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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-07-29 Daily Xml
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Park Lands Zone Development Plan Amendment

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (16:08): I rise today to talk about the fate of Adelaide's iconic and heritage-listed Parklands. Last night, I attended a meeting of the Development Policy Advisory Committee. This meeting was called to hear from some of the 168 persons and organisations who took the trouble to write submissions against the government's proposed Park Lands Zone DPA.

This DPA is a statutory document that effectively sets out the planning rules for building and other development in the Parklands. What the planning minister is trying to do in this document is to undermine promises that his government made back in 2005. They were promises made to the South Australian people and the South Australian parliament.

When the bill was debated and passed, the Adelaide Park Lands Act was designed to provide a high level of protection for the Parklands against arbitrary government decision-making and to ensure the proper involvement of the Adelaide City Council and the broader public. The act specifically provided that the government would not be able to fast-track contentious developments in the Parklands.

The act made consequential amendments to the Development Act which ensured that ministers would not be able to sign off on government infrastructure projects without community input. Also, the government would not be able to declare projects in the Parklands to be major developments because, as we know, decisions on major developments are political decisions; they are made by the government through the Governor. They cannot be appealed or challenged in any way. So the parliament and the government recognised the significance of Adelaide's Parklands and they deliberately restricted the ability of the government to ram through projects. However, all that is about to change.

The DPA released by the government and the subject of last night's meeting is a dishonest, blatant, arrogant and shameful breach of this government's own legislation and its own promises. It effectively rewrites all of the public participation rules for a huge list of infrastructure projects to be built in the Parklands. It does this by reclassifying infrastructure projects from category 3 to category 1. This means that new roads, railways, sewerage works, power stations or prisons could be built in the Parklands without going through any form of public consultation. Decisions would be made by the government's hand-picked Development Assessment Commission and would not be subject to any challenge, even if seriously at variance with the planning scheme. This is an absolute disgrace.

The trigger for this change to the planning rules has been a number of projects, including the O-Bahn city access project, with its controversial tunnel and road through Rymill Park, but the scope of the change goes much further and includes vast tracts of parkland around Adelaide and North Adelaide. In relation to the O-Bahn, there is clearly a wide range of divergent views that deserve to be considered. We have established a select committee in this place to look into it, and I look forward to participating in that process. Personally, I think there are elements of the O-Bahn project that have a lot of merit, but there are other aspects that are seriously problematic.

The Greens strongly support public transport. I am a founding member of the group People for Public Transport and I have written a book called Greening Adelaide with Public Transport. We believe that South Australians should not have to choose between good public transport and high-quality parklands; they deserve both. We do not need to sacrifice one for the other, but we do need to address congestion on our roads, particularly when it is holding up the buses.

The government does need to pay attention to community concerns. That is why I am opposed to this government's planning change. I said that it was a dishonest move, and here is why. Back in 2005, when the Adelaide Park Lands Act was being debated in parliament, the member for Morphett, Duncan McFetridge, said on 29 November:

My understanding of this legislation is that no new roads will be put through the Parklands. I hope that I can get an assurance from the minister that that will be the case.

What was the minister's response? Minister John Hill said:

The issue of whether or not new roads could be created was raised by the member for Morphett. I can assure him this legislation does not allow new roads. If the government wanted to put a new road through it would have to introduce legislation to achieve that, and I think that is the appropriate thing.

So, there you have it. The minister said no new roads through the Parklands without legislation in the parliament. The government is now trying to use a sneaky and underhanded device to undermine its commitment to protect the Parklands and to protect the rights of public participation. Clearly, the government does not trust the community to have a sensible debate about public infrastructure in the Parklands. Instead, they want to bulldoze through their plans by removing opportunities for citizens to be involved.

If this Parklands DPA is any indication of what the government has in store in future changes to the planning system, then we should be all very worried. Clearly, the government does not care about citizen participation, it does not care about putting people back into planning and it does not care about its promises to parliament.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. A.L. McLachlan): I understand the Hon. Mr Lucas will replace the Hon. Mr Ridgway.

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