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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-11-27 Daily Xml
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON ST CLAIR LAND SWAP

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (17:00): I move:

That the interim report of the select committee be noted.

This committee is one of the relatively recently established ones, and for that reason we have a bit more evidence to receive, I think, before we are able to provide a full report, so in effect we are tabling an interim report, which will enable us to release all the evidence we have received so far. As I said in one of my speeches calling for the committee, transparency is an important part of this matter, and therefore all the evidence, with the exception of that taken in camera, should be placed on the public record.

At the outset I also extend my thanks to the other members of the committee: the Hon. Kyam Maher, the Hon. Mark Parnell, the Hon. David Ridgway and the Hon. Russell Wortley. More recently we have struggled to get the full membership of the committee present, but that is a reflection of the fact that we are reaching an end of the parliamentary sittings. I also thank our secretary, Anthony Beasley, for his attempts at diarising these things, organising witnesses, and so forth.

To date we have received 10 submissions and heard from 15 witnesses. They have been: Renewal SA, the City of Charles Sturt (both the CEO and separately from the mayor, who was really elected on this issue), and from other counsellors. The chief set of witnesses we have heard from have been local community groups and concerned residents. I will make some remarks in relation to some of the evidence we have received so far.

The origin of the land swap has some history. My observation—and I think the conclusion reached by the Ombudsman—is that this decision, which has caused so much community outrage, was really driven by the 30-Year Plan and the obsession within government of transit-orientated developments. Woodville became the focus of what really was supposed to be the pilot, and the council fell into line with the state government rather than seeing itself as an independent body that needed to take into consideration the wishes of its community.

We have clearly advanced a fair way down the track to the point even where the minister has now signed the DPA. The rail lines electrification has fallen off the agenda, so that initial reason has almost become redundant, yet the proponents, particularly on council, have dug themselves in so far that I think they feel that it would be too much loss of face for them to reverse their position.

The roles, particularly in the initial decision, of the member for Croydon, the member for Cheltenham and the member for Enfield really do not place them in a good light. It really has been a Labor conspiracy that the Labor Party controls that council, so we have ended up with this situation. We may yet receive evidence from the member for Croydon. He has written to the committee, and I quote from his email. He says that allegations have been made against him in some of the submissions:

...that the person must know are false, or in which the person is recklessly indifferent to their truth or falsity, or in which the person's allegation pre-supposes a relationship or communications between us that did not exist at the relevant time or ever. In some cases, it is rather like being stalked by complete strangers or people with whom I have had no communication for years.

He clearly feels he would like to provide evidence and he, of course, has that right, as do all citizens.

It is quite a dysfunctional council and we certainly heard evidence of that. We heard evidence of the council that existed prior to the 2010 elections, which was the subject of the Ombudsman's report. I think the Ombudsman's recommendations and findings are quite limited by the existing provisions in the Local Government Act but, certainly, a number of those recommendations, if you read between the lines, indicate that, had the act been written differently, some of those councillors would have come in for some fairly strong penalties for their behaviour and collusion—certainly, unethical behaviour—and some of it may not have been able to be pinned down.

As a result, there has been not a single action that has taken place against any of them for those things. I note, too, that there was a lot of legal wrangling to try to fend off the Ombudsman from providing a report. There is a lack of trust in the community and on council, and it has really just become a battleground and the situation we are in is really quite sad.

The matter of tape recordings also came up. One of the witnesses, a former member of the House of Assembly, highlighted to us that he was told that tape recordings were made of council meetings and these were then provided to the member for Croydon who was subsequently contacting councillors to advise that he was well aware of exactly what had been said at council meetings because of those recordings. We also had the issue of recordings of our committee, which is certainly not illegal, but somebody came to attend a number of our committee meetings and record everything that took place while she was there.

I think that sort of behaviour is quite creepy—I think that is the only way that I can describe it—and it highlights the fact that, until those sorts of elements do not exist or are not re-elected to that council, unfortunately, that is going to tarnish any of the decisions they make. With those comments, I endorse the interim report to the council.

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (17:08): As this chamber is aware, there was an Ombudsman's investigation of the Charles Sturt council and there was also a select committee into the SAJC. The vast majority of the evidence presented to this committee was relevant particularly to the Ombudsman's investigation. For the Hon. Ms Lensink to suggest that the Ombudsman's investigation was limited by the Local Government Act is quite ridiculous. It was quite thorough and a significant number of recommendations were handed down, and the vast majority of them will be taken up.

I must say that I felt sorry for some of the witnesses who came and gave evidence. They were decent human beings who felt aggrieved and who were given false expectations by the opposition that there was going to be massive movement on the whole issue. I think the resources of this parliament and this chamber could be used a lot better, a lot more efficiently and more productively if we used them on issues moving forward and not from the past. As I said, I look forward to this going through.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (17:10): I rise to make a few remarks in relation to the interim report of the Select Committee on St Clair Land Swap. From the outset, when this land swap was proposed, it was clearly another announce and defend decision from the government. Yes, we had had the Cheltenham sale, and I guess that was the start of the community concern in the western suburbs. As the shadow minister for planning I attended a number of public meetings in the Woodville Town Hall, just across the road from the St Clair site, where of course we had the local member, the Hon. Jay Weatherill, turn up on a couple of occasions. I think the community felt like they were sort of dudded.

