my residents that we are increasing housing supply in a way that means they can still park on their streets and have the choice to have a larger property, should they want it. This provides housing choice but also abolishes targets for infill development, which has placed pressure on key sites in Adelaide. My community, I hope and believe, will be one of the communities a little bit further out from the city that will not necessarily have the same pressures that perhaps those inner city areas have had in the past, and I think that is something that residents generally will be quite pleased about.

I also think it is really important to talk about what this means for jobs. My community in Tea Tree Gully is very much tradie heartland. We have more individuals working as sole traders in construction and associated fields than any other industry, and our government is coordinating the way that we build houses, including ensuring that we have the people to do it. Not long ago, we launched our Housing Roadmap, which was the coordinated response to bringing housing to market.

One of the things I would like to talk about is the commitment by the then opposition to build five technical colleges around the state and what that means for meaningful employment for individuals in communities like mine. I think it is incredibly important not just to give students options but to know that we are preparing for the jobs of the future and the jobs that we need to cater to the demand that we have.

People often talk about not being able to get a tradie in. That is a comment that I hear very often in my community, that people are waiting two or three months to get a plumber. I think that is unfortunately a product of governments continually not investing in trades and in vocational education. I am really pleased that we are doing so at The Heights Technical College in the member for Wright's electorate but, of course, in my community.

I think it is also really important to discuss infrastructure. As I often do, I thought I would give you the example of infrastructure that was not invested in and, as a result, could not keep up with the growth of a metropolitan area. That is, of course, the Tea Tree Gully Community Wastewater Management Scheme. You have no greater example of a community that could not keep up with growth than these septic tanks in Tea Tree Gully. The simple fact of the matter is that 50-odd years ago Tea Tree Gully was a semirural area where people would install septic tanks on farm-style properties and then you would see a house a kilometre down the road.

In order to keep up with the growing area, we did all sorts of interesting things at the time—I say 'we' but I well and truly was not even alive yet—to keep up with the demand for housing in that area, and one of them was to continually tack houses onto a septic tank scheme that could not keep up with it.

Whenever anyone asks me the question, 'Why do we have 4,700 septic tanks in a metropolitan area of Adelaide?' I tell them the area was too popular and we could not keep up with the infrastructure required for the housing. We see that in lots of ways in my community, but one example is where you go down streets like Elizabeth Steet in my electorate, which is home to a number of sports clubs, three major schools and housing and you see examples of septic tank, SA Water, septic tank, SA Water. It was a real piecemeal approach to managing infrastructure in a community.

Of course, now we are seeing the impact of that, which is that a government is having to intervene, invest significant money and literally rip up people's front and backyards in order to retrofit the infrastructure that should have been invested in 50-odd years ago. I think that when we look at the GARP, it is actually investing and identifying the ways in which we need to invest in infrastructure to ensure that that will not be happening again in 50 years' time.

We see that SA Water has committed to $1.5 billion of spending between 2024 and 2028 to make sure those growth areas are catered for. That is, of course, necessary spending to make sure that we are not continually fixing the mistakes of the past like we are currently doing in my electorate.

I am very pleased that there is a sensical approach being taken to planning here, one that continually gives those options, whether it be an option to live in a townhouse like I do or perhaps to live two minutes up the road in a property with a large backyard. I think South Australians deserve options. They deserve opportunities to have housing and to enter the housing market, and of course to have infrastructure that will accommodate their needs, particularly their needs as their family grows or changes in different stages of life.

I would like to acknowledge the steadfast work of my friend and colleague, Minister Champion, the member for Taylor, who is incredibly passionate about his work in planning, and of course all of the individuals who have contributed to the GARP. It is one that I am very pleased with and looking forward to seeing the results of in years to come.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (17:12): I appreciate the opportunity to rise and make some contributions to this bill. I have enjoyed listening to those contributions made by other members of parliament about the importance of the work that is being done here and the importance of the work that is being done by the Minister for Planning.

