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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-06-28 Daily Xml
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CHARACTER PRESERVATION (BAROSSA VALLEY) BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (16:07): I was speaking prior to lunch and I talked about the private member's bill proposed by the honourable Leader of the Government and Minister for Tourism, that is, a bill to decriminalise or legalise prostitution. Members might think, 'What's this got to do with the Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale?' We are preserving these areas for tourism, recreation and hospitality pursuits, and some might argue that the services provided by a legal brothel could easily fit somewhere into the character values and the objects of this bill when we talk about providing economic impact and contributing to the tourism attributes of the district.

I think we need to be very careful when we start talking about the objects and the character value of these districts and trying to prescribe it in legislation because clearly it is not cut and dried, it is not black and white. It is very open to interpretation, and I expect that it will be very difficult. It will be almost like a lawyers' picnic, I would think, if we try to prescribe it in the objects of these bills, particularly the character values of the districts.

During this whole process a number of us have received quite a significant amount of correspondence in relation to these bills, and Iain Evans (the shadow treasurer) who had carriage of this legislation read a lot of the local government commentary into the record. I will not read in and duplicate most of what he said, but I know that the Barossa Valley council was somewhat concerned initially with the second bill and the second DPA, and its option was to abandon it in favour of amendments just to the current Development Act to give it some comfort. I know the view of the Onkaparinga council, which is the other major council that is affected, was that they wanted to go through the whole round of public consultations. I think the final ones on the DPA are in August, so they were wanting this legislation not to be progressed until then.

I will now read into the record some of the correspondence from people who have been concerned about, I guess, some of the unintended consequences. I have a copy of a letter sent to the Presiding Member of the advisory committee (I assume it is DPAC), Revised Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale Protection Districts Development Plan Amendment, care of the Department of Planning and Local Government, from Mr Phillip Santy of Hollitt Road, Clarendon. This is just the executive summary of his submission. He said:

The revised DPA and proposed Character Preservation Bills create the following issues:

Renders 2052 potential existing lots that meet existing minimum allotment size for a dwelling worthless. The costs to landowner (based on a conservative average of $300,000 per title) is approximately $616 million in lost equity.

Will cost the local councils in the Barossa and McLaren Vale districts $3.287 million per annum based on reduced valuations. Funds required to maintain public utilities.

Stops governed environmental development of 2 houses per square kilometre in McLaren Vale District and 1 house per square kilometre in the Barossa District and creates 2052 worthless untended allotments.

Will cost the housing industry a conservative estimate [of $250,000 per dwelling, somewhere in the vicinity of $549 million] in our state at a time when we wish to promote a skilled workforce.

Will be detrimental to tourism target 6 per cent increase of $378 million by 2014, with lost (council) resources, disgruntled landowners and untended land allotments.

In summary, it will cost the South Australian economy approximately $1.17 billion in the foreseeable future and leave the government vulnerable to a class action for compensation on the grounds of estoppel (right and expectation to build a house per title withdrawn) in excess $616 million.

Also, I have an email that has been forwarded via the Hon. Michelle Lensink from Mr Felgate and it says:

Dear Ms Lensink,

The Character Preservation (McLaren Vale) Bill 2012 together with the Develop Plan Amendment (5th April 2012) which the South Australian State Government proposes to introduce, supposedly to stop the loss of prime agricultural land to further urban develop (i.e. to stop urban sprawl), is totally unnecessary and is in fact a disaster for all the owners of such land and for the local councils.

The pretence under which it is being introduced is a complete sham, as all such properties are currently protected by the development plans of the local councils (the Onkaparinga council in my case and my property) which prevent subdivision of this land and the construction of more than one dwelling per title.

Building one house on my property, Mullaghmore, Lot 21 Toops Hill Road, McLaren Flat of 42.5 hectares (103 acres) can hardly be described as urban sprawl. If this bill is introduced, the value of my property will fall to a fraction of the price I paid for it and far below the mortgage I am currently paying off, to say nothing of the loss of rates to the local council.

These bills must not be passed by the parliament.

Since purchasing my property in 2008, I have been planning the infrastructure, arranging aerial spraying of weeds in accordance with the Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board instructions, agisting cattle to keep grass down and help prevent bushfires, repairing fences and performing routine maintenance tasks.

I have plans for my house and garden there, and am utterly devastated that I may be prevented from ever living there, and may be unable to sell my land. My hopes and dreams will be dashed, and I will suffer great financial hardship if this proposed bill goes ahead. It is quite unnecessary!

Please help me to realise my dreams instead of being bankrupt and homeless.

The next correspondence I have is a letter to the member for Unley from Mr Davey. He says:

I introduced myself to you at the Unley Shopping Centre as Rhonda and I are now in your electorate at 'Braested'.

I guess everybody is in my electorate; we have 1.6 million, all of us are fortunate to have 1.6 million people. It continues:

Please note the enclosed. My son's letter has all been sent to the Hon. David Ridgway, Minister Gago, the Hon. Leon Bignell, and Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg.

We would like to know your views on the bill and if you can ask your colleagues can you rectify the wrongs in this legislation.

We are a very hard 'working family' and have always been. We support development and have been very happy with what has happened on the west side of South Road. Dean Brown resolved these issues many years ago to our complete satisfaction.

This bill has the potential to destroy the businesses of many farming families—

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Well, again, you have to take that up. It continues:

It has been a tough few years...and now this.

If the bill is passed what rights do we have to compensation of value lost.

With best wishes

RJ Davey.

I will read another one from Mr Nichols. He states:

The character preservation bills—

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: I beg your pardon? I have another one from Mr Scroop. This is a submission to the Barossa Valley McLaren Vale revised protection development plan. It states:

We have owned a property between Mount Pleasant and Springton for a period in excess of 35 years. This property consists of some 300 acres, 2 titles, main road frontage, mains water and power.

When we purchased the property it was run down, rough and untidy. Rural living was unheard of and irrelevant because the area was considered too far away from many living areas...Over the years we have developed and nurtured the land running it essentially as a sheep farm while always maintaining and appreciating the beauty of the area.

In latter years, particularly the last 20 years, rural living in the Adelaide Hills has become very popular, particularly for retirees wishing to build and live on a small rural holding close to the city. This has added greatly to the value of the property and we are at a point now where these tittles are prime assets because of this.

As you can imagine the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale proposal has been met with disgust as it will cause severe financial hardship and impact greatly on our future lifestyle.

1. The Current Value of the property has been used for borrowings by our company and if halved will place us in a non viable situation financially.

2. The Current Value of these properties also forms a large part of the superannuation/retirement asset which we are relying on for the purpose of self funding and a comfortable lifestyle in retirement.

3. Over the past 30 years we have put extensive capital investment into the presentation, preservation and improvement of the property and to wipe out this improved value with a simple stroke of a pen without suitable compensation cannot and will not be accepted. We will therefore endeavour through a class action with other participants to protect our rights and seek full compensation for any loss we may incur.

4. Freehold title of land has always entitled the holder to a dwelling. This is the Australian Way and must be protected at all cost.

5. This Proposal Plan if it goes go ahead will not only add huge costs to any potential future development/redevelopment (which the state can ill afford) but will have a severe effect on local businesses and employment as development grinds to a halt in these areas and become nothing more than rural backwater.

Finally this exercise smells of a broke Labor Government with nothing to lose and plenty to gain for no cost. Affected people will be people who have worked hard to earn a dollar and build a valued asset and do not believe in using other people's assets for averaging of the rest.

Mr Rau, this is Australia not China or some other socialist republic. If you are so passionate about helping to preserve the 'special character' of the Hills for future generations then maybe you and your politician colleagues would like to show the way and donate half of your hard earned wealth/retirement assets to help with this project.

I have another one here which is quite lengthy, but I will read it onto the record. This is a press release that I know a number of members did receive, but I think it is worth putting this on the record. It is entitled 'Barossa and McLaren Vale Bills To Cost Land Owners Millions'. It states:

As you may be aware, on 5th April the Minister for Planning tabled a revised Bill named the Character Preservation (McLaren Vale) Bill 2012 and a similar Bill applying to the Barossa. Also on that date the Minister brought into effect a Development Plan Amendment (DPA). The DPA is effective from 5th April for 12 months unless terminated. The DPA has to be read in conjunction with the current City of Onkaparinga Development Plan (as consolidated on 24th November 2011) and the corresponding plans in the Barossa.

As an example, a partial extract from the DPA applying to the Rural Zone is reproduced below.

In the first list of PDC 94 (non-complying development) which relates to 'The following kinds of developments are non-complying in the Rural Zone, except for in the Watershed Policy Area, the Primary Production Policy Area and the Yaroona Policy Area...the words: 'Detached Dwelling, except within 'Note 1 below.'

