RAU RIDES THROUGH CANYON ON BIGGLES

Unholy Twists In "Green" Pretzels
New Character Preservation Bills:
Devils In The Detail Of Rau's Oath
by PHILIP WHITE

John Rau, for now Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice, Minister for Urban Development, Planning and the City of Adelaide, Minister for Tourism and Minister for Food Marketing, spoke last week to presenter Ian Henschke on the local ABC.

The Minister was touting the new Character Preservation Bills for McLaren Vale and the Barossa, which are largely the work of the Member for Mawson, Leon “Biggles” Bignell, who has been hard at their planning since his constituents suggested this long ago. Given the restrictions imposed by his very strange Labor Party colleagues, Biggles listens to his people, and does his best to react to his electorate the way it wants rather than to meekly obey his political party. In doing so, he risks being called a rat or a scab or some other charming ALP insult, by his own parliamentary mob.

These significant Bills have been written so that within these major wine regions, further urban development is restricted to existing township boundaries, an overdue comfort to those who hate the malignant creep of villa rash over invaluable farmland.

The two most important Australian vignobles will owe their surviving rural amenity to the determined Biggles (below), whom Rau typically didn’t mention.

But then, it seems, increasingly, Rau won’t only refrain from giving credit where it’s due, but he seems far too taut to listen. To anybody, other than those who can somehow make him appear large through their obedience. As he’s Tourism and Food Marketing Minister as well as all those other things, he sits on big buildings full of bureaurats with the capacity to tip funding down the throats of submissive tourism and foodie zealots, and fiefdom-erectionists in both the big valleys. These are easily identified by their starstruck support or dumb acceptance of everything Rau says.

And he said “We put in interim control measures because the legislation which will cement this into place - if we get the support of the Upper House in relation to it - has to take some time to go through the parliament, and the last thing I wanted to do was to make an announcement about exactly what we intended to do, only to have every person who wanted to beat the rush charge out, while the parliament was still considering this, and do what we don’t want them to do. So we’ve put an interim freeze on some sorts of development which would be prohibited under this act, but it’s not a blanket freeze on all development at all.”

If a tad mushy, this freeze is admirable, and another of Biggles’ suggestions. He called it a moratorium. But some folks did manage to beat the rush. Having played a major role in presenting the McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Association’s anti-development submission to the Minister, Tony Parkinson’s uprooted the corner of his best Penny’s Hill vineyard for a house for somebody.

Given the beggarly times, many others would love to do the same.

Henschke was curious about the development of supermarkets and fast food outlets. He shows healthy interest in the influence of The Shopranos on the Labor government. This lot, a.k.a. the Shoppies, is the Shop, Distributive, and Allied Trades Association, the state’s biggest and most influential labour union. Two of its heavies, treasurer Jack Snelling, and secretary Peter Malinauskas were the henchmen who walked into Premier Rann’s office to tell him his leadership was over; another Shoprano, Senator Don “Godfather” Farrell, was a king-hitter in the sacking of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and subsequent installation of Julia Gillard.

Sonia Romeo, the wife of Rau’s chief of staff, Daniel, is the state secretary of the union. Its members work in supermarkets, fast food outlets, and discount booze stores.

“They would need to go through the planning process,” Rau said of the supermarkets and fast feedlots, “and the planning process would make it clear that they are – both of those – are not desirable options”.

And then, and this brings a gunpowder whiff to the vigilant nostril, he said “The only thing that would be absolutely prohibited would be, first of all, subdivision for residential purposes – that is clearly just not possible – and the second thing is subdivision for the purposes of developing industrial activity which is inconsistent with the character of the region.”

This reminds this writer of former Planning Minister Paul Holloway's promise on ABC radio:

“Because they’re wine regions, also significant tourism regions, it would not make sense to have urban encroachment to a significant extent into those areas,” he said. “So we’ll avoid those ...areas and the areas that we’ll be looking at for future expansion are those areas where there’ll be less impact on the important tourism and economic areas ... why would you want to encroach on areas that are important to the economy because of the significant contribution that they make to the state’s economy through the wine industry and the tourism industry? Clearly that would be put at threat if we allowed rampant urban development within those areas."

McLAREN VALE, SOUTH SIDE photo KATE ELMES

Holloway avoided the final rubber stamping of the inexcusable Seaford Heights development, but at least he then had the decency to resign. Rau, on the other hand, is not the resigning type. Just how many of his conflicting portfolios he'll retain when Jay Weatherill soon takes the premiership will be an early indicator of the new boss's resolve and clarity of vision.

Rau suggested that, for example, a munitions factory in the middle of the Barossa would be verboten, but a distillery would be cool. Industrial wine refineries and unclad tankfarms were not mentioned; windfarms, like the one the residents of the Barossa Ranges have just learned of, are not prohibited.

