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Liberal Parliamentary Secretary John Dawkins has called on the State Government to match the proposed re-alignment of the urban growth boundary in Concordia and Gawler East with improved public transport services to Adelaide.
Mr Dawkins said that following the recent announcement of the extension of the urban growth boundary, Urban Development and Planning Minister Paul Holloway appeared on the ABC 891 morning radio program.
Questioned about the accessibility of public transport to the Concordia and Gawler East areas, the Minister responded “you can just tack on to the existing infrastructure”.
Emphasising the State Government’s lack of a transport plan, the Minister went on to indicate that “tacking on” is part of what good planning is about.
Despite being questioned by Mr Dawkins - a regular user of the Gawler rail service - in Parliament this week, Mr Holloway failed to clarify these comments.
“What did the minister mean by ‘tacking on to existing infrastructure’, given that the Government has repeatedly refused requests by Schubert MP Ivan Venning and myself to consider an extension to the metropolitan train service east of Gawler along the existing rail line”?
In addition, what will the Government do to address the current situation where trains on the Gawler line are generally over-crowded and almost always running late?
This is what Minister Holloway had to say about urban planning on ABC Radio on July 26, 2007:
Paul Holloway, Minister for Urban Development and Planning (891ABC 8.40-8.53) State Government to release 2,000 hectares of broad acre land for housing
(Abraham: Dr Bob Such, Independent MP has called, he says there are people in his electorate who after 30 years are still waiting for a footpath … Paul Holloway … Minister, welcome to the program … how can people have confidence that the State Government … will be able to provide services when they struggle at the moment to provide services for existing outer suburbs?) The population will grow regardless, I mean there’s two options that you can do … it’s interesting that in this debate it’s actually two Liberals who have sort of taken both ends of the debate, one is the Liberal candidate for Federal Makin, he said, look we can through this away, have no urban boundary at all and just let the city sprawl where it will and that’s where you will get places where there’ll be no footpaths, you’ll have houses scattered all over the Barossa Valley, the McLaren Vale and everywhere else (Abraham: …we have houses where there are no footpaths already in suburbs areas) Yes, that happened before the urban boundary was introduced, the urban boundary came in, in 2001 … we’ve had this now for six or seven years … the whole object for the urban boundary is to contain the growth of Adelaide within that boundary … some of your listeners are suggesting that should be done entirely by infill … there are a lot of problems if we do that … half of our growth actually has come from infill which is largely high rise in the city, plus the reuse of old industrial sites and so on … about half our growth comes from infill, the other half from broad acres, so the urban boundaries that we’ve had for about six or seven years has achieved its objective, its constraining growth within those boundaries so we don’t have that situation of people just going, you know scattered development in outlining areas where there is no infrastructure, so I think it’s a furphy to use that argument (Tribe: …what consultation, if any, have you had with the councils in the affected areas?) Well obviously given the prospect for land speculation that is has to be limited, but they are all notified of our general intentions and certainly over some time now, particularly in relation to Gawler, which incidentally won’t become part of suburban Adelaide, we are committed to having a green belt between Gawler and the metropolitan area (Abraham: Won’t the houses … wrap around Gawler?) Yes … (Abraham: …it will effectively be a suburb … what, you’re going to quarantine it and put it in a glass bubble? …) No, what we’re doing is, is saying the growth for Gawler should be contained to the east of Gawler … that’s really to protect the Barossa Valley, what we’re saying is we’re not going to let any further growth within the town boundaries of Tanunda, Nuriootpa and so on within the Barossa Valley, we’ll keep a tight control of that, but all of that, the growth from the Barossa Valley and there has been rapid growth, should be around the east of Gawler where it’s still an attractive area, but it’s not high value agricultural land and the services are there in Gawler, so it just makes good planning sense to ensure that rather than have sprawl in to the Barossa Valley, we contain our growth just to the east of Gawler (Abraham: …is the Transport Minister going to budge on what appears to be his refusal to have a transport plan? Because if you’re going to have 2,000 hectares of land, don’t you need a transport plan?) Well of course there’s planning for transport … part of the reason that we use the urban boundary is to contain growth in areas where it has a minimum impact of infrastructure and if you have a look at the area east of Gawler and also that area at Blakeview place up north and Penfield, that there is good public transport flows to most of those areas, so it’s already there, so you can just tack on to existing infrastructure … that’s what good planning is all about, rather than having the growth just sprawl, as was the case prior to the urban boundary in 2001 … you contain that growth to the perimeters where there’s already public facilities (Tribe: …we spoke earlier to Stephanie Johnston and she said well look we’ve been crying out for rail down to Seaford, that hasn’t come through, now there’s going to be even further spread, so what are you planning?) If you’re looking at Seaford, one of the reasons you wouldn’t put a railway down there is because at present there just wouldn’t be enough people to justify it, it would just be an incredibly expensive exercise, but just have few people using it, obviously if you’re going to have good public transport systems, you have to have frequency of services, there has to be enough people to use the service … good transport is more likely where you’d have a concentration of people than if you have a whole lot of scattered small villages (Tribe: …it’s more likely if you plan it though isn’t it? …) Yes, that’s exactly right and if you look at the map … the area that we’re proposing in the south, the major area … there’s virtually no scrub on the land, it’s just land that’s been just used for broad acre farming … it’s a very suitable place and it’s between Aldinga and Maslins Beach, so it’s already areas that if you were having transport in the south, you would go right past this area … we put a lot of work in to this, I mean we put some months in to examining the best areas that we should allow Adelaide to grow (Abraham: …you would not argue … that the services in these existing outer suburbs … are anywhere near what they should be and anywhere near the services in leafy inner suburbs of Adelaide) If you have scattered populations, it is much harder (Abraham: …we’re not talking about the scattered populations, even existing, well established outer suburbs) If you have a solid concentration of the population, it’s economic to provide services for those areas, if there are scattered populations you can’t and one of the things we tried to do is to ensure that with this variation of the boundary that we have [unclear] to existing areas so that we can just tack on to the infrastructure that’s already there, if we just let whole new villages develop that are isolated from existing development, that’s when it will become a problem, that’s when it will become very, very difficult to provide infrastructure (Abraham: …I'm hoping you will be able to stay with us Minister … we know you’re generous with your time, you spoke to Grant Cameron on Drive yesterday hot on this announcement by you and the Premier … we’d certainly like your observations, Sandra Kanck has some views, Kris Hanna, the Opposition also has some views and we’ll take calls).
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