McLAREN VALE LOSES ROUND # 14 TO LABOR

HON JOHN RAU, MINISTER FOR NEARLY EVERYTHING, CENTRE, ANNOUNCING THAT HIS LABOR GOVERNMENT WILL IGNORE LOCAL HOPES AND WISHES, AND PIG-HEADEDLY GO AHEAD AND COVER SOME OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA'S RAREST AND MOST REVERED VITICULTURE GEOLOGY WITH A BRAND NEW GHETTO. LEFT IS THE DELIGHTED RETIRED VET, DAVID GILL, OF THE FRIENDS OF WILLUNGA BASIN, AND RIGHT, A VERY SOMBRE MAJOR LABOR APPARATCHIK, JIM HULLICK, CHAIRMAN OF THE SOUTHERN COALITION OF CONCERNED CITIZEN ACTIVIST GROUPS.

Planning Minister Imposes Brand New Ghetto ... Food Minister Destroys Rare Geological Ground ... Tourism Minister Buggers Beautiful Gateway To The South
by PHILIP WHITE

McLAREN VALE Thursday 26 May: Hon John Rau, is South Australia’s Deputy Premier. He is also Attorney-General, Minister for Justice, Minister for Urban Development, Planning, and the City of Adelaide, Minister for Tourism and Minister for Food Marketing.

Yesterday he approved the highly contentious Seaford Heights housing development right in the gateway to the McLaren Vale wine region, the beautiful Willunga Embayment, and the Southern Fleurieu tourism and farming region.

NOT SEAFORD HEIGHTS, BUT STILL SIMMERING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN:HAVING PAID MUCH MORE THAN THEIR CURRENT VALUE FOR THESE VINEYARDS ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE McLAREN VALE TOWNSHIP,, THE WISHFUL DEVELOPER KARIDIS INTENDED TO REPLACE THEM WITH 1200 UNITS FOR THE AGED. WHEN DRINKSTER BEGAN INQUIRING, KARIDIS WAS TOLD TO TAKE A DIVE BY HIS PANICKY LABOR PARTY MATES, TO WHOM HE HAS BEEN A HUGE DONOR OF FUNDS SINCE THE DAYS WHEN HE INTRODUCED THE DODGY FINANCIER TIRATH KHEMLANI TO THE WHITLAM GOVERNMENT IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES. THAT RELATIONSHIP EVENTUALLY LED TO THE KHEMLANI LOANS AFFAIR, AND THE CONSERVATIVE COUP WHICH OVERTHREW THAT GOVERNMENT AND SAW MALCOLM FRASER AND THE LIBERALS INSTALLED IN CANBERRA photo KATE ELMES

While his government was recently elected after promising there would be no more housing in McLaren Vale or Barossa vignobles, the Minister maintains the deal was done in 1989 and therefore could not be stopped.

The plan involves the erection of 1180 houses in a place where roads are already clogged, employment is minimal, “mortgage stress” is standard and infrastructure is stretched to the limit. It would add to a coastal mess of ugly eave-to-eave housing where prices are tumbling, unemployment, vandalism, crime and violence is high, and little, if anything, is done to ensure any of this ugly villa rash is in any way energy efficient or eco-friendly. In the driest state of the driest inhabited continent, where summer temperatures soar, macho black tile roofs are the fashion and solar panels a rarity.

Recent suburban developments along this coast have seen the housing go in first, with local and state governments struggling to provide the necessary infrastructure once these homes are sold and inhabited. Roads are terrible, public transport messy and infernally slow, and basic shopping always involves driving to a few ugly central supermarket precincts surrounded by hectares of car park.

This decision has been made without any consideration of the geological importance of Seaford Heights.

While this publicly-owned land had been rezoned from agriculture to housing early in the ’nineties, a consortium led by David Paxton and the late Greg Trott later managed to have the zoning for some of the land reversed to agriculture in order to make way for their adjacent Gateway Vineyard. The fruit from this vineyard makes evident the amazing quality of wine which can be grown on this rare Umberatana geological group, which is over 650 million years old. This is the only incidence of this group of geologies in the Willunga Embayment, the heart of the McLaren Vale district. (The same ancient geological group re-emerges around the Barossa Greenock Creek/Marananga/Seppeltsfield sub-region, and again around the Sevenhill/Polish valley region of Clare, both vignobles which produce a myriad of internationally-revered wines, trophy-winners, and perfect Parker scores.)