Detached dwelling...:

(a) in accordance with Note 1 below

(b) in the Character Preservation District shown on Figures [Onkaparinga Consolidated Plan Development]/1 to 11 to replace an existing dwelling provided the replacement dwelling does not result in more than one dwelling on an allotment.

The effect of this change In both the McLaren Vale and Barossa is that the owner of rural land (which in this context means land outside the township boundaries) cannot build a dwelling on their land (unless it is to replace an existing dwelling) with consequent severe loss of property value.

HOW DID THIS COME ABOUT

The government began a process of consultation in June 2011 when the public was invited to give their views on the future for McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley. The printed invitation contained a hint for those interested—'Most will also agree that prime agricultural land must not be lost under housing estates.' The implication here is that this scenario is possible unless new legislation is brought in to prevent it. Although this implication was false and misleading, it certainly produced a spate of responses from concerned residents who didn't want housing estates to encroach on rural land.

Over two hundred submissions were received by 22nd July. Minister Rau said he was delighted and, not surprisingly, 'the majority strongly supporting the protection of the Barossa and McLaren Vale from further urban development', (according to the Minister's media release).

But what is meant by the term 'urban development'? If it means suburban housing estates, there is no need for the Minister to act to protect the rural districts. They were and still are protected by the Development Plans for each Council district. These Development Plans have been carefully built over the years by responsible local councils who act with the benefit of local knowledge and community objectives, and are administered by competent professional staff. The Development Plans and the administration of them have a proven track record of success over the years. On the other hand, the hastily conceived legislation with which we are now confronted has no track record whatsoever.

On Wednesday September 28th 2011, Minister Rau introduced the so called 'Character Preservation' bills and a DPA to go with them covering Barossa and McLaren Vale. His press release stated his legislation would 'ensure the protection of Barossa and McLaren Vale from urban sprawl'. This is commendable on the face of it, but that claim is nothing but a sham as the areas were already protected for the reasons given above.

THE HOAX

The hoax here is that the misleading threat of 'urban sprawl' is being used to justify the prohibition of a very low level of additional dwellings as will shortly be explained in detail.

RESULTS OF THE PUBLIC CONSULTATION TILL DEC 19TH, 2011:

A period of public consultation followed regarding the DPA, to close on December 19th 2011. This time the number of responses was reduced to 107, but having now seen the detail, instead of being in favour of the new proposals, the vast majority were scathingly critical of it. A common reason for objection was that their existing in principal right to build on an existing rural block was to be taken away, resulting in severe financial loss, disruption, uncertainty and hardship to them.

As a result of the poor report card the proposed legislation received on Dec 19th, on April 5th 2012 Minister Rau released revised Bills and a revised DPA to cover both the Barossa and McLaren Vale. However the revised DPA still prevented building a house on a rural allotment (except to replace an existing house) just as the previous version did.

The Fact Sheet issued with the April 5th proposed legislation stated an objective was 'to present residential style development in the rural areas pending further strategic review and analysis'. This is the same nonsense as before, as residential housing style development was not previously permitted anyway.

THE CURRENT BILLS AND DPA AND THEIR DEVASTATING EFFECT

The comfortingly named Character Preservation Bills and the DPA which goes with them will be devastating to many rural land owners including those who the Bills are supposed to benefit. This is because the DPA which is in force now will in many cases prevent the building of a new house in rural areas. In consequence property values will be slashed, with some properties being rendered virtually worthless. If you have rural land for sale the prospective purchaser will be frightened off on discovering that building a house is 'non complying'.

There is no mechanism proposed in the Bills or elsewhere to compensate land owners for the loss in value of their properties and the deprivation of in principle building rights. Should these Bills pass Parliament it will result in thievery by the government from affected land owners on a grand scale.

There has been little about the Bills in the press. Consequently it is likely that only a tiny fraction of landowners who will be adversely affected by the laws are aware of them.

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE AFFECTED?

The government has obligingly provided us with this information as part of the 2012 DPA in the table reproduced below—

Mr President, I seek leave to insert a statistical table into Hansard.

Leave granted.

Summary of land division and new dwelling potential in rural zones (pre-interim DPA) (4)

Protection District Potential existing lots without a dwelling (A) Potential existing lots that meet minimum allotment size for a dwelling Lots able to be divided (for residential use) (B) Potential additional lots for dwellings Total Dwelling Potential (A)+(B)
Barossa Valley 2,289 1,263 53 76 1,339
McLaren Vale 789 789* 48 69 858
Total 3,078 2,052 101 135 2,197


Notes: *(1) No minimum lot sizes exist for dwelling in the McLaren Vale district in the Onkaparinga (City) Development plan; (2) Excludes Government land

(4) 'Rural Zones' includes a range of primarily non-urban zones within the protection districts located outside of townships or other areas excluded from the 'district', including Rural, Primary Production, Primary Industry, Watershed, Fringe, Hills Face, MOSS or like zones.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: The potential of existing lots without a dwelling in both areas, according to this information, is some 3,078 allotments. The potential existing lots that meet the minimum allotment size for a dwelling are then reduced to 2,052, only about 101 lots are available to be divided for residential use under the existing provisions, and there is the potential for 135 additional lots and dwellings. So, there ends up being a potential number of dwellings in the two areas of 1,339 in the Barossa and 858 in McLaren Vale—a total of 2,197. The submission continues:

The government has also calculated and provided us with the size of each Character Preservation area. McLaren Vale is 40,000 hectares or 400 square kilometers, and the Barossa 136,000 hectares or 1,360 kilometers.

Having determined the number of allotments affected and over what area of land, it would appear that the government did no further analysis on these figures. Had it done so, it would have realised how little effect the proposed measures would have on the McLaren Vale and Barossa dwelling numbers.

According to the above figures, a maximum of 858 new dwellings could have been build in the McLaren Vale Character Preservation District prior to September 2011, while the Barossa District could have accommodated 1,339 new dwellings.

WHERE IS THE URBAN SPRAWL?

To summarise, in the McLaren Vale district, according to the government's own figures, prior to September 28th 2011, only 858 new dwellings could have been built on 400 square kilometers of land. This amounts to just over 2 dwellings per square kilometer. In the Barossa the corresponding figure is 1 new dwelling per square kilometer. So where is the urban sprawl referred to by the Minister?

The halt on land division alone ensures that no housing estates can occur.

The staggering fact is that this legislation, under the guise of stopping 'urban sprawl', would at the most, prevent the building of 2 new houses per square kilometre. These would be new houses of attractive design which complement and preserve the rural landscape. One must conclude that such new dwellings would be a most desirable attribute to the district, not a detriment.

If the proposed measures come into effect it will render many allotments worthless. This will particularly apply to allotments less than 2 hectares (5 acres in the old measurement), as no commercially viable primary production activity is possible on this size allotment. These allotments will be neglected and quickly become an eyesore and fire hazard.

WHO WILL PAY FOR THE PROPOSED LEGISLATION?

Firstly the general community will be disadvantaged. The desired character of the area will not be preserved, so the legislation will have the opposite effect to that desired.

The next class of those who will suffer is the local councils. As an example a block of land in Seaview Rd McLaren Vale which was for sale for $400,000 will, if the legislation is passed, become virtually worthless. Rates payable on this land are $1,140 per annum. If this land becomes worthless or close to it, Council stands to lose over $1,000 per annum of rates collectible. On the government's own figure of 858 allotments affected, that is almost $1,000,000 annually. The corresponding figure for the Barossa is around $1.4 million annually. This money which could otherwise be used to maintain the respective districts.

The next class of those affected will be the owners of rural land who lose the ability to build a dwelling on their land. The loss of value per allotment has been estimated (by a retired land agent with property in the area) at $300,000 minimum in the McLaren Vale district. For 858 allotments land owners will stand to lose $258 million.

At that rate, the loss to Barossa landowners over 1,339 allotments would be some $402 million, a total of $660 million over both districts.

The building industry will lose the construction of 2,197 homes at an average of say $250,000, a total loss of over $500 million.

In summary the DPA, in stopping the owner's rights to build on their existing allotments will cost the SA economy approximately $1.16 billion in the foreseeable future.

This is contrary to the State Strategic Plan promoting sound economic development and can be avoided by limiting the DPA and proposed Bills to only stop further subdivision.

The next question posed is:

OWNERS IN THE DARK

The government has made no effort to advise the 858 owners in McLaren Vale or the 1,339 owners in the Barossa of the government's true intentions. Hopefully the Councils in the affected areas will take immediate steps to ensure that every rural landowner is informed of the detrimental nature of what is proposed.

This is particularly so in the case of the Character Preservation Bills (April 2012 versions). In these 2 Bills there is mention of preventing land division but no mention whatsoever of preventing the building of a dwelling. It is only when one looks at the DPA which the Minister has brought into immediate operation that the intent of the government to prevent new dwellings in rural areas is revealed.