I should start by talking about the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan and the announcement that I joined the Premier and the Minister for Planning to make out in the northern suburbs, in Eyre, just a couple of weeks ago about our inclusion of a piece of land to build a brand-new public high school in the northern suburbs. It will be open for the start of the 2028 school year, so not far away at all.

The government has already set aside the $155.3 million that will be needed to build that school. That should be taken as both a sign of our commitment in terms of building quality new schools and also a sign of how expensive things are now to build as well—that a standalone high school with about 1,300 student capacity is now about $155 million to build, but that is another story.

Nonetheless, I was very proud to stand with the Premier and Minister Champion at the site of where this school will be built in the suburb of Eyre. It is of course a vacant paddock now, but in not too long it will be bustling with school students. It will mean that we can provide the kind of choice around education that we so often speak about, I think, as politicians but we do not always live up to those expectations. There are a number of examples where I think governments of both political persuasions have failed to meet the tests in terms of building for the future, particularly when it comes to education, in years gone past. I would point to Mount Barker as being a good example of that, where our infrastructure did not keep up with the growth in the area. Certainly in terms of schools, that was true.

I was pleased, though, earlier on in this term of government, to announce that we are building a new primary school and a new preschool in Mount Barker. We have the land, we have budgeted the money to make sure that happens, to ensure that the growing population in Mount Barker has good opportunities in terms of a public school and preschool. As part of the same process that we went through with Infrastructure SA, and doing a business case about where the most growth and need was for enrolment pressure in South Australia, it was very clear that the northern suburbs were number one. Although Mount Barker was number two and had very real and genuine need in that area, to be perfectly frank there was daylight between numbers one and two such is the need in the northern suburbs for new schools and new enrolment places.

I am pleased we are getting on with the business of providing those public school opportunities in what will be a world-class school. I know we use that term a lot, but we are going to build an absolutely cracking school out there. I for one am proud that we will be able to put our hand on our heart come 2028 and say that, at that stage, the newest and grandest and most impressive piece of public school infrastructure in Australia will be in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, which I am not sure is something we have ever been able to say before, but we will be able to say that.

At the press conference I attended with the Minister for Planning and the Premier, there were some local residents who had recently purchased houses in the vicinity; I think it might be St Andrews. The Minister for Planning will correct me if I am wrong about the housing development's name. They joined us at the press conference. They were a young couple. She was expecting her first child. The journalist asked, 'What does it mean to you in terms of not just being able to find a home for what will soon be your growing family but in terms of having the option of a brand-new public school just down the road?' In fact, it would be a five or 10-minute walk from where they were planning on living.

The husband said something that I thought was very interesting and powerful about the need for not just housing but for making sure that the other infrastructure that is needed in the area where you live is provided at the same time. He said that they wanted to live somewhere they could have their children go to school with people who were their neighbours, people who were their community members, the people who they lived with and saw at the shops and at the football on the weekend, and all those sorts of things, people who were also fellow parents at the school where they wanted to send their kids. That was a really insightful comment.

Because of things that have been done poorly, or things that just have not been done, we have made many parents feel like they need to drive to the other side of town to get the kind of schooling they want for their child. That is not really what a community is about, so it is important that we get it right when we are opening up more land for houses, which is the work that the Minister for Planning has been doing, which I strongly endorse. All the members who have spoken this afternoon before me have traversed this very well. There is not much need for me to necessarily repeat how important an issue this is in terms of housing availability and affordability.

What we also forget is that people do want to live in a community. They want their kids to go to school with the people from their community, with their neighbours. That is kind of how the whole model of our society is supposed to work. You have your local school, and you have got a lot of confidence in that, and you do not think twice about sending your child there. I thought it was a very powerful comment from those soon to be local residents around what appealed to them about buying a house at that housing development. It was not just that it was the area they wanted to be in, but they wanted a house that would be the right size to have children, so there would be bit of space out the back. It was a modern house that had all the amenities they wanted, but there was also going to be a school that their child could walk to and they would be going to school there with their neighbours and with the other people who chose to live in that community.

