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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-10-28 Daily Xml
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WILLUNGA BASIN

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (14:44): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Urban Development and Planning a question regarding Willunga Basin.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I recently received a letter from the Southern Community Coalition, a collection of community and interest groups from the Willunga Basin and surrounds who are concerned about the government's intentions for the basin. Their letter reads in part:

We are...concerned that master planning for new residential and commercial development on the government-owned land at Seaford Heights and Aldinga, and privately owned land at Sellicks, will be fast-tracked by the Minister to occur ahead of this big picture planning and protection.

That is something the minister has announced in recent weeks in this house. Further:

We believe that this would be a serious mistake, given the size of those proposed developments and their strategic location at the gateways to the McLaren Vale vineyards, the historic townships, and the southern beaches, the key tourist attractions of the Willunga Basin.

The development plan amendment currently being drafted for Seaford Heights has, to date, failed to incorporate any consultation or consideration of the interests of food, wine and tourism stakeholders and is therefore seriously flawed. The City of Onkaparinga's recent rejection of the amendment simply reflects those flaws.

My questions are:

1. Is the government intending to get all development land that it has planned for development approved before supporting community calls for protection?

2. When will the minister give me a response to my letter requesting information on buffers for what I thought was stage 1 of the Seaford Heights development and the request for rezoning to rural land for stages 2 and 3 that the minister, this week, said is now all encompassed to 77 hectares of the entire redevelopment opportunity?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (14:46): In relation to the latter question, the very reason I made the ministerial statement was to clarify the situation in relation to that. I have only just received details that have come through via the department from Onkaparinga council in relation to its Seaford Heights development plan. As I said, when I became aware of that I thought it was important that I clarify that that staging is developer talk rather than part of the planning process. The planning process was to rezone the entire 77 hectares of the Seaford Heights site.

The question really was: would I be rushing things in Seaford Heights? I would have thought that, given it has been zoned for 20 years and designated for that long as urban development, it would scarcely be rushing, particularly when one considers that the current development plan amendment at the last minute, days before the election is called (and the ballot papers are going out at this moment) asks the council then to reverse its position. It had been in train for a significant period of time, at least 12 or 18 months, I think it was, and probably longer if one considers all the discussions that inevitably lead up to those processes.

It is not just the formal consideration, but it is all the bits leading up to it. This has been in train in terms of discussions with the LMC and Fairmont Homes and the council for a significant period of time. I do not think that one could say that the government could be fairly accused of trying to rush it since it has been earmarked for residential development for 20 years. What the government is trying to do overall is to reach a situation—and we are close to doing it when the current development plans are out—where we will have reached the target set out in the planning review to have 15 years of land that is zone-ready.

When one looks at the areas such as Seaford Heights, Gawler East, Buckland Park, along the new Northern Expressway and Mount Barker, that should increase the amount of zone-ready supply, from about the seven or eight years it is currently, to the 15 years. As I have indicated in this council, what the government really wants to do now is to focus attention on the alternative, which is increasing the density within the existing areas. I have announced in recent days a number of initiatives—and there will be more to come—in relation to how we are now moving on to try and increase the density within the existing boundary.

At the end of the day, the best protection one can have against urban sprawl is to have viable policies that encourage a density within the existing boundary, and that means that it has to be attractive development so that the market—individual buyers—would accept it. If that does not happen, the only alternative for this city's growth will be further sprawl. These debates take place in every city. There was a big similar debate in Melbourne earlier this year when they leased 25,000 hectares of extra greenfield land. The debate there is between infill and growth.

Every city has these debates. This government would like to see, through the 30-year plan, that we have a greater emphasis on infill. That needs to be good quality and it needs to be well designed. It needs to be attractive, it needs to be integrated properly with the public realm of open space, and that is why we have appointed an integrated design commissioner. We have a government architect who is on board to try to ensure that these policies are successful.

I would like to think that, at least in relation to Willunga Basin protection, we are moving in that direction, but really the fate of Seaford Heights was effectively sealed 20 years ago when it was earmarked for development. As I have said in this place, there were some last-minute issues raised in relation to the quality of that area for viticulture, but unfortunately, it is already adjacent to Main South Road. It is between a waste transfer depot and Main South Road, with housing to the south.

Any viticulture in that area would reach problems anyway, because of the land-use conflicts that we talked about yesterday and the question in relation to Bald Hills Road at Mount Barker. So the dilemma is, even if the decision had not been made 20 years ago to zone this land residential and if we had not been going for this process over some years, it would still be very difficult to justify agricultural activities on that particular land, given that it is adjacent to housing.

The honourable member also talked about some other areas in the Willunga Basin—Sellicks Hill and Aldinga. As I understand it, that land has been in the urban growth boundary for all the time that this government has been in office. Apart from Bowering Hill, I do not think the boundaries have changed in that area since this government came to office, so it has been earmarked for growth and eventually it will come on. We do have a Housing and Employment Land Supply Program, which is designed to schedule that land coming onto the market in an orderly fashion, and that sets out the timing for that program. But I do not think one could argue that, given that that land and Seaford Heights have been in that boundary since well before this government came to office, we are in any way rushing it to market.

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