So on the face of it the DPA is inconsistent with the Bills. One might wonder how the Bills could be used to ban new dwellings. Perhaps if the Bills are passed by Parliament, the prohibition on new dwellings will be achieved by regulations which the Bills authorise the Minister to introduce.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

What started out in June 2011 as an exercise to protect the McLaren Vale and Barossa districts from 'urban sprawl' has now become a pathetic inconvenience which would prevent a miniscule number of new dwellings relevant to land area being built. The legislation would, if it succeeds in being brought into law, do more harm than good, and cause irreparable damage to many small landowners.

The legislation is an affront to the local Councils who have a proven track record of responsible administration by overriding their Development Plans.

The reintroduction of new Bills and DPA on April 5th 2012 without restoring rural dwelling rights shows that the so-called consultation process is merely window dressing which is really ignored by the government.

Make no mistake, if the proposed legislation comes into force there will be mortgage foreclosures and bankruptcies in the rural areas.

I think I am nearing the end of this particular piece of correspondence. It continues:

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE—ELECTED COUNCIL MEMBERS

According to the government figures there are 858 allotments in the McLaren Vale district and 1,339 in Barossa which will be affected, total of 2,197. Of the 107 submissions the government received on December 19th 2011, only half or about 50 were from rural landowners. This suggests strongly that over 2,000 landowners are completely unaware of the damage being done to their land values.

The people best placed to remedy this lack of knowledge are the elected Councillors in the affected areas. Councillors have a duty of care to their rural ratepayers, and should make a collective decision as to how their ratepayers might be assisted. Having made that decision, Council staff should be instructed to put the chosen measures in place.

The first measure which should be taken is to see that every landowner outside the townships should be notified by mail. The second is that Council should call one or preferably more public meetings so that the legislation and its effect can be explained, and written material handed out. Such meetings should be held before the end of May, so that landowners have a chance to put in a submission before the expiry of the public consultation on June 27th [which of course was yesterday].

Councils in the affected areas should take a stand on behalf of their rural ratepayers to protect the ratepayers' assets, to regain their Councils' authority, and lobby parliamentarians to reject the proposed legislation.

Then there is a little part here for all of us:

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE—ELECTED MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

Be assured that the current DPA, and Bills if they are passed, are causing widespread grief. To better understand this see Annexure A at the end of this document (extracts from submissions received on December 19th, 2011).

State Members of Parliament may wish to ponder on the inconsistency between the Bills and the DPA as far as dwellings in the rural areas are concerned.

Perhaps the Minister might be asked how the 2012 Bills will prevent building of dwellings when that objective appears not to be covered (unlike the 2011 Bills which very clearly permitted dwellings). Has the Minister exceeded the proper use of his powers by introducing a DPA which goes much further than the accompanying Bills?

We request the immediate reinstatement of the in principle right to build a dwelling on any allotment which is outside of township boundaries and was in existence prior to September 28th, 2011.

I will read from the last page of this document, which is extracts from the submissions on the initial DPA. It states:

So as you can imagine, we have found this news, to be honest, quite shattering, with the added stress and uncertainty of not knowing when, or even if we can build our family home...I plead for those who are able to overturn this situation to see sense that they are hurting a lot of innocent people trying to catch a few, there must be a better way. Please help me and my family, we are at the mercy of common sense.

The next one states:

I am distraught at the thought of not being able to build on my land that I have worked so hard to keep and this was my investment for retirement. I fear I will be stuck with land that I cannot afford and no one else will want to buy.

The proposed DPA has been presented to the public under the pretence of stopping urban sprawl and preserving the vineyards and productive farming land is totally misfounded, as it stands the Bill will sterilise the area, stopping all development, destroying the livelihood of many of the farms it is meant to be preserving.

While the Minister and Parliament take their Christmas break and holidays, bear a thought for those who have had their lives thrown into turmoil and will not be able to put the worry of what the new year may bring due to this crazy Bill and DPA.

The next point states:

We are in the process of finalising our house plans, but were very distressed to learn that dwellings, along with any other form of building, are now non-complying in the Watershed Protection (Mt Lofty) area.

We see this as a 'Kick in the Guts' as we are in our early sixties. [For] this to be a safety net. The removal of the current laws will cause financial shortfall, stress and stymie productivity. Ownership of land is also the key to retirement and we have planned this for decades. Primary producers have to be self funded retirees as no one pays our super. We can't be expected to be financially worse off without compensation.

Almost towards the end, it states:

My husband is 56 years and I am 54 years old, we don't have time to save again, or the years to spare. I can't believe this nightmare that we have stepped into due to no fault of ours.

Finally, it states:

[We have]...six children. This law will significantly affect our whole family financially. If unable to be developed our farmland will reduce enormously in value, or be (as it is currently) a difficult farm to farm.

Members can see with those comments and with the document provided to me that these bills have created a great deal of uncertainty and concern in the community. I have maybe one or two final quotes to go in relation to correspondence to me. I did hear the Hon. Mark Parnell make some—

The Hon. M. Parnell: I'm taking mine out of the file as you read them.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Okay. I do recall a very lengthy WorkCover debate, where somebody took the floor for some 14 hours. This has barely been much over half an hour. I have one here from K.E. and M.D. Jennings of Rosedale, in the Barossa Valley. I had put some comments in the newspaper, and I received this letter, which states:

This week I read in our local paper...June 2012, about your concerns regarding need for more information...[in relation to] the DPA plans for the Character Preservation (Barossa Valley) Bill.

We have a business and farming property within this boundary and are extremely concerned about the future of our family.

April 24th 2012, I wrote a letter to the DPA, also sent a copy to the Honorable Ivan Venning, Tony Piccolo, Robert Brokenshire, the Senior Planner at Barossa Council...and I [also] sent a copy to the Honorable Nick Zenophon and Isabel Redman.

So, a number of people have received that.

Copy of this letter and the article from The Leader I have attached.

Our house plans have been submitted to Council. As you can read from my letter we have been put in a situation that we feel is unnecessary. We have no need to retire into a retirement home complex, as we are in our 60's, both fit and well and want to live on our property as long as we can.

Because we purchased our 50 acres knowing that we could build, which in the long term would add value to the property, we feel now the resale value is now worthless. Is the government going to compensate us and all the other people involved for their loss...we bought this property in good faith, knowing that we could build.

If you wish, please contact us on our mobile phone, or pay us a visit and see how we are managing under these circumstances. Because our daughter is now living in the farmhouse with her husband and three teenage boys (trying. also to renovate) we are living in a caravan and double garage. We are 'comfortable' but it's not best accommodation. We have been living this way since April 2012.

I have a copy of a letter sent to the Presiding Member of DPAC, and I might make this the last constituent letter I read. The letter is from Mrs Marlene Jennings, and she says:

I...on behalf of my family, wish to express our concern regarding the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale Revised Protection Districts Development Plan. We are owners of the below mentioned properties at Rosedale.

December 2000, we took over the lease of the quarry at Rosedale, the property was then owned by...[Mr] Afford.

October 2010, Dean Afford approached my husband Ken Jennings about the sale of his whole farm, as he wanted to retire. That same month Ken and I approached the Barossa Council planning department, asking if we could build a house on Lot 308, if we personally purchased this parcel of vacant land. We were told yes.

So as a family business, Jennings Bros. purchased Lot 313, pieces 91 & 92 for $1,000,000 (one million dollars), this was the quarry area, approx 180 acres. Our daughter Kylie...purchased Lot 307 for $450,000 (four hundred and fifty thousand dollars) this was house and sheds, approx 38 acres, and [Kenneth Jennings and Marlene Jennings] purchased Lot 308, vacant land for $250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) approx 50 acres. (This was our super fund.) This sale was finalized July 14th 2011. Total $1,700,000 (one million seven hundred thousand dollars).

Ken and I sold our house in Willaston (because we were told we could build on Lot 308) moved into the farm house, until such time as Kylie sold her house in Willaston and moved into the farm house, which has just happened.

Since moving in July, we have surveyed the property, had engineers report prepared and house plans drawn up to submit to Barossa Council, cost of about $8,000. Water is connected, enquiries made regarding power and phone and fenced off the house block.

We operate all these titles as one farm, except for about 20 acres, which is quarry area and recently extended our quarry lease to the property next door belonging to [Mr] Jim Johnson. The remainder is land for cropping and we are now running a small commercial herd of beef cattle.

We operate the quarry with four partners (family members), plus four full time staff and a casual truck driver when needed, because of these business commitments we feel that Ken and I should live close by, not in the next town.

Council told us we could not build a granny flat onto our daughters house.

[Their grandson] is studying...at Xavier College and is doing a farm management course...[He is] planning to work the farm and eventually take over running the quarry.

The house that we are intending to build will eventually be left to [the grandson], when we no longer need it.