ACE VITICULTURER DAVID PAXTON, PROPRIETOR OF PAXTON WINES, IN HIS PRICELESS GATEWAY VINEYARD, WITH THE SITE OF THE SEAFORD HEIGHTS GHETTO ON THE HILL BEHIND HIM. THE PROPOSED 'BUFFER ZONE' OF NATIVE VEGETATION WILL NOT BEGIN TO HIDE THE NEW VILLA RASH FROM THIS VINEYARD, LITERALLY THE GATEWAY TO McLAREN VALE AND THE SOUTHERN FLEURIEU PENINSULA. photo KATE ELMES

The Minister chose his moment. Leon Bignell, the Member for the local seat of Mawson, was on other government business in Whyalla, two gulfs and hundreds of kilometres away. Bignell, a friend of the winemakers and an enthusiastic defender of McLaren Vale’s rural purpose and amenity, was convinced by his caucus colleagues to accept a compromise, with buffer zones planted to native vegetation to hide the new suburb. Either Mr. Rau chose to move behind Bignell’s back, or Bignell suggested he’d rather the announcement was made while he was away.

Bignell says his trip had been long planned. As he is parliamentary secretary to John Hill, the Minister for health, he was in Whyalla to discuss hospitals and health issues.

Late on Tuesday afternoon Minister Rau called a meeting for early Wednesday morning. The press release warning that he would be making his announcement following this meeting was released Wednesday morning, while Bignell was on a plane, so there was little chance of many concerned parties, or indeed the local Member, attending, if any of them indeed wanted to.

The first this writer heard of the meeting was on local ABC radio just before 9:00am, when the forthcoming announcement was also signaled. Pip Forrester, the new Chair of the McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism association, was interviewed, obviously before she entered the meeting in that association’s offices.

Announcer Ian Henschke asked Forrester whether she thought she was about to be informed of a “done deal”.

“Well”, she said, “we hope not. We’ve been opposed to this development right in the entrance to our tourism region. We’ve been working through the process, and until we were advised that the Minister was coming down this morning we were waiting to hear about the consultation and our key concern, other than that we would prefer no development on that site, and we certainly want, whatever does happen, to be non-visible from Victor Harbor Road and Main South Road.”

Forrester suggested that there had been changes made to the plan due to consultation, like the removal of a string of “big box” light industrial commercial businesses along Main South Road, but suggested they were waiting for further consultation, admitting “at this stage we’re not sure, but we’re looking forwards to the announcement and we hope there’s something positive for us. We haven’t had a warning for this. It is a surprise. We hope it will be a pleasant surprise.”

Forrester said that in an ideal world the Minister’s combination of portfolios would be advantageous, for example to her business in food marketing, “some really good synergies could happen, but it probably does put him in a difficult position with respect to the Seaford Heights development. But I know he’s sympathetic to the concerns that we have, so maybe he’s come up with a solution that’s positive.”

When this writer arrived at the offices of the Wine and Tourism Association, Forrester could be seen with others at the private meeting underway in a meeting room with a temporary sign on the door stating: “The Office of the Hon. John Rau MP and Stakeholders”. Outside stood local councillor Yvonne Wenham, the chair of the local government Planning Committee, who had not been invited.

When these deliberations came to a close, the Minister seemed ill-prepared for the knockabout press conference which followed. Most reporters were politely waiting outside the building for the Minister to emerge, yet once the suited developers scuttled away, he began his statement back in the almost-empty meeting room, and it took this writer to dash outside and advise the press that the statement was already being made within the building.

The Minister and his staff seemed surprised that anybody not invited to the closed-door meeting had bothered to turn up to witness his following announcement, and his response to a few brief but pertinent questions was irritable, dismissive and condescending.

“You just don’t understand it” was his mantra.

Minister Rau made a few quite startling admissions. He suggested that South Australian developers, planners, and architects were so far unprepared to build the sort of higher-rise, more intensive, smaller-footprint village housing that many locals prefer, and indeed his own government insists is ideal for infill in the city of Adelaide proper according to his government’s new 30 Year Plan. (As it is land owned by the citizens of South Australia that is being sub-divided, broadacre sprawl development will provide greater returns to a cash-strapped government upon the sale of the land.)

He said it was impossible to change the contract with the developer, although it emerged within hours that his last-minute “compromise deal” on Seaford Heights involved the developer being given more land to compensate for the buffer zones now included in the development, to hide the housing from the view of some.

