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Legislative
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| Mike Elliott Leader Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
Parliament Index |
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Legislative
Council |
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| Mike Elliott Leader Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
Parliament Index |
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Adjourned debate on second reading.
The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I rise briefly to support the second reading of this bill. There has been a great deal of eagerness in the community for a long time to make recreational walking much easier, and to that extent this bill is encouraging. If there is a disappointment, it is that this bill does not get to the heart of the major problem we have with recreational greenways, or whatever you want to call them—that is, the Roads (Opening and Closing) Act. The Heysen Trail is, in part, dependent upon access across private land but a large amount of it is on road reserves which were drawn up a long time ago and which in most cases have never been used as functioning roads, although I suppose the odd horse rode along them a long time ago.
There is enormous potential in South Australia for large numbers of recreational trails throughout the state and they have a great deal of tourism potential in the longer term. We have not scratched the surface at this stage. Unfortunately, bit by bit some of those options have been closed off, because various local governments have given some of these roadways back to adjoining landowners. In some cases, they have not been given back but have been subsumed by fences going across what are still technically roads. If the government is serious about recreational trails, it will have to go beyond legislation such as this, which, in many ways, is tokenism, and get to the very heart of the problem. When I say `the problem', I mean in terms of the problem that is before us now. If we do not tackle it now, we will have to rely upon this bill. This bill is all about land that is already in private ownership, for the most part, and trying to get permission from owners to allow a greenway to pass through the property. However, throughout the state large areas of land are already in public ownership and the recreational greenways can run along them, as long as they are not closed off in the meantime. A couple of years ago I intended to introduce private members' legislation in this area and at that stage there was a plea to back off because the issue was being looked at.579\DB\PGN\1Indeed, nothing has progressed since. My plea to the minister is that this should be seen as the first small step, but the most important step is to protect the large amount of road reserves we already have in this state to ensure that we can more easily set up recreational greenways without getting into what will obviously be very tangled negotiations with private landowners. Clearly, private landowners have a significant interest that they need to protect, and they have all sorts of problems in terms of legal obligations when people are crossing—
The Hon. Diana Laidlaw interjecting: The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: That is right. I can understand the great deal of concern that private land- owners have about people trooping through their property and all the implications of that. Yet, as I said, in so many areas of the state that really is for the most part unnecessary right now because of these road reserves. We must, as a matter of urgency, have a major review of the road reserve system that exists and avoid the risk that we do not have options closed off and end up with more complicated procedures and difficulties which are still present within this legislation despite the best efforts of those who have been involved in drafting it. With those words I support the second reading of the bill and urge the government to look at the Roads (Opening and Closing) Act and tackle a review of those publicly owned properties to ensure that we can have a system of recreational greenways which is of real value.