There had been much press in the preceding days about the handsome $15 million 18 metre high Buddha and 35 metre high pagoda due for final approval on a wide empty slope beside Cactus Canyon on Sellicks Hill, across from the world-famous Victory Hotel. Henschke asked the Minister about this, but Rau didn’t know whether it was inside the restricted area or not.

It’s not, and the Minister for Planning should know.

As short with inconvenient questioning as his stature, Rau released his customary irritability on Henschke at this point, regrouping to say “there would be no back door way of getting around the prohibition on sub-division”, but suggesting the planning process for the Buddha had been long underway.

His headmasterish tone reminded me of his visit to McLaren Vale in May (above), to sell us his government’s highly-contentious Seaford Heights suburban development. Smack on the entry to the township, but way outside its boundary, he’s determined that this dormitory suburb will go ahead regardless of mass public opposition.

On that day, he didn’t seem to understand what a Geographical Indicator boundary was. When I enquired why his planning boundary for McLaren Vale was radically different to its GI, which is its official border as recognized in international law, and took many years to negotiate, his face changed colour - similar to his fluffing about not having a map at hand when Henscke enquired about the impending mass housing development at Roseworthy, on the Barossa’s western floodplain.

This plains village was the site of the world-famous Roseworthy Agricultural College, where generations of winemakers were trained. But then Brian Croser decided to move that campus to the Wine Research Institute in the inner suburbs, and make it part of the University of Adelaide. So the college lost its research vineyards, which is why the University was given the spacious Glenthorne Farm property, just a twenty minute drive away from the WRI.

Contrary to the formal requests of the winemakers’ associations in both regions, Rau’s new planning boundaries do not conform to the GIs. His new McLaren Vale, for example, chops off the top third of the region, leaving the gate open for the retreating Accolade to flog the last of John Reynells’ vineyards at Chateau Reynella, and the University of Adelaide to continue striving to subdivide the 206 hectare Glenthorne Farm at the Top of Taps. To avoid its subdivision, the taxpayers bought that and gave it to the University for $1 so it could undertake horticulture, viticulture and wine-making research and education; it signed a solemn deed pledging it would do this and never ever subdivide.

In a decade, it’s done none of the former, but conspired constantly to achieve the latter.

DEPUTY PREMIER RAU HAS EXCLUDED GLENTHORNE FARM FROM THE REGION PROTECTED BY LEON BIGNELL'S CHARACTER PRESERVATION BILLS photo LEO DAVIS

Compared to the relatively new (younger than 56 million years) sediments of the rest of the district, the rare ancient (650 million years plus) siltstone geologies of Glenthorne and Seaford Heights are much superior for both grain and grapes. But the wine world obviously wins more credulity from this government than beer drinkers: Seaford Heights grew world-famous barley that was much prized by Guinness; the next-best brewer’s grain is grown where the vast Roseworthy suburbs will go.

And there WE go.

An encouraging step; not yet a stride.

IT'S A DOG'S BREAKFAST ... SWAHILI ON THE WALL AT THE VICTORY HOTEL, McLAREN VALE ... THE VAST FORTIFIED MOSLEM MANSION CAN BE SEEN BEHIND THE COOPER'S SIGN ... THE GIANT BUDDHA WILL BE FURTHER BEHIND THAT ... THE DRINKSTER-BHP-BILLITON DEVIL WILL BE DIRECTLY IN SWAHILI'S LINE OF SIGHT

Before the roads clog up, I urge you to join me and the beatific Buddhist tourists as we flock south through all this. We may even attract some Lutherans. I’ll stop at The Victory, get me a bottle of Petagna Diavolo and sit there on the wall, overlooking the Gulf St Vincent, the patron of viticulturers, schoolgirls and lost things. From there one can ponder the beautiful giant Buddha across Cactus Canyon, and consider his juxtaposition to the vast Moslem house, with all its barbed fences and security, just this side of the gulch. Which is infested, by the way, by Agave Americana: not a cactus, but the sister of the Blue Agave the Mexicans use to make tequila.

That canyon’s the only place where one can see your actual Willunga Fault: it’s exposed and confronting. Before she lets go big time, and the Lord’s burning rain sets the whole joint sliding into the ocean, I want Special Planning Approval to erect a hundred-metre statue of the Devil, dancing rampant in the last empty field there by the Gulf.

In exchange for the north half of the state I’d have BHP-Billiton donate the titanium and the teflon, so he’d be indestructible, and matte black; very dark grey and black. They could also provide the gold for the barb of his tailtip and his horns, his beautiful sabre teeth and the prongs of his mighty fork.


THIS EARLY PROTEST AGAINST THE SEAFORD HEIGHTS DEVELOPMENT FEATURES STOLEN ELECTION POSTERS OF THE LOCAL FEDERAL POLITICIAN, AMANDA RISHWORTH ... YET ANOTHER SHOPRANO ... CLICK HERE FOR FAMILY HISTORY AND BE PATIENT ... SHE'S PRETTY SLOW TO LOAD