It would seem unlikely that this could have been done without changes to the contract. It emerged that some of the land now called “buffer zone” includes the margins of the local rubbish dump, which government environmental law precludes from any housing use.

When this writer asked why such an exemplary housing development would need to be hidden from the public view, and not be seen from the start to be something that everybody could be proud of, he was curtly dismissive.

He said he was unaware that government could have retreated from the contract as recently as six months ago. He admitted that he had no idea of how much compensation government would have to pay the developer should the former decide to withdraw from the contract, but suggested it would be “many millions”.

LOOKING SOUTH: THE WILLUNGA EMBAYMENT, THE SOUTHERN HALF OF THE McLAREN VALE WINE REGION, WITH THE ONKAPARINGA RIVER GORGE IN THE FOREGROUND, AND THE WILLUNGA ESCARPMENT RUNNING PARALLEL IN THE TOP LEFT. ALL THE ANCIENT GEOLOGY - PERHAPS THE BEST FOR VITICULTURE - IN THE NORTHERN HALF OF THE REGION, OFF THE BOTTOM OF THIS IMAGE, IS UNDER INTENSIVE VILLA RASH, WHICH YOU CAN SEE CREEPING FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE PHOTOGRAPH, SOUTH TOWARDS THE TOP. THE McLAREN VALE VILLAGE IS SLIGHTLY TO THE LEFT OF CENTRE OF THE IMAGE; SEAFORD HEIGHTS IS IN THE BARE COUNTRY TO THE RIGHT OF IT, NEAR THE COAST. photo STACEY POTHOVEN

As the Seaford Heights development is repeatedly said to be worth $500 million, including the percentage government would take for its sale of the publicly-owned land, simple arithmetic says the houses would cost $420,000 each: an unlikely figure in a district where prices generally sit between $280,000 and $350,000. Prices in the adjacent Seaford Rise have fallen 20% in eight years. But at $420,000 per house, government nevertheless stands to take a windfall $24 million in stamp duty alone, should all the houses be sold.

When challenged about the dodgy nature of any “community consultation” that had occurred – it was scant and prohibitively hurried at best, and most of the advice offered government was scorned or ignored – he suggested that the chance for such consultation was in the days ahead, when locals would be given the chance to devise the boundaries of their region, to assist government decide where new housing would be prohibited. When this writer suggested the boundaries had been clear for years, according to the gazetted Geographical Indicators for McLaren Vale, as approved and regulated by the appropriate government/industry organization, Wine Australia, he seemed unaware of such boundaries and spoke as if new ones would be required.

He also said he was unaware that on another contentious site, 20 kilometres to the north, the University of Adelaide is once again moving to have it released from its Deed of ownership of the 206ha Glenthorne Farm, in order to make that last spread of greenfield available for subdivision. Glenthorne is only a few kilometres from the University’s Waite Campus, where wine science and viticulture is taught. The property is surrounded by dormitoria.

This Deed, which saw the research station transferred to the University for $1, very specifically and repeatedly states that the land must never be subdivided and used for housing, but instead be devoted to agricultural, viticultural, oenological, and horticultural research. As Planning Minister, Rau would be responsible for approving changes to the Deed, and as Attorney-general, he would be the chief legal advisory officer in the matter.

When this writer explained the McLaren Vale GI boundary had been deliberately set to include Glenthorne Farm, he said he was unaware of this.

GLENTHORNE FARM, 20 KILOMETRES NORTH OF THE SEAFORD HEIGHTS SITE, AND ALREADY SURROUNDED BY TUPPERWARE TUSCANY: MINISTER RAU CLAIMED TO BE UNAWARE OF THE UNIVERSITY'S PLAN TO HAVE HIM RESCIND THE DEED WHICH CLEARLY PREVENTS IT FROM SUB-DIVIDING THIS 206HA RESEARCH STATION, WHICH IT WAS GIVEN A DECADE AGO FOR PURPOSES OF VITICULTURAL, OENOLOGICAL, HORTICULTURAL AND AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, BARELY A SCRAP OF WHICH IT HAS ATTEMPTED TO UNDERTAKE. INSTEAD, IT HAS CONSISTENTLY CONSPIRED TO SUBDIVIDE THIS SITE, WHICH IS ON ANOTHER SET OF GEOLOGY FROM THE VERY SPECIAL UMBERATANA GROUP photo LEO DAVIS

Wine and Tourism Chair Forrester was ashen-faced by the end of Minister Rau’s announcement. She seemed to some to be embarrassed at the persistent questioning her predecessor in the Chair, Dudley Brown, put to the Minister during the conference, while she remained silent.