This house block is situated 300 metres from the Rosedale Road and is well within the township zone of Rosedale. Our front boundary fence is situated inside the 80 km per hour sign and also continues into the 50 km per hour zone. How are small townships supposed to survive if we can no longer expand in the future?

We saw on TV a report about this plan, but thought it was in connection with sub-divisions.

We are not grape growers; we are farmers with a moderate size quarry, which is greatly supported by the Barossa and Kapunda Councils and the public.

If a farmer cannot build on a separate title, what hope do they have of trying to stay on their own farm as long as they can, and still have their heir run the property?

Ken and I do not have any sons, but have a grandson who is prepared to continue the business and live on the farm, learning from his Grandfather.

Please consider this letter and the plights of others in the same predicament when making your decisions.

I think that letter and the others certainly summarise a lot of the concerns that are out there in those two communities, and I think it has demonstrated that the minister probably has not understood the unintended consequences. I think it is clearly stated in the early commentary that everybody thinks that the concept of protecting the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale is a sensible and honourable thing to do, but when it comes to the technicalities of it, it becomes much more difficult.

I am nearing the end of my contribution, but I did put some questions to the minister here last time when I started my contribution. One of minister Rau's advisers was sitting in the gallery and he has attempted to answer most of the questions I asked. I do not believe that either the minister sitting here, the adviser or the minister himself understood when I talked about the areas and the township boundaries. In particular, I highlighted Beckwith Park where the old town boundary had not been changed to reflect a change of land use, so the car park of the Beckwith Park facility was in the protection zone. I have provided copies of that aerial photograph to the minister's office via his adviser.

However, the minister did provide new copies of the protection zones to me, which I note now include Henschke's Hill of Grace winery, but I am yet to see the detail of the maps in relation to the Beckwith Park issue and the Tarac facility. I did ask the minister (via the minister here) to recheck every town boundary because, if we pass this legislation, both the external boundary and the township boundaries will be enshrined in the legislation in relation to the maps that are lodged at the General Registry Office.

So once they are lodged and these bills pass, if they are not accurate and someone wants to do some development that they are entitled to do—for example, the Beckwith Park people on their car park, which is bitumen and has no character or heritage to preserve; and when you look at the aerial photographs you can see this anomaly—it will be noncomplying. It will be in the wrong zone and they will actually have to come back to parliament to adjust it.

I did have an informal discussion with the minister, and he agreed that that is what would have to happen. I know we will not be doing any of the committee stage today, so I do ask the minister to instruct his officers to double-check every town boundary, even by use of aerial photographs, to make sure the land uses and boundaries are all consistent with what their intention is, because I would hate to have to come back here and do all this again.

Having said all that, when the Hon. Robert Brokenshire indicated that he wanted to protect the Willunga Basin we indicated that we would be prepared to look at legislation that offered some level of protection. We now have these two bills. Broadly, this is a bill where basically, as the minister says, nothing can happen unless it comes to the parliament; the parliament is the final decision maker. So if the parliament wants to change a town boundary or have some development, the parliament gets the final say.

We think that is an overreaction. As we have seen, with a number of the contributions I have made and the correspondence I have read onto the record, the existing development plans of the Barossa and McLaren Vale have, by and large, coped with all the issues and all the pressures of the last 150 years. In fact, as I alluded to earlier, the only issues, the big issues, were when the minister intervened with ministerial DPAs or major developments in those areas.

So it is the opposition's intention to support the bills, but we will be supporting them with some amendments that will enshrine the boundaries where they are—now that we have Henschke's Hill of Grace—and, provided that the minister can guarantee that all the town boundaries are in the locations they need to be, we will enshrine them in the legislation as proposed. So I guess we support the intent of the bill there.

Clearly, we want to make sure (and I am pretty certain) that Henschke's Hill of Grace winery is back in the zone, but what we would like to do is, in the broadacre area, remove the right for a minister to be able to do a ministerial DPA so that the minister cannot do what he did in Mount Barker: just come in and say, 'Look, we don't really like what you are doing. We have had a chat to the developers, our mates the developers, and here we go; we're going to rezone 1,300 hectares with you like it or not.'

We see that as one of the main reasons we are faced with these bills now, because of the reckless behaviour this government. We think the easiest way to achieve that is to remove the minister's ability to initiate a ministerial DPA in the broadacre area. We believe that major developments should be removed from the minister's ability in the broadacre area as well, and of course we would support a five-year review.

Then we would actually amend the bill to remove the character. We have some new objects of the bill that have been drafted now, which naturally I will circulate and table and put on file, but what we want to achieve is to say that, yes, we accept that these are particularly important areas, clearly defined by the boundary. The township boundaries are defined, but what we want to do as an opposition is have smaller government and actually hand it back to local councils to manage—as they have done for the past 150 years.

If the boundary is clearly defined there is no capacity for Big Brother, for the government, to come in and say, 'We're going to have a broadacre subdivision.' Our intention would be that the small landholders, the ones we have discussed who have 20, 40, 100 acres, whose dream was to build a home—and I have a dozen more of those letters; maybe the Hon. Mark Parnell can read the ones I have not covered—

The Hon. M. Parnell: I've found some more.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: He has found some more. There are some really genuine cases, and I know that the Hon. Robert Brokenshire is concerned about those. It is not urban sprawl: it is a house on a 100 acre or 50 acre farm that someone has bought, mortgaged, gone out and put their neck on the line to be able to build their dream home. Those are the things we think should still be important, and that is where local councils should manage it. In the Barossa, the local council has imposed a minimum allotment size, and that was something they did themselves some 20-odd years ago, I think. That was something the locals did and it was their decision to do it.

The intent of our amendments is to get government out of it. It is not for the parliament to be telling an area what to do; it should be about the local communities and their local councils. I suspect, if our amendments are successful, we would see a greater interest in local government elections. If there were a rogue council (although 'rogue' is probably a bit harsh) or a council clearly going off at a tangent from what has been the normal practice, as people know, all the development plan amendments do go across the minister for planning's desk at this point, so at the end of the day there is still a check and a balance for the minister.

However, under our proposal, the minister or the government of the day cannot impose upon the region something that is against the region's wishes. I think that is what we have seen at Mount Barker, Buckland Park and, to a lesser degree in one sense, at Seaford because that land had been rezoned for some 30 years, but it was the government of the day that—

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Well, they might have misled the whole community, and maybe you might like to cover that in your contribution; I do not wish to delay the debate. I think it was Mount Barker that was the catalyst for this legislation, and the key issue at Mount Barker was the use of a ministerial DPA. The key issue in Buckland Park was major development. We are proposing that those two options are not available. We would amend the bill to make it impossible for the minister to do that.

We would still allow major developments to be used within the town boundaries because there may be an old industrial site or a commercial site that needs some sort of consolidation or remediation. We can see that there may well be a situation where you would have a need for a major development within the town boundaries. I have discussed these proposals with both councils. They certainly favour a more minimalist approach, rather than the prescriptive approach that the minister has proposed.

By and large, though, the councils have managed their affairs extremely well, and they have done a great job. It is not the councils that have been engaging in this urban sprawl: it has been the government. By removing the minister from it and handing control back to the local communities, all the current development plans, as has been outlined before, where subdivision is not allowed, will stay in place. At the end of the day we will get a clearly-defined area, clearly-defined township boundaries. Handing control back to the locals is what we will be attempting to do when we move our amendments at the committee stage of the bill. With those few comments, I support the bill.

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:52): I am sure that everyone in this place is in furious agreement that the Barossa Valley and the McLaren Vale regions are most appropriately preserved as areas of agriculture and rural landscape. All of us would agree, when we are in the heart of the Barossa or at McLaren Vale and in amongst the vineyards, that that landscape is best left as it is, rather than being turned into concrete and bitumen for housing estates—the ongoing urban sprawl of Adelaide. I have not heard anyone disagree with that proposition: we all want to see these areas protected. The bill before us is one method of doing that, and other options are available as well.

I look forward to the committee stage when we have a look at some of the amendments that have been foreshadowed to see whether they in fact improve or detract from this model. The McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley areas (and I should say that I will speak to both bills in this one contribution, rather than dividing them up) are close to Adelaide, they have fertile soil and, as we know, they are very important areas for producing wine. There are orchards of fruits and nuts, and there are vegetables and other crops. These are important agricultural areas, and the fact that they are within a stone's throw of a metropolitan area of over a million people is something that is not that common these days around the world.

In fact, this sort of agrarian landscape on the outskirts of a major city, whilst not unique in the world, is regarded as globally significant. That is why there is at present a push for the world heritage listing of this agrarian landscape. A fair bit of work has been done on mounting the case for some of the areas in the Mount Lofty Ranges and these agricultural areas to actually be put forward to UNESCO for listing as a world heritage agrarian landscape.

It would be a travesty if these areas were opened up to bitumen, concrete and urban sprawl. We would in fact be killing the goose that laid the golden egg, because these areas are of the utmost importance to tourism in this state.