I think that is a good example of us actually making the early decisions to get things right. Minister Champion and I have had a number of conversations, which he has instigated since being the Minister for Planning, which I have really appreciated, where he has been pushing to me the need for us to put land aside.

We have made some bad mistakes as governments in years gone past—I think we have probably all been guilty of it—where our land has been sold or potentially developed without a great deal of forethought to the future. Then, lo and behold, demographics might change, you might get some unexpected growth in a part of town where you had not first thought that was going to happen, and then you are scrabbling around looking for a vacant piece of land to actually build a school or a hospital or whatever it might be, and you get into these very perverse situations where you are almost forced as a government to look at buying back pieces of land you had previously owned on which to build schools.

The former education minister knows what I am talking about. These are the situations governments get themselves into if we do not get the planning right, and that is a bad outcome. It is a bad outcome not just for the people who would be living in that area, but a bad outcome for the taxpayer as well, because you potentially end up buying back land that you previously owned at a greater rate than you sold it, often decades ago. Not only do you do that, but the bit of land that you can find that is available to buy back that you used to own is not in the perfect spot for the school.

I really want to commend the Minister for Planning in terms of the conversations he has had with me, and that is around not just making sure that we plan for the future and making sure there is a spot available to build, for instance, a school near where we are going to put new housing, but making sure it is the right bit of land, the prime bit of land, because that is where we should be building public infrastructure, where we should be putting schools, regardless of whether they are public schools or non-government schools. Schools are such an important part of our social fabric that we should not be cutting corners. We should not be cutting corners in terms of the build quality—and I have to say we are not doing that.

Governments of both persuasions in the last 10 years have built quality new schools, but sometimes we have to make compromises in terms of where we build them. I am really pleased that the work that is part of the GARP that the Minister for Planning has been really driving is around making sure we do not repeat those mistakes, but that the pieces of land that we get, not just for housing and all those debates we have had around the trunk infrastructure and making sure we have got that so we can open it up, but also making sure the land we have for all the other bits of public infrastructure provision that we have to put in place are the best bits of land so that people do flock to the local public school, because the best outcome for all of us is that mums and dads have the confidence that their local school around the corner is the school they want to send their kids to.

It means that we get higher rates of kids riding their bike to school or walking to school; we get cars off the road. This is something that the member for Newland just touched upon before and made an excellent point about how busy people's lives are. In my mind the root cause for so many of society's ills these days is that households are so busy and stretched and they feel that they are not able to devote the time—I say this as Minister for Education—to helping their kids with their schoolwork or perhaps just having a bit of time to themselves and relaxing like they would like to. The kinds of things that governments can do to facilitate that is making sure that, when we open up new housing, we have all the other ancillary infrastructure of a quality that means that people who move there and buy a home there decide to use their local infrastructure, their local schools and all those kinds of things.

It means that you do get all that extra benefit that we have been talking about a lot as a state and a nation around active kids—how do you get active kids? Every single time there is an issue around a kiss and drop at a school—and that is about twice a day the way it goes these days—everyone bemoans the fact that no-one walks to school any more and kids do not ride bikes.

Some of the things that we have to do, if we want to turn that around, are the kinds of things that we are talking about in this amendment bill around being able to make the decisions ahead of time to make sure that when we do open up new pieces of land for new housing developments and what will become new communities, they have everything they need so that we are not sending people to the other side of the metropolitan area for something that they should be able to get around the corner. That has a sometimes unseen cost and toll upon people, whether it is parents whose busy lives get even busier. I really want to acknowledge the work that the Minister for Planning has done on this.

I say that as the Minister for Education, because making sure that we have enrolment places available for people in their local area is something that all Ministers for Education have always had to grapple with, such as schools that might be full and then have a capacity management plan and are zoned and there are families who desperately want to get into that zone and they cannot, or they feel like the school they are zoned to is not the one they would like their kids to go to. It is never an enjoyable thing as Minister for Education to write back to parents who are desperately trying to get their kid into a particular school and tell them that they cannot because it is full. Making good planning decisions around this will make sure that kind of scenario happens less in the future and I will be very pleased about that.