Brown’s few pertinent questions irritated the Minister to the point at which he threatened “You’ve had a pretty good go”, and made to leave the room, while his security guards twitched menacingly. Only when one reporter said “I thought this was a press conference” did Rau return to the table.

As he made his announcement, the Minister was flanked by a retired veterinarian, David Gill, representing the Friends Of Willunga Basin, and senior Labor local government mandarin, Jim Hullick, chair of the Southern Coalition, a union of a dozen bodies akin to Gill’s organization. Gill seemed delighted at the compromise the Minister had made, obviously enjoying his place in the light; Hullick was unforthcoming, and, more appropriately for a wise man, very solemn indeed.

TRACTOR ACTION; LAST YEAR'S TRACTOR DEMONSTRATION CLOGGED LOCAL ROADS FOR HOURS, IN THE HOPE THAT THIS WOULD BRING SOME SENSE TO THE SEAFORD HEIGHTS ISSUE. MANY HUNDREDS TOOK PART. photo JAMES HOOK

The rage around McLaren Vale today is palpable and seething, with many constituents of the Grape Wine and Tourism Association wondering why they were not warned of the Minister’s visit, nor indeed invited to attend to witness his following announcement.

While many changes were made to the Development Plan Amendment during this long planning process, all without the further community consultation required by law, this final meeting and press conference provides with great clarity an indicator of how South Australia’s arrogant, impoverished and desperate Labor government sees its responsibility to listen to its citizens.

Recent polling suggests the Labor Party’s primary vote is now on only 24 per cent, a record low, whilst its two-party preferred status has its government on 40 per cent, with the Liberal opposition on 60 per cent. This indicates at least 15 Labor seats would fall if an election were held now.

Utterly disillusioned McLaren Vale people are busy searching for a solid candidate to run against local MP Bignell, one of the best representatives the wineries have had, but one who was steamrolled by his own party on the one issue critical to his re-election.












SEAFORD HEIGHTS DECORATED WITH IMAGES OF THE LOCAL FEDERAL PARLIAMENTARY MEMBER, HON. AMANDA RISHWORTH, ANOTHER LABOR POLITICIAN. THESE WERE STOLEN ELECTION POSTERS WHICH APPEARED SURREALLY OVERNIGHT, EARLY IN THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RARE AND PRECIOUS SITE FOR VITICULTURE.

As Deputy Premier, Mr. Rau is second in line to the throne of South Australia: he’s Boss # 2. As Planning Minister, he is responsible for enforcing the Planning Act. As Attorney-general, it is his duty to ensure his government obeys all the law. As Minister for Justice, it is his role to guarantee a fair go for all: justice. As Minister for Tourism, it is his role to ensure this state is a damned fine place to visit. As Minister for Food Marketing, it is surely his responsibility to jealously protect every millimeter of land which is important, unique, or particularly well-suited to the production of healthy, fine food or drink.

Given all this, yesterday’s events, and indeed all those leading to them, have provided Mr. Rau with countless opportunities to face problems of difficult vested interests. While this writer is certain the Minister’s pre-eminent standing as a lawyer would ensure his deliberations remain exemplary in the eyes of his colleagues at law, yesterday’s performance offers scant hope for the quality of consultation and response we can expect in the delineation of yet another boundary for one of the world’s most beautiful, profitable, and environmentally-aware vignobles.

HOW THE FRENCH WOULD DO IT: BUILD A WALLED VILLAGE WITH INTENSIVE TWO AND THREE-STORY HOUSES OUTSIDE THE WALL, THEN PLANT AN EXEMPLARY VINEYARD INSIDE THE WALL. KRUG'S CLOS DU MESNIL,THE EXQUISITE CHARDONNAY CHAMPAGNE WHICH GROWS HERE, CURRENTLY SELLS FOR $1500 PER BOTTLE. ONE OR MORE SUCH VINEYARDS WOULD LOOK JUST SCHMICK ON THE SEAFORD HEIGHTS LAND, AND PRODUCE SOME STUNNING WINE, BUT WITHOUT THE CAVITIES FOUND IN FRENCH FIZZ ...