A group of bowlers enjoy the surrounds of St Clair Recreation Reserve.
These practitioners of the Serbian form of lawn bowls should not be supported, one local real estate agent told a Council workshop last year, as they “do not add value to the area.”
In the background can be seen the inaugural meeting of the Community Alliance. The gathering was addressed by Nick Xenophon and Mark Parnell, as well as many of the Alliances’ member groups.
Speeches as follows:
Nick Xenophon :
"It's great to be here! Can I just say that I've had a lot to do with many of
these groups over time, and St Clair is just one example, where governments have got it wrong. Where polititions haven't listened to the people, and we've seen a situtation where it's been taken up as housing when in fact it should have been left as housing, or at the very least some high density housing on the edges of it - let it be a world class stormwater
recycling wetland and yet they've done the wrong thing. We've seen it happen at Mt Barker, where they don't have the resources, or the fundamental community infrastructure for the many thousands of homes that we've put there. There's something seriously wrong there - something wrong about building more and more houses on prime agricultural land past Gawler, down McLaren Vale. That's why it's terrific that we have
Carol Vincent, the President of the South Australia Farmer's Federation, -they're not part of the N F F I should say, which seems to just sit on the fence but the South Australian Farmers Federation doesn’t, because they know the importance of food security and keeping up prime agricultural land.
So I want to talk about one of the problems we've got here. One of the key issues we need to deal with is this: right now it seems that too many developers have too much power when it comes to key decisions where communities are being run rough shod over. (cheers, applause)
And what we need to do - and that's why the importance of this group is that it's easy politicians to ignore one or two groups - but when you have as many groups as this, when you have groups as diverse as the Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association, the Adelaide Showgrounds Area Residents Group, the Australian Civics Trust, the Burnside Save Open Spaces, the Cheltenham Park Residents association, the Gawler Region Community Forum, the Mt Barker & District Residents Association the North Adelaide Society, the Norward Residents Association, the Peoples Enviromental Protection Alliance, the Prospect Residents Association, the River Lakes Action Group - and by the way, that report's coming out tomorrow the interim report on the draft plan - the South Australia Residents and Taxpayers, the St Clair Residents Association.
Well, good luck to any politician, any government ignoring all those groups together because if you speak with one voice they can't pick you off. That's why it's good that Mark Parnell from the Australian Greens is here. In my time in state parliament I worked well with Mark - although now I'm working well with his wife Penny Ryde in the senate - I can't seem to get away from the Parnell clan. Mark and I share very similar views in relation to this.
We need to reform political donation laws in this state I don't want us to have the best democracy that money can buy, and that's why in South Australia, we need urgently to have political disclosure laws that are the best in the world, that are completely transparent, and we also need to have public funding of election campaigns on condition that you can't take big donations from the big end of town. (applause)
And that's why I'd be happy to work with both Mark Parnell, with John Darley my
fellow independent in the Legislative Council, to bring about some changes to political donation laws, not just at a national level, but at a state level, because right now it is shameful the way that political donations in this state work.
This organisation is critical. It's important - this is about participatory democracy, and don't ever think that you're too small to make a difference. What this group is also about is leadership. I think one of the best definitions of leadership was given by Ralph Nader, the great consumer advocate who said; "The function of genuine leadership is to
produce more leaders, not more followers" What I see today is a lot of genuine leaders, and leaders of the future when it comes to bringing about change. This might seem a tough fight, but you need to win this for communities right across the state, right across the metropolitan area
There is something quite bizarre that we are spreading more and more, taking up open spaces, taking up prime agricultural land when the square mile of the city of Adelaide right now has 21.000 residents. Eighty years ago, before high rise it had 46.000 residents How did we lose 25,000 people from the center of our city? That just shows you what an abject failure our planning laws have been in this state (applause)
That's why we need to reform them, and that's why this Alliance is so important. I just want to leave you with one final; thought - this comes from the words of Anita Roddick, the late great founder of the Body Shop who said, if you think you're too small to make a difference, try going to bed with a mosquito in your room. I have great pleasure in
launching this Alliance. (cheers, applause)
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Mark Parnell
"Thanks very much for coming along, meeting here on Kaurna land. I'm delighted that many of the people here have been my clients for the last fifteen years when I was a lawyer at the Enviromental Defenders Office - many of these groups came to us for legal advice.
Now I'm in the State Parliament looking after a lot of these issues - in fact someone said to me before - one of the Mt Barker people: "Mark, how's that court case going? Those documents you're trying to get under freedom of information?" Well, I can tell you, coming up to the first birthday of the court case...still no documents in sight; but we're going to keep pushing, because, as Nick Xenophon said, the connection between big property developers and government through donation and other influence is an
absolutely toxic situation, it's a corruption of our democracy. I endorse what Nick said - we need to clean it up.
A good spot for you to start - go to the Greens' website: "DEMOCRACY FOR SALE" and have a look at it. We've documented a lot of these episodes in New South Wales, and
there's a South Australian page as well.
The groups that are here - Nick mentioned some of them, tried to go through a roll call - I won't do the same thing, but what I think you all know, is there's some groups not here as well. There's some groups who would love to come under your banner. I know for example there's some people fighting a dam in Brownhill Creek, trying to stop masses of
concrete going in to an open space and spoiling that area; I was a week or so ago in Moonta a boat harbour that's going to destroy their beaches and lead to erosion. A couple of weeks ago I went to Kangaroo Island - the 31st birthday celebration of KI Eco Action - now that's a group not everyone's heard of - they had the guts 15 years ago, to take their local council to court, and they prosecuted their local council for breaching native vegetation laws. The council used to take a bulldozer to roadside vegetation - against the law - the local group took them to court and they won in the Magistrate's Court.
Small groups of people can actually achieve great things. There's also some aboriginal groups we don't want to lose track of as well, who are fighting against uranium mines and
inappropriate development in their traditional lands.
The influence of developers is one thing, but our development laws are something else. The way I see that the whole sector moves, that there's a job for everyone - a job for the organisers, the people who can organise; there's jobs for the artists, song writers and poets. We've heard some songs this morning. There's jobs for everyone. In that toolkit for action, one of the things we can do in state parliament, is we can try and change the laws, and we can shine a bit of a spotlight on things that go wrong. I was very pleased - I can see some Port Adelaide friends up the back there - very pleased that the Parliament has voted to support a committee into the development at Port Adelaide. Newport Keys was a
shocker - you told them that ten years ago, that it was going to be a shocker. It was a shocker. It's fallen over. Now's the opportunity to get something better we're going to get chances in parliament for witnesses to come along and talk about a better vision for development - a development that doesn't just hand it to the big end of town but makes
sure there's places for kids to play, that there;s open space and some biodiversity in the suburbs.
I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing I guess for the last 15 years, but with different tools in the tool kit. We're going to be fighting in parliament for fairer laws. We're going to try and make sure that the categorisatrion of development means that you people don't get left out. You know this - they categorise things as 1 and 2 - you don't even get told until the bulldozers turn up. We need a lot more forms of development where you have the right to go to the umpire - to go to the environment court and overturn lousy decisions, and that right has been taken away from you year after year. We need to fight to get those rights back.
So, good on you - reach your tentacles out further - there's many more groups who would love the support and the camaraderie that you can offer them. All the best for the coalition and I look forward in a year or two to not being able to move here because so many people will have come on board - it's a fantastic initiative - good on you and lets keep going.