The deputy premier and treasurer Foley had made some comments and so had the current Premier, the Hon. Jay Weatherill, in relation to the sale of Cheltenham—over their dead bodies, that this would not happen. Of course, they saw that Cheltenham did change hands. Of course, it belongs to the SAJC. It was their privately-owned land so I guess in one sense they were entitled to sell it—and it was a decision that they made—however, I think the community felt somewhat cheated. When you have the local member in the area making comments to the effect that it would happen over their dead body, you can understand that the community was disappointed that that happened.

Then we moved on to the St Clair land swap, which, as members would be aware, is a land swap of some of the land between the Cheltenham Racecourse and the St Clair site (the old Actil site), and there was some other ownership of land there as well. The developers at the time decided that they would put a proposal to government to do a land swap, to swap land closer to Woodville Road (in fact right next to it) and the Woodville Railway Station, which is the St Clair site, and have public open space on the old Actil site and the associated land there. It was at a time when the government had this love affair with transport orientated developments.

It is interesting that a witness on Monday said that he was at a street corner meeting where I think the member for Croydon, Michael Atkinson (the current speaker), and I think Mark Butler, the federal member for Port Adelaide, were asked a question about TODs. The member for Croydon said, 'Well, we've run out of money so we're actually not going to do that electrification or the transport orientated development.' So that also begs the question: why would you proceed with a land swap after 10 or 12 years of Labor mismanaging the economy and running out of money and not being able to proceed with what the government intended to do?

It is interesting to note that some issues have come out. Of course, the St Clair site has a cricket oval and other facilities, and beautiful trees. I have attended a couple of public gatherings out there. Glynis Nunn, the state champion and international sporting star, trained there. There are also some ashes from some of our ANZAC heroes, returned servicemen, spread around there. We were told on Monday by Mr Meschino, I think, who was a former City of Charles Sturt councillor, that as a young boy he would see a lot of people gather there after the ANZAC Day service and just reflect on the contribution and sacrifice that people had made. This is at the St Clair site.

It is also interesting to note that we had the Ombudsman's inquiry into the council's handling of this land swap and, of course, the allegations. The Hon. Russell Wortley has referred to the Ombudsman's wide-ranging, lengthy inquiry into the council's handling of it. The Ombudsman found some deficiencies and, while I think a number of them have been addressed by the council, there are still a large number of questions left unanswered, and the community feels that those questions were not answered.

Interestingly, there has been a constant theme running through all of this particular saga, shall we say, from the sale of Cheltenham right through to what we are dealing with today, and that has been the involvement of the member for Croydon (the Hon. Michael Atkinson), who is the current Speaker. His involvement just seems to be a recurring theme. I know local members of parliament like to take an interest in their local community, but it seems that his has gone far beyond what we would think is fair and reasonable.

On Monday, we heard a witness give evidence (it was not about this particular issue) that Michael Atkinson some years ago attended a council committee meeting and then gave a committee member a motion, or an amendment to a motion, to read. That person could not read it, so they handed it back to the local member of parliament to read it himself at the council meeting—that was evidence given to the committee. He certainly has a level of involvement that I think goes way beyond what is reasonable. There is some influence, I suspect, that is pushed and perhaps used to advantage the government agenda with that particular council.

What is also interesting—and I think this strikes fairly at the Premier today and also at the Minister for Planning—is that the recent development plan amendment, which has been signed off just recently, is called the Woodville Railway Station DPA, yet it has nothing to do with the Woodville Railway Station: it is actually about the St Clair site itself. I think it is a clear example of a very sneaky and dishonest government, whether it is the Premier (this is his local patch), or the Deputy Premier, who is the Minister for Planning, who is prepared to say a DPA is about the Woodville Railway Station when, in actual fact, it is about a piece of land next to the Woodville Railway Station. It is extremely misleading, and I think it is just a clear example of how this government, which is so desperate to hang onto power, will do anything it can to try to quieten down the noise in the western suburbs.

We have seen that DPA go through; it is a disappointment for the community. It remains to be seen what development will happen. There have been a number of, shall we say, allowances made and changes to the plan. In the end, there will be quite a large amount of open space still left within the St Clair site, and I really wonder whether it has all been worth it—the angst, the pain and suffering. I think the witnesses said on Monday this week that it was not just the loss of the land: it was the pain, the suffering, and the sort of emotional turmoil these people felt. They had trusted the government, and I suspect most of the people who gave evidence to us have been Labor supporters, but they felt that they had been dudded.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: They were Labor supporters.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: They were Labor supporters; they may not be in the future. They felt they had been dudded. In fact, we saw a local government election where the mayor was removed and Ms Kirsten Alexander was elected mayor on the back of the way that the council had handled that whole land swap. I think it just indicates that this issue is probably one that is going to linger on in the western suburbs for a very long time.

The Premier and others talk about Adelaide being a livable city and a walkable city. We could have easily left St Clair the way it was and had housing on the other areas, and people could have easily walked to the Woodville Railway Station. Of course, the early plans for a transit orientated development had quite a large redevelopment of the Woodville Railway Station.

I remember the member for Croydon saying to me one day, 'Ridgway, it's very simple: we've got a railway line that goes off to Grange and out to Outer Harbor, so it's a V. It's a perfect place to have a high-level development between the two railway lines and over the railway lines, just like they do in Europe.' Well, we see that nothing of the sort is going to happen. That was what I think the community was led to believe was going to happen and, in the end, nothing has happened at all. With those few words, I commend the interim report to the council.

Motion carried.

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