There are not many places where you have winegrowing areas of such quality in such close proximity to a major metropolitan area, and that is a fact that is not lost on international visitors or on the people of Adelaide. People from Adelaide love going up to the Barossa and down to McLaren Vale. They like doing so because it is close. There are wineries and other tourist ventures there, it is close to Adelaide but it is not Adelaide, and we do not want it to become part of Adelaide.

So, the objective of this legislation is to keep these assets and to keep the character of these areas intact and to protect them from urban sprawl. The first question we need to ask ourselves in relation to this legislation is whether these bills are necessary to achieve that objective. There are two ways of looking at it. If we approach it from a planning perspective or a strictly legal perspective, the answer is no, we probably do not need the legislation; we have legislation that is capable of protecting areas. However, when we approach it from a political or indeed a community perspective, the answer is that we do need this legislation.

Under our existing planning scheme, we have arrangements whereby a development plan can create zones, and the development plan can set out what is or is not allowed within those zones. If you want a finer grained form of planning, you can create policy areas within zones and you can use that to protect the character or the desired character of these areas. So that is why from a purely planning point of view there are plenty of people who say that we do not need to do this.

However, as I have said, from a political perspective or in fact even a community perspective, we do need these bills. We need them because there is a major hole in our planning system. In fact, I would not call it a loophole: it is actually a gaping cavern. This hole is big enough to drive a fleet of bulldozers through, which is exactly what has happened time and time again in South Australia. This hole is the virtually unfettered power of the minister of the day for planning to make whatever decision he or she wants and for those decisions to be beyond challenge. That is the loophole, and that is why legislation offers a much higher level of protection than the regime under the existing Development Act.

Under the current system, the minister can ride roughshod over the local community, over local councils and even over the advice of statutory authorities and independent experts. Under our current system, the minister is king. If this parliament decides that the special character of the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale is deserving of a higher level of protection than being left to the whim of the minister king at any point in time, then we need this legislation.

However, I think we also need to acknowledge that the current planning minister absolutely knows this to be the case. As he has said to me and to others as well, through this bill he is voluntarily giving up a degree of power and he is giving up authority, and he is giving it up not just on behalf of himself but on behalf of future ministers for planning. That is something that is rare in politics and it is something that he should be commended for.

Effectively he has put the handcuffs on himself, but the question that I think we will get to in committee is whether he has left the keys close by or whether we need to put those keys out of his reach. The Hon. David Ridgway has referred to some amendments that he is planning which probably fall into that category: putting the keys to the handcuffs beyond the reach of the minister of the day.

I do not want to simply slap the minister on the back and say, 'Job well done', because the back story to this legislation is, in fact, even more informative than the revelation on the part of the current minister that something must be done. In fact, the whole reason this legislation is necessary is that you cannot trust the government to get these planning decisions right. You cannot trust it not to do the bidding of its mates in the development industry. It has shown time and time again that when given the opportunity to make a bad planning decision on behalf of a mate it jumps to it.

As has been mentioned before in debate, you only have to look at Buckland Park, an atrocious planning decision not supported by any town planner I have met, other than those who are directly associated with the project and are making some money out of it, they do not seem to think it is so bad. Practically everyone else in the planning profession will acknowledge, in public and in private, that it was an appalling decision that should never have been made.

The Greens have also been strongly opposed to the urban sprawl at Gawler East, certainly at Mount Barker, and within the existing metropolitan area we have had some pretty dodgy deals done like the St Clair land swap and the rezoning of too much of the Cheltenham Park racecourse for housing and not enough provision for open space.

The back story is that the government has consistently been getting this wrong for most of its term of office. Through this bill the government is recognising that it cannot trust itself, and that is right. We do not trust it either. So, passing legislation that restricts the power of the minister to make bad planning decisions in relation to these two important areas is most welcome.

I would also mention that it will be interesting, on the third Saturday in March 2014, what people remember of how this government has performed since 2002, because from my perspective what we are seeing now is the old good cop/bad cop routine. We had bad cop minister Holloway and bad cop premier Rann. They are the ones who brought to you Buckland Park, Mount Barker and Gawler East. They have been replaced by good cop planning minister Rau and Premier Weatherill, who brought to you things like the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale character protection legislation. Will people be fooled in March 2014? Will they remember that the legacy of this government is the urban sprawl that they will start to see at Mount Barker and Gawler East?

The urban growth boundary is a line on a map which has been intended, for many years now, to be the limitive outward spread of the metropolitan area. The problem has been that that line has been written with an HB pencil and it is easily subject to being erased and redrawn, when in fact it should have been written in texta colour. In fact, it should have been written in one of those broad felt-tipped markers that are behind the glass case, behind wire, in the hardware store.

I have it on good authority that the planning minister is over 18. If he needs a note, we can give him one, to buy one of those broad tip texta colours to make sure that the line on this map, beyond which urban sprawl cannot go, will be enshrined in legislation. The object here is that once you have identified the areas that are worth protecting, in this case the valuable agricultural land of the Barossa and McLaren Vale, you draw those lines and you do not keep messing with them, you do not keep rubbing it out and moving it further and further out.

Whilst this legislation sets the broad framework for the protection of the McLaren Vale and Barossa areas, the detail is partly contained within the development plan amendment that is currently out on public consultation. The submissions formally closed yesterday. I will say that this latest version of the development plan amendment is a vast improvement on the version that was released last year.

Last year's version was a very blunt instrument, effectively making any form of development anywhere a non-complying form of development and that led to some of the ridiculous situations that have been described already, such as people within townships in industrial zones not being allowed to undertake reasonable industrial development in an industrial park. That was a crazy situation, so the government has moved and amended the map that forms part of this legislation, and they amended the development plan amendment as well.

The effect of making everything non-complying was that it stomped on good development as well as inappropriate or bad development. That was the subject of my submission to the Development Policy Advisory Committee, and I am glad that the minister stepped in and acted and fixed that up before we even got to the public meetings that had been scheduled.

It has also been mentioned before, but I will say it again, that the development plan amendment (both the previous one and this one) has been introduced on interim operation; that is the provision in the Development Act which is also known as the 'shoot first, ask questions later' clause. It basically says that the changes to the planning rules come into effect immediately and then consultation is undertaken afterwards.

I have been very critical of the misuse of that tool by ministers in ministerial development plans for many years, but I will say that this is one case where it is absolutely appropriate to bring changes in under interim operation because what we are trying to do is to pre-empt speculative behaviour. If you were going, for example, to prevent subdivisions in an area and you flagged your intention months out, then the logical consequence is that you will get hundreds of subdivision applications all lodged in a rush to try to beat the changes. So when the object of the exercise is to protect and preserve an area, interim operation of changes to the planning scheme are absolutely warranted. I just want to put that on the record because I have been critical of just about every other interim operation that the government has introduced.

In relation to the specific situations in the McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley, along with other members I have been sent a large number of submissions from individuals and groups, and they fall probably into four categories. Category 1 are the people who are wholeheartedly in favour of the legislation, people who can see what it is trying to be achieved and who urge us to vote in favour. Those submissions tend to be fairly general in nature and, as I said at the outset, we are all in furious agreement that we do not want urban sprawl through the Barossa and McLaren Vale.

The next category of submissions come from people who say that they feel hard done by with this legislation because they had always intended in the future to subdivide their land as an investment and that they feel it is unfair that they will no longer be able to do so. I will say that I have less sympathy for these people than for some of the other categories of people affected by this legislation.

In some ways it has parallels with the introduction of the native vegetation clearance laws back in the 1980s and 1990s where people said that it was always their intention to clear all of the native vegetation on their property and to then turn it into what they saw as more productive uses. They felt that it was unfair for the community to want to protect native vegetation on private property and they insisted on compensation, and the government back then agreed.

They thought, 'That is fair enough. If we are going to stop you from clearing vegetation, we will compensate you.' That scheme did not last very long before it pretty well sent the environment department broke and a wiser government then realised that when you impose these changes in the public interest for the community good, then there is not a need to compensate each and every landholder who is affected.

I think there is a parallel here with those people who complain that their future intentions to subdivide for housing have been thwarted. I think the response is: 'I'm sorry but bad luck.' The whole purpose of this legislation is to prevent inappropriate future subdivisions. That category of constituents will not be getting much joy from the Greens.

The second category of constituents are the people the Hon. David Ridgway referred to at some length. These are people who already own a block of land, they have a separate certificate of title in either the McLaren Vale or the Barossa area and they are concerned that they will not be able to build a house on it. The Hon. David Ridgway sought leave and was granted it to incorporate into Hansard a statistical table, showing the number of affected properties with people who own land and feel that their ability to build houses on it has now been compromised by this legislation.