Perhaps I will talk just a little bit before I wrap up around the housing crisis more generally. I feel that in the last three or four years, or certainly the time that I have been fortunate enough to be a member of this place, which is just on seven years, it really has gone from an issue that was spoken about a little bit to really the thing that is raised every time you are talking at a public forum, or at a street corner meeting, or you are even just at a barbecue with friends or something like that. Often the first thing that is put forward now is around the cost of housing, the availability of it, the availability of rentals, all those sorts of things.

The litmus test I often use around what the issues are that people are most concerned about—and it is very useful being a cabinet minister—is going to country cabinets or metro cabinets. You get a really good flavour at those from punters who come out and ask what is on their mind. It is a very unfettered kind of environment where they get to stand in front of the microphone and say whatever they think and you get all sorts of interesting things. I have been taken aback at the number of questions that the Minister for Planning and the Premier and others have received around the cost of housing and the availability of housing and the need for government to do more around that.

I am proud to be a member of a cabinet that is actually really tackling it and making hard decisions. I think that was a question that the Premier got at the Golden Grove Football Club metro cabinet on Monday night. The Minister for Planning might remember better than I can, but it was a very fair question put to the Premier around the cost of water and the decisions that this government had made.

I thought the Premier answered it in a really forthright way, which was to say that is a great example of the hard decisions we have to make to get this right. If you have not got the trunk infrastructure, for instance, in place to be able to get the water to these new developments then everything after that cannot come. Do governments enjoy putting up the price of utilities or things like water? Of course we do not and we are absolutely cognisant that we are amidst a cost-of-living crisis, not just in Australia but around the world, and that is a difficult decision to make.

But we also know that there is a much bigger opportunity cost if we do not make that decision, because the opportunities we are now talking about in great detail here in the Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Environment and Food Production Areas) Amendment Bill are not possible unless you make those tough decisions earlier so you can build more houses, open up more land and make sure there is going to be water and sewerage.

I talk as the member for Wright and refer to what the member for Newland correctly pointed out, which is that the north-eastern suburbs are actually an excellent example of where we did not get it right, where the governments of the day cut corners because there was not capacity within the sewerage system to accommodate more homes. They basically said, 'You can develop that land, you can build homes, but if you are going to do it you are on your own and you are going to have to put in place a septic tank.'

Of course, that was an interim measure; I think they were supposed to last from memory maybe 10 or a bit more years. Most of the residents who purchased the properties back in the day when those suburbs were built, such as in my patch of Redwood Park and Surrey Downs, actually were not even told there was a septic tank in the backyard. They did not know until it overflowed. It was not on the plans and they found it out later on.

In terms of the cost the taxpayer ultimately wears here in terms of trying to fix that problem later on, well, we are now supporting the City of Tea Tree Gully to replace a system that was supposed to be replaced about 40 years ago that is about to collapse. So when we talk about what the cost is now for decisions that were not made 10, 20, 30, or, as in this case, 50 years ago, well, they are really serious implications and repercussions that affect the amenity of those people's homes who every now and then have to dig up the soil on top of their septic tank hatch and get someone around to pump it out.

I remember the first time I doorknocked on Hancock Road in Redwood Park. I marched up to the door and there was a massive pit right next to this bloke's front door. I said, 'What is that?' He said, 'That's my septic tank.' I said, 'What do you mean it's your septic tank?' He said, 'We are on septic here.' It is as suburban an area as you can imagine, and he is on a septic tank. He has to live with that and, of course, the government has to find a way of supporting a council to replace about 4,700 other homes like that because those tough decisions were not made.

I want to commend the minister for his work on this and thank all those members of this place who have spoken passionately about it, because this is really, really important stuff. It is not particularly often that you get the chance to be a part of something in the work that we do that will well and truly outlive us. I think this is one of those examples where, hopefully, when we are all long gone from this place, there will be people down the track who will acknowledge that actually we got something right that had long-term benefits for people. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT