Page 1037 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 April 1994
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MR KAINE (11.42): Mr Deputy Speaker, I should declare my interest in this subject because the street in question happens to be the one I live in. I know that members opposite will scoff at the fact that Mr Humphries has put forward this motion, but in fact this began with some people in the street going to the media on the subject. Without my knowledge, Mr Humphries picked that up from the media and pursued the matter.
Mr Lamont: That is really good, Mr Kaine. They have you in their street and they go to the media.
MR KAINE: It was interesting. They did approach me on the subject and I said that I thought it would be pure self-interest for me to push the issue, and I did not. That is why the matter has been brought up by Mr Humphries.
I listened with great interest to what the Minister said. I think we can give a subject like this too much broad-brush treatment. I appreciate what the Minister was saying in relation to green-acre development, where a developer moves in and develops a huge mass of land, puts the streets in, builds lots of houses and puts in recreation areas. It is a sensible thing to do some tree planting and some streetscaping before people start to move in; otherwise people are moving into a desert in many ways. But I do not think that necessarily applies to other places where building occurs.
It is the Government's policy at the moment that 50 per cent of housing for the next 10 years or so will be through urban infill. Some of that will be by dual occupancy; but some of it will be in the form of the area I live in, Macarthur, and the street where this complaint came from - a small extension of an existing suburb or, in some cases, a relatively small area of unused land in a suburb the Government now decides should have a few townhouses or something built on it. That is a totally different situation from the broad-acre development, and I would submit that under those circumstances it is reasonable for the Government to solicit views, as Mr Humphries suggests.
I am not saying that we demand that you implement whatever the community tells you they want, but it would at least give the people moving into that small enclave an input. Generally speaking, it is going to be a tight-knit little community that develops within an existing suburb, so people are going to get to know each other well, as is the case in Starritt Place, Macarthur. The people who live in that street have street parties, and they are developing it. It is a cul-de-sac, and at the top end they are developing a little area which is open land. They are planting trees and turning it into what will ultimately be a nice little park. Under those circumstances, it would not be unreasonable to ask them beforehand what they envisage their street or their little community looking like in the future, including the forms of trees.
Ms Ellis has commented on what members of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee saw in Adelaide. The in thing was edible landscaping. You can laugh at that, but they are planting trees and shrubs that do produce fruit. I have to say that most of the houses in Starritt Place were occupied when they came along and put the trees in, but if the residents had been spoken to they might have said, "We would like some plum trees or some peach trees or something other than
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