What I would ask the minister is, if she could, in her second reading summing up or in committee, verify those figures and just confirm that they are, in fact, accurate figures. I have got no reason at all to doubt the Hon. David Ridgway, but we need to know how many people we are talking about. We need to know how many people previously had a right—and I use that word cautiously—to build a house compared to those people who now find that that right is somewhat curtailed.

I make the point—and the minister will no doubt make it at great length in committee—that, when a form of development such as building a house is described in a development plan or in legislation as noncomplying, it does not mean that you cannot do it. What it means is that it is more difficult to do it. You have got more hurdles to jump and, most importantly, if you are knocked back in your application, you are not allowed to challenge it, so they are the two main things.

The Hon. David Ridgway read out a number of letters from people who said that their properties were now effectively worthless because they had either paid a sum of money for them or paid rates on them as if they were able to have a house built on them and, if they are not allowed to have a house built on them, then the land is worth less.

It is pretty hard to doubt the logic but where the proof of the pudding will be in the eating will be the extent to which people do lodge applications to build houses on large allotments and are then knocked back by their local council using the noncomplying development rules. My feeling would be that there will be much less of that than might be feared, but that is not to detract from the genuine concerns of the people who own these blocks, because they do not know which of them they will be able to build a house on and which they will not.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Uncertain.

The Hon. M. PARNELL: It is uncertain, because they do not know what that will hold. I think there are some serious questions around that, and I am not sure at this stage what the answer is. It is certainly a broadbrush approach at the moment making such development noncomplying. It may well be that, as we progress this and certainly as the local councils undertake their role in fine-grained planning, we find that some of those larger allotments in particular are, in fact, freed up again for individual dwellings.

Having said that, we have seen the system rorted in years gone by where people have leant on their local council to allow extra blocks to be carved off. It starts off as a granny flat and then it is an extra house for the ageing parents and, whilst that might be legitimate at the time, it is only a generation away from being an extra block of land for a tree-change owner to move onto.

Whilst the individual stories about people's personal circumstances—their kids, their ageing parents or whatever—might lead us to feel that we need to change some of these rules, what we have to remember is that the rules are in place and the consequences of those rules last from generation to generation. So, it is not just about trying to achieve individual justice for a current landholder, but we do not want to ignore their legitimate concerns either, so that will be part of what we have to do in committee.

The other category of people who have contacted me are people who have got more than one title and who might seek to rearrange the boundaries. I think there is some scope in the legislation, in the development plan amendment, for that to occur, but we need to make sure it occurs in a way that protects the character of these areas. You would not want the boundaries being shifted in such a way that the only spot left for a dwelling, for example, is in the most environmentally sensitive spot on a piece of land; that would be a bad outcome.

In terms of the correspondence that we have received, the Hon. David Ridgway was reading a large number of them and, as he read them, I put them onto a discard pile, so I do not need to refer to all those same ones again, but I will just give you a flavour of them. One sort of example that has crossed my desk was from a person who said that they had two 80-acre titles—so, fairly large allotments.

They had always intended to keep one and sell the other and now they are facing this uncertainty in that they have been told by their real estate agent that, because they are in the Barossa protection zone, even though only by a small amount of 500 metres, they do not have a guarantee that the land can be built on, and their comment is that this effectively makes the land worthless. Well, I disagree with that: the land is not worthless but their future is uncertain, and we do need to acknowledge that. One letter I have—and, again, this is the furious agreement I referred to—states:

This decision to protect the uniqueness of the Barossa Valley I support.

The vehicle used by making all development Non Complying I do not support, and intend on fighting against these amendments.

Another piece of correspondence I received from someone said that they had recently purchased their dream block of land on 20 acres, and they wanted to move from the city and bring up their family in a rural environment. The letter goes on about the different sums they have expended in trying to turn their block into their future dream home and that now they are worried about the lack of certainty.

I am sure that for some people, whilst the wait might be anxious, the situation will be resolved once the development plan amendment is finalised and local councils undertake their fine-grained planning. I would like to think that some of these people will be able to build on their properties, especially the very large allotments; it is hard to see that that is urban sprawl. I think we need to look sensibly at this measure so that it is not stifling all forms of development but focuses primarily on stopping the intense residential development we have seen in places like Gawler East and Mount Barker.

I have received an amount of correspondence from local councils, and in particular the Barossa Council has been very vocal. I know that the minister has expressed, I think publicly and maybe privately to members, that he has been frustrated. However, to give the council credit, it has persevered, and I think it has actually now achieved the sort of compromise it was after.

Certainly, I received a letter from the minister, written on 17 June, outlining the amendments the government was proposing to both bills (the Barossa bill and the McLaren Vale bill) which the minister says were the result of further consultation with the Barossa Council, the Light Regional Council, the Adelaide Hills Council, the Mid Murray Council and City of Onkaparinga. I was pleased to receive a letter just last week from the Barossa Council which includes the line:

The Barossa Council is pleased that Minister Rau has indicated an agreement to support the majority of Council's requests for amendment of the Bill and therefore Council does not want to derail the proposed legislation.

Having said that, the council is not saying that it is perfect and there are a few outstanding matters it would like considered, and we will deal with those in committee.

In relation to the McLaren Vale area, I have met with representatives of the wine industry and, again, I think their position can be pretty well summarised by saying that they are in furious agreement with the protection of their area as a primary production area and an area for tourism and for the wine industry. They want to protect it from urban sprawl, but they want to make sure that legitimate and appropriate developments can still occur. The Greens will be supporting these bills, and I look forward to the committee stage.

The Hon. David Ridgway has flagged a number of amendments, and the Greens are considering amendments as well, but many of those could be put into that category I described before. The minister has put the handcuffs on himself and on any future planning ministers, but we need to make sure that those protections are real and not illusory. We need to make sure that the keys to those handcuffs are appropriately looked after. My guess is that there might be twin sets of keys held by the local councils, on behalf of their communities, and by this parliament as well. With those words, the Greens support the second reading of both these bills.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (17:19): In the next 20 minutes or so I will summarise what I have already put on the public record on a couple of occasions on behalf of Family First when we argued for the protection, initially, of the McLaren Vale and surrounds of the basin. I put on the public record my appreciation to colleagues in this house. The majority of them, in fact everyone other than the government, on two occasions supported a bill that I had over a two or three year period.

I just want to put a little more history into this as I debate the second reading. In principle, Family First will be supporting both these bills, subject to seeing some amendments approved that I will highlight further in a moment and in detail when we get to the committee stage. I will speak to both bills, even though they are scheduled to be spoken to separately. In the interests of efficiency in the chamber, I am speaking for both bills, because for all intents and purposes the McLaren Vale character protection bill and the Barossa Valley bill are in content the same.

Back in 1993, as a candidate then for the Liberal Party, I was asked by the then leader of the opposition (Hon. Dean Brown) to draft an agreement that could be developed into a heads of agreement between the then district council of Willunga and the Liberal Party opposition. I was very pleased and proud to do that. There was a lot of community interest in our district for years before that, but it started to express some concern about rapid expansion of housing on some of our prime agricultural land and also about the fact that the government—it had the right intention—had bought so much land in some of our best agricultural and diversification opportunity rural land that housing was starting to spread fairly significantly then through the Morphett Vale areas and so on.

At that stage areas like Woodcroft were still running dairy farms, poultry, almonds and some cropping, even sheep. The markets at Willunga were still there, so it was quite a rural area, but it was clearly evident then that we were continuing that sprawl way back from when we were colonised, frankly. I drafted this agreement, and along with the then mayor of Willunga and the Hon. Dean Brown we had a signing media opportunity up near Oliver's, just to the immediate north of the McLaren Vale township. Effectively, what that agreement said was that outside the township boundaries of McLaren Vale, Willunga and McLaren Flat, to the east of Sellicks and Main South Roads, there would be no further subdivision.

By and large, up until very recently, that agreement, which was adopted and endorsed by the merger of the Willunga and Noarlunga councils to the Onkaparinga council, and, in fairness, also in principle adopted by the current Labor government, stood quite strongly and the intent of that did protect pretty much most of that land. Of course, there was no intent in that agreement to protect the area on the western side of Sellicks and South Roads at that point in time, because the trade-off was to develop along the coast but protect the land in the Willunga Basin up through to the Hills Face Zone. Of course, the Hills Face Zone had already been protected years before. I think the members of Dunstan government were probably the ones who rightly protected that Hills Face Zone.

It worked well, but it has got to a point now where we need to have legislation for the long-term protection of these areas, because we are rapidly running out of prime agricultural land that has diversification opportunities. Clearly, agriculture is going to change over the next 40 or 50 years, and we will see a totally different form of a lot of intense horticulture from what we see at the moment. Even around our own home farm, both to the northern and western sides, we have two—one in particular very extensive—plastic house complexes where quality vegetables, herbs and the like are being grown and trucked to the Pooraka markets pretty much every day of the week. We will see a lot more of that change.

