"..vile, rude, and an embarrassment to the party, the parliament, and to the people he represents"

BARTON ROAD DEBATE 11/07/12

Isobelle Redmond, Member for Bragg :

“The government is planning to throw its weight behind this bill. The government's time which is now allocated to deal with this matter, prompted my office to request a briefing from the Department of Transport on this matter...no piece of traffic data or information from any transport expert including anyone from the Department of Transport has been presented in support of the effect of this legislation to open up to all forms of traffic this part of Barton Terrace - not one scintilla of professional information.

The new event is that the government now own the Clipsal site. The government have announced that they are going to develop this piece of property as a very significant housing development with lots of other design aspects...

The government have spent, through the LMC, about $10M in promoting this piece of development to obviously make it attractive enough for people to invest in it, and secondly, to ensure that there is sufficient infrastructure and transport around it.

One of the things that they have recently announced is to support or contribute to a $400m grade separation of rail infrastructure both at Goodwood and at Torrens. The Torrens interchange is immediately adjacent to the Bowden development, and that's to include an undergrounding of a significant portion through that site, of one of the rail corridors. This is a major piece of infrastructure which the taxpayers of of South Australia; in fact of Australia because the Commonwealth is paying the other half, which will enhance the opportunities of the development.

It is my contention that in the absence of any data that has come from the Member for Croydon that the only benefit in the government coming to the party on this now, suddenly, is that they want to develop that precinct and that they know that the one way they can deal is this - because it seems that they have been pretty slow so far in being able to get some interest in the Bowden development you might have noticed that in the Budget Bill just recently they cherry picked a bit across to enable it to have also the stamp duty exemption which the City of Adelaide people enjoy along with a Western Australian developer on a Hackney site but the Bowden site has now been added in but what else could they do other than to try and develop the opportunities of that site to say: "You'll be able to have access through this road, you'll be able to go and have coffee on O'Connell street" - whatever, right?

[Member for Croydon: Excellent! Excellent ]

That kind of self interest by the government, to scramble across and support the member for Croydon twenty years later is almost laughable... total self interest by this government. I look forward to hearing what the Department of Transport has advised of this matter, what they have advised the Minister for Transport or Minister for Transport Services as to the merits of this bill. This issue has been around for twenty years. I cannot understand why we have these amendments on the day of the debate. It's just lazy.”

The Bill's third reading motion was endorsed along party lines.