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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-24 Daily Xml
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Question Time

30-YEAR PLAN FOR GREATER ADELAIDE

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:21): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Urban Development and Planning yet another question about the 30-year plan.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: The minister responded to a presentation that Professor Dick Blandy had made at a function in the northern suburbs. I am sure he is aware of it but on page 3 of Professor Blandy's presentation he indicated that there were some errors in the plan. It may seem to be somewhat trivial but the page numbers and appendices cease at page 20 (out of 93 pages). Figure 7, Appendix 8, describes gross state product, not employment; in table 10AA the employment numbers are actually the unemployment numbers; table 12AA describes total industry employment, not the net impact of the plan on employment; and in reference to page 45 of the IPCC's 2007 synthesis report, it cites the wrong page. He continues with a couple of other inaccuracies.

I contacted some academics at one of the South Australian universities, and they ran this document through their plagiarism scanner—a program called Turnitin. The advice they gave me is that the background technical document has been cut and pasted from various sources, mostly from other governments, documents and websites. Apart from containing dodgy data, it lacks an executive summary and is very poorly written. There are spelling errors that suggest that the authors did not even bother to spell check it before posting it on the Department of Planning and Local Government website.

The background technical document begins with a bizarre disclaimer on the first page after the title page. It lacks page numbers in places and it says that the document is the draft 30-Year Plan for Greater Adelaide released for public consultation. However, a statement on the DPLG website, where the background technical document is downloaded from, says specifically:

The technical papers available for download are not intended as part of the Plan for Greater Adelaide.

The advice I have received then states:

Nevertheless, the same data that appears in the background technical document appears in the Plan for Greater Adelaide.

Looking at the Turnitin report, it is a significantly large report of some 381 pages for the technical report and some 230 pages for the main plan itself. I think it is interesting to note that there are quite a large number of references to student papers. However, of particular note is that there are two references to material taken from Wikipedia and inserted into the plan.

The academics went on to say that, if this document was handed up to them as a paper from a student, they would fail the student. My question is: will the minister now admit that this plan has been rushed and is flawed, and will he now agree to extend the consultation period and undertake to rewrite the plan so that it is a document that the community of South Australia can have some faith in as being accurate?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:25): Let me say that I am absolutely delighted that the Liberal Party of Australia obviously agrees with the fundamental objectives of the plan because they have not raised a single objection to those fundamental underlying objectives which are part of the plan: that we change the direction of Adelaide away from a dependency on motor vehicles, that we should look at the population data for 30 years ahead, that we should set targets for population, and that we should be recognised as being the first government to set out such a plan for the first time in many decades.

I am delighted that the opposition—through such great scrutiny as it has obviously shown—has not been able to find any fundamental flaws in the base data underlying what the plan for Adelaide should outline. If they have found any fundamental flaws then they have failed to identify them in terms of the underlying assumptions or the basic statistics. They have found no flaw, and I am delighted about that.

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