There has been a huge effort in the McLaren Vale area with the purple pipes, as we call it, the recycled water project—something I was proud to be associated with—and that region has been drought-proofed. As the government finalises the tertiary treatment of the water supply from the Christies Beach treatment plant we will be able to use that water for hydroponic vegetable production and the like. The facade of the McLaren Vale fruit packers cooperative is still there at the Menz FruChocs confectionary outlet opposite Hardy's McLaren Vale hotel. We will see that type of concept recurring through Blewitt Springs, McLaren Vale and right up to Willunga as we see some changes with our primary industry of viticulture.

I think it is quite good that we have taken this step and, likewise, with the Barossa Valley. They are iconic areas, they are economic engine rooms, and they are good for tourism. With the Barossa Valley, particularly, and McLaren Vale, there are very few people you meet when you are overseas who have not heard of the Barossa Valley and Kangaroo Island, and they are iconic places for us now and into the future.

That is a bit of the history. When the two bills that I put up on behalf of Family First were passed, the government opposed them. They were opposed for one reason only and that was because Treasury had said that they needed to accelerate the subdivision opportunities for Seaford Heights, which is the gateway proper to the McLaren Vale/Willunga Basin district. It was dollars that drove that, not what was best for long-term opportunities. It is well known that work done by some highly experienced people including Philip White, a renowned wine writer and an expert in the wine industry, discovered that it had some of the best soil type for viticulture available in Australia, and that now is going into housing.

I put that on the public record because I was very disappointed that the government, for short-term financial expediency, destroyed that particular area. But once they did that, their tenders came through and they sold it, they then realised that politically they had to do something else to protect the region if they were to try and hold a couple of marginal seats in that area. They could not leave it all to good redistributions that they seem to get every time in those southern seats, and they thought they had better put up another initiative.

So here we are this afternoon debating these two bills. As I said, in principle, we agree with them, and I commend the government for finally seeing what we have been calling upon for a long time to be put before this parliament. I will not name all the individuals I have worked with over a 20-year period now—they know who they are—who have put in a such an enormous effort to see this vision become a reality in the parliament. We know that, unless there is total inflexibility by the government when it comes to the amendments that will be tabled, debated and voted on in committee, these two pieces of legislation will be passed, I expect, before we get up for the winter break in a few weeks.

I particularly give the Hon. John Rau an accolade because I have worked with him on this, and Michael O'Brien before him, and I think it is fair to say—

The Hon. R.I. Lucas: Minister Rau.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Minister Rau. The Hon. John Rau and the honourable—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Now, do not get really excited just because I give credit where it is due now and again. I commend the Hon. John Rau and the Hon. Michael O'Brien, who both genuinely realised that something had to be done. My friend, and someone I thought was one of the best ministers in the Labor government, the Hon. Paul Holloway, was the axeman. He had to do a job for the government, so he pushed through the Seaford Heights and Mount Barker developments.

I received the document from a very frustrated public servant. I received a piece of the documentation where, at that point when we were debating my bills in here, the Hon. Paul Holloway put a request through to the department, saying, 'Give me all the reasons why we can't support the Brokenshire bill.' It was not 'Give me the pros and cons of the bill', but, 'Give me all the reasons why we can't support the bill', and surprise, surprise one of the reasons—and it is on the public record—was that the bill that I put up was so draconian that you would probably not get council being able to approve a shed. That was one of the reasons why they would not support my bill.

That was a nonsense, because the bill I put up was for the big picture, the boundaries etc., and then the internals of that bill were to be put together through local people, including the council. I find it ironic after the Hon. Paul Holloway saying that he could not support my bill on behalf of the Labor government because it was going to be too cumbersome and have too much control even over a shed, that now there are hundreds of people who are disaffected because the government hit the nut with a sledgehammer and went so far over the top that pretty well everything at the moment is noncomplying, and that is of real concern.

Whilst I understand why the minister put in the interim DPA (because he was concerned there may have been an acceleration of opportunities to subdivide before protection legislation went through), the reality was that it could not happen outside the township boundaries, anyway. However, even after a lot of effort by many of us in this parliament, we did get a second interim DPA. That is still not adequate and it still worries me enormously.

I will give a few reasons why that does worry me. The Hon. David Ridgway has already put a lot of these reasons on the public record, but I think there needs to be just a few more put on the public record. I received one only today, which states:

Good morning Robert,

I was just wondering if you could get an update on the rural land fiasco. We are anxiously awaiting news of what Mr Rau has decided to do in regards to the building on rural land approvals. At last when I read in the Messenger—

and my constituent quotes—

'suggestions had made no impact on the time delays and approvals for building approval on vacant rural land', and that vacant rural land is losing its value because there are no developments (house dwellings) still being approved. Could you follow that up? Pete and I are waiting to sign on a block of land but won't do so until this is sorted out or we have something to say that says we can build a house on the four acres.

Then they ask for my response. That is as recent as today. The Hon. David Ridgway talked about the Jennings, and we received that correspondence as well. I received another one here from some people at Mount Pleasant. They talk about their concerns, and I quote just a couple of them. They say:

The very inadequate concessions that were made indicates to me that the potential damages of the original DPA were not completely understood.

They then go on to say:

First things first. We must ensure that we get to a position where if you own a vacant title you are entitled to build a dwelling on it provided it meets council regulations.

I also have many other pieces of material from constituents. I note today also that there is a concern by dairy farmers—jersey breeders like our own family from Greenock who want to expand their dairy because they not only milk cows but they value add. They want to increase their cow numbers and they want to increase their processing to other products, which will clearly create jobs and economic opportunities.

They want to bring their three daughters and son into the business. They have some titles, I understand, but, at the moment, it is all noncomplying so they cannot expand their dairy. The daughter would be forced probably to live in the town of Greenock and then commute out at very early hours of the morning to milk cows and get involved in the processing plant. This is undemocratic, and this is where the government has made a huge mistake.

Just to show what can happen, one of the reasons the Hon. Iain Evans and I are both in this parliament is a minister involved in planning back in the 1990s called the Hon. Susan Lenehan. Back in the early 1990s, the Hon. Susan Lenehan decided that, even though you had titles right through the Adelaide Hills and Fleurieu Peninsula, it was a risk because, if houses went all over that land, you would not have the landscape.

She was not actually very interested in the agriculture, I might add, but she was interested in the landscape so that she could drive out of Adelaide on the weekend and suck some fresh air. What the Hon. Susan Lenehan did in the early 1990s was say that it did not matter how many titles you had, you would not be able to build on them. Iain Evans and I set up an action group—with great success, I might add—and had a lot of meetings to ensure that we could get that overturned and that the Liberal Party, if they were to get into government in 1993, would ensure that they were overturned.

In fact, it got to the point that, when I was a candidate hoping to come into this parliament, I had to move off my farm, even though I had multiple titles, because I needed a share farmer and I was not allowed to build another home on any of those titles because the then Labor government said there would be no more dwellings on existing titles. I know that World War II and World War I were attended by a lot of men and women throughout this state (and some of them paid the ultimate sacrifice) to ensure democratic rights; and one of the basic democratic rights, surely, must be that, if you have a Torrens title system and a council-approved building envelope and if you meet standard building and planning requirements, you should have a right to build on those existing titles.

I talk about the Hon. Susan Lenehan because I find it interesting that here we are now, just over 20 years later, and we are going to have to argue this same debate in the house. Whether the bureaucracy or the ideology of the Labor government is at work here, I do not know (perhaps we can be told during the committee stage), but this aspect of what has happened with the DPA and what will continue to be a problem if we do not get this fixed, is wrong.

As I said, I have a lot of respect for the Hon. John Rau. He is genuinely committed to the protection, and I commend him for that, but I appeal to the Hon. John Rau to support the amendment that I have tabled now, which I will talk about in more detail during committee, to ensure that, providing people do have that building envelope and do meet council building requirements, they will be able to build.

It is no good public servants in the planning department saying, 'If you have got a problem, get it to me on behalf of your constituent and we will fix it. It might cost you $450 for some advertising and a bit of documentation but we are not stopping any of that.' That public servant may not be in that position long-term. Why should people suddenly have to spend $450 with no right of appeal because, suddenly, building a home on a piece of land becomes noncomplying?

At the moment, even if you want to put a toilet on the back of your home, it is noncomplying and you have to go through a noncomplying process. To give credit to the councils, they are trying to do whatever they can to approve them, and the Development Assessment Commission has indicated, 'We won't worry too much about it,' but that is not good enough for me. I do not, any longer, trust DPAs and public servants to that extent where I would put at risk the democratic rights of our constituents and also the money that they have invested.

