Mike Elliott: Phone Towers

Extract from Hansard

Legislative Council
25 July 2001

Mike Elliott
Leader Australian Democrats
Member of the Legislative Council

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The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I rise to address the issue of telephone towers. In the last couple of days in the news there have been reports about proposals for a telephone tower near St Francis de Sales College in Mount Barker. The proposal is to erect a telephone tower about 260 metres from the school, not on school property but on privately owned land. The parents and school community generally were concerned about this proposal for the tower and in this case it appears that both Alexander Downer and John Olsen thought it was a very important issue and intervened-

The Hon. Sandra Kanck: That's funny, in marginal Liberal-Democrat electorates.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: It is funny what happens in marginal seats, but they intervened and in my view they did the right thing, regardless of their reasons for doing so. This brought to mind questions that I asked in parliament some years ago. I asked a question of the then Minister for Education, now Treasurer ( Hon. Robert Lucas), on 31 July 1996 about the approach of the Minister for Education and Children's Services to mobile telephone towers on school property. He went into a very lengthy answer, in the first instance talking about telephone towers, saying that all evidence suggested they were safe. It is worth noting that at that stage the Chief Executive, Denis Ralph, said:

I fully support the position of local decision making in this matter, based on community consultations at site level with access to expert advice from the South Australian Health Commission.

The government was saying that, in relation to government schools, if the particular school council decided to put a tower on the school property itself, that would be acceptable. The government might say that the difference in this case is that one school council wants it and another school council does not, but there seems to be some inconsistency because there is a fundamental issue about whether or not telephone towers are safe and whether or not we are going to adopt the precautionary principle.

It seems that, quite responsibly in relation to the school in Mount Barker, the precautionary principle was adopted and it was declared that 260 metres from a school is too close for a telephone tower. It begs the question whether the government has changed its mind in relation to public schools and whether or not it would allow public schools individually to decide to put towers onto school properties, potentially at distances significantly less than the 260 metres that was the case in Mount Barker. When I re-read the answers given by the minister at the time about who had legal liability in these matters, I noted that in his further reply of 16 October 1996 he said that at that stage any legal action would be against the state of South Australia. What is not clear is whether or not with the introduction of P21 a school council should have legal liability if it decided to allow phone towers on the property.

It seems to me that the process in relation to phone towers is becoming increasingly ad hoc and whether or not a phone tower is erected depends on whether the community jumps up and down enough. I suppose, more importantly, it is whether or not a significant number of people in a community in a marginal seat jump up and down enough-

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: The minister well knows that the commonwealth delegated its powers but the state government has not taken up some of that delegation in terms of further legislation. The federal government has given the states the power to legislate in this area and South Australia-

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: It can override it, but the minister well knows that the current federal Liberal government delegated the authority in the first instance to the states, and it has been on the public record as saying that. In South Australia nothing has been done. That is the point that I was heading to and I thank the minister for that. We need consistency and I ask the minister to consider setting a distance from schools that must always be adhered to in relation to telephone towers-indeed, not only schools but other areas where there are large concentrations of people who are potentially sensitive-and whether we should adopt the cautionary principle.