I have had some of these people ringing me up and they are at sixes and sevens about whether or not they should be buying land at the moment. I have said to them, 'You have got to treat it as noncomplying at the moment, because that is where the DPA is.' I make one commitment only to those constituents and that is that I will put this amendment before the house. I cannot guarantee that it will be approved, but I trust that it will be approved. We need to revert back to where we were prior to all this debate about protection. I never intended that, when we first started debating this in the house a few years ago, people with existing Torrens titles would have noncomplying requirements put around them when they wanted to build a home, a shed, or the like.

The intent, and the clear intent to today, should simply be to stop further subdivision and to protect the region and the districts of McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley. That is what it was about: it was about stopping further subdivision outside the township boundaries, not saying to people that it would now be noncomplying and that they would run a huge risk in whether or not they could get housing approval.

There are about 2,000 titles, I understand, between the McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley area. In the Barossa Valley, I also understand that they have had for 20 years or more their own planning through their development assessment plans, whereby you have to have quite significant title areas to build. Some people want to see that remain, and some people I have spoken to want every title to have democratic right to build. The amendment I am putting up would do that, but it would still support the principles of the bill in not allowing further subdivision.

It also would have no impact on the fact that you will not be able to cluster anymore. Clustering is an interesting issue. I have seen some very bad clustering in the McLaren Vale region recently that constituents were very concerned about. That would not be allowed any further under the government's bill, and I support that. I am not sure whether or not we should have been more innovative and been given an opportunity to expand an area like the Tatachilla Estate, which was a visionary concept developed some time ago (probably in the seventies), and it is not a bad little village settlement. However, the way the bill is set up that cannot happen, and on behalf Family First I agree with the government on that.

There were some concerns about how big subdivisions for wineries and the like might be able to remain under this bill. I will ask the minister some questions at the committee stage about that because, personally, I think we should have no further subdivision at all; but there is a huge difference between no further subdivision and allowing buildings on existing titles.

Over the last year, in the McLaren Vale/Willunga area, even though there are 800 separate titles, 12 new homes have been built, I am advised. Over probably the last 10 years, you would not have seen more than 100, 140, or 150, and that was in the good times. You only have to go to the top of Willunga Hill to see that there are very few shiny roofs in that area. The shiny roofs are still on the western side of Sellicks, South Road and Seaford, where all the development has occurred.

I am told that if the noncomplying situation continues with these individual freehold titles, you could see drops in value if you then cannot get approval through the noncompliance, and there is no guarantee of that once it becomes noncompliant. It is another hurdle, it is another cost, it is another impediment, but it will have an impact on the value of those properties. Surveyors, land agents and planners have been in touch with me and told me that they have real concerns about this and that they do not believe this should be the way to go. I would like to see that returned back to where it was before we started any of this debate.

There are some areas on the map that are showing that development will still be able to occur on the western side of Sellicks and South Roads. I hope that the community that has been particularly interested in this has noted that. We have alerted some, and the feedback from them has been neutral. There is some Land Management Corporation land there still, I understand, that clearly the government wants to develop. Given the amount of time I have spent consulting with people on this issue, I am happy to support the boundary the government has put up in the McLaren Vale area.

I think I am already on the public record about this next issue—it is another amendment that I do have to make, and it will be for the parliament to democratically decide on—and it relates to the Willunga township boundary. A constituent came to me who I think has a bona fide case. With that constituent, I have met with the senior planner and another planner within the City of Onkaparinga whereby, because of an anomaly with what we still call the new road coming up Willunga Hill (which is now, from memory, about 35 years old), a little pocket of the Willunga township remains in the Hills Face Zone and therefore what can be done is restrictive compared to the rest of the township, which prevents those people from being able to create township-sized allotments in that corner.

The rest, to the east and the south-east of that, over the Victor Harbor Road and east of the township boundary heading up the Old Willunga Hill, is Hills Face Zone and, clearly, that should stay there. There is an opportunity, as the Hon. David Ridgway said, to fine-tune a couple of these boundaries, and I will move an amendment for that. I think that covers most of it at the moment. It is breaking new ground, having this protection legislation. We saw what happened at Mount Barker when we did not have the protection structures there.

Realignment of boundaries is one thing that I want to touch on. As well as having a complying right, which was always the case, to build on an individual title subject to meeting that building envelope and normal council building planning requirements, in the past you have always been able to realign boundaries. That is very important, because sometimes farmers want to grow land and sometimes farmers want to sell off land or they may want to retire on a hectare and sell the balance of their land to their neighbour. To my knowledge, right throughout the state you can realign boundaries; it is not subdivision and it is not creating new titles, so it does not go against the intent of the bill.

I raised this with the Hon. John Rau and I note that, whilst I have tabled an amendment for this, so has the Hon. John Rau, and I thank him for seeing the importance of being able to realign boundaries. Even if, in time, the whole 800 titles were to be built on in the character protection area in McLaren Vale, it would have little impact on the opportunity for expansion of diverse agriculture and horticulture in the region. Given the pace of building and the fact that a lot of farmers do not want to have homes on those titles, we will probably not see a large number of those ever built on.

My step-grandfather and my grandmother who farmed along with other families in the Aldinga area, not far from the Aldinga township but on the eastern side of the road (there were titles right through there), still do not have any homes on their properties, which are still farming land. I look forward to the debate in the committee stage. I ask my colleagues to look at my couple of amendments.

The only other amendment I will speak more about is removing the right for a specific minister for these bills: I do not think that is in the spirit of good planning. I agree with what the Hon. Mark Parnell had to say with respect to some of the powers that ministers get, and I think it was by default that that seemed to be in the bill, because I cannot understand why the planning minister would want to have another minister responsible for overriding situations. We will talk more about that in committee. I commend the principles of the bill to the council and I look forward to the committee stage.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the Status of Women) (17:49): I understand that there are no further second reading contributions to these bills, so, as other members have, I would like to make some concluding remarks, and they relate to both bills. I thank honourable members for their second reading contributions. As members are aware, the government intends to propose a number of amendments to both the Barossa and the McLaren Vale bills. The proposed amendments are based on feedback received from affected councils and clarify the intended operation of each bill.

Copies of the proposed amendments were provided to party leaders and independent members in correspondence from minister Rau last week. Given the substantial community interest generated by the previous bill, the minister in another place, believing it important that members had the opportunity to canvass their constituents and give the bill appropriate consideration, allowed the bill to lay on the table for over a month before debate commenced.

During this time, members would be aware that a number of comments on both the Barossa and McLaren Vale bills were made in the media by various parties, including councils in the proposed Barossa Valley district. Parallel amendments to both bills are proposed to be made. In addition, there are a number of consequential amendments to the Development Act proposed to be made under this bill which, if supported, will have an impact on the operation of both bills.

The proposed amendments fall into three categories. Firstly, the government will be seeking to exclude explicit provisions in each bill for the minister of the day to consult with councils in each district. This will include consultation in relation to alterations to the planning strategy and the development plan amendments related to the character of the district; consultation on any regulations, and consultation on the review of the bill are required in five years' time.

In addition, the new provision is proposed to be inserted, requiring a review of the bill to explicitly include a review of the township boundaries in each district. I also understand that the Hon. Mr Brokenshire will be moving additional amendments to this new provision, which the government is minded to support.

Secondly, the bills as they stand make the Development Assessment Commission the relevant authority for assessing any land division applications in each district, effectively taking this role away from council development assessment panels. The reason for this is to ensure that land division is undertaken in a consistent manner, ensuring that the prohibition on residential land division set out in clause 8 of each bill is applied consistently.

In discussions with councils, the government has agreed that the same outcome could be achieved by similar arrangements to those applying in the Hills Face Zone, where land division applications, while assessed by council development assessment panels, cannot be approved without the concurrence of the Development Assessment Commission.

Thirdly, as a result of the conversations with councils, the government is proposing a number of amendments to clarify the intended operation of the bills. For example, the government is proposing to amend the definition of 'residential development' to ensure that dwellings ancillary to an agricultural use of land are not inadvertently prohibited. I also understand that the Hon. Mr Brokenshire will be moving a number of amendments to this bill, a number of which the government is minded to support.

I will leave further detailing of the amendments to debate in the committee stage, but I obviously want to thank the councils involved for their willingness and assistance to engage with the government, particularly over the last few weeks. It is my understanding that each of the councils has expressed support, in writing, for these amendments.

Finally, I just want to emphasise that the Onkaparinga council—which is the only council affected by this bill—has indicated it strongly supports this legislation and wishes to see it passed as soon as practicable. Indeed, in discussions regarding possible amendments to the Barossa Valley bill raised by the Barossa Council and others, the Onkaparinga council made it clear that it would not wish that discussion to delay passage of this bill.

With goodwill by all parties, the government does not believe that to be the case; we believe both bills can be debated together. However, the fact that the Onkaparinga council indicated this should be sufficient for members to understand its level of commitment to this legislation. With those few words, I commend the bill to the council and look forward to the committee stage.

Bill read a second time.

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