Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the local council elections on Saturday, it is probably fair to say that candidates of the Liberal persuasion came in for a bit of a drubbing. I have noted Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister, laying that down to the dogs. But I would like to point out to our colleagues in the state parliament that there is much more going on in our local community than that. There is a sense of arrogance by the Baird government when it comes to the development of our communities, the selling off of public land, the selling off of our green spaces, the demolishing of community facilities, the handing over of land to UrbanGrowth, which is the development arm of the state government, to do pretty much whatever they want in parts of our community that we see great value in—our heritage areas, our green spaces et cetera.

The biggest issue I have with it is the extraordinary lack of community consultation of any kind when the state government decides to sell off, in the case of the heritage precinct in North Parramatta, land that has been in public hands for 220 years. It is being sold to developers for high- and medium-density development. The Parramatta pool was built with community donations in the fifties and sixties as a war memorial pool, but it is one of the best pools in New South Wales and a pool that has one of only two Olympic diving towers in Sydney. It is about to be demolished to expand the stadium, again without consultation. I want to focus on just that decision today because I know that in my community there is a great deal of concern about this decision.

Parramatta pool is a post-Second World War pool. When city council, through Alderman Mobbs, resolved to determine the level of interest in a local Olympic swimming pool, it was resolved in the affirmative. A committee was formed in 1956 and raised the money to build that pool. It was well and truly built by the community. It is known by the local swim clubs as one of the best pools in New South Wales. It is 10 lanes wide and it is Olympic standard. That means you can set a record in it. You can warm up in two lanes while the other eight are training. It contains a water polo pool and, as I said earlier, one of only two Olympic diving towers in the entire Sydney region. It is incredibly valuable and people elsewhere in Sydney are jealous of the Parramatta pool. It is an outdoor pool that is incredibly well used. Last summer, on one particularly hot day, 1,300 people passed through the gate in that one day—and that is not counting the New South Wales under-18 water polo championships, which were taking place on the same day; that is just the people who came in to use the main pool. It is an incredibly popular pool that averages, even in winter, some 1,500 people a week and trains hundreds of kids in how to swim and in lifesaving, in a community where many of our newer migrants do not know how to swim. It provides an incredibly important service.

It is also a pool that was built on land that was given to the people of New South Wales. It was part of Governor Macquarie's Domain. It is one of the oldest dedicated parks in the world for public use, and this little bit of land that the pool is on was carved out of the trust and is leased from the trust for the purposes of this pool. It borders a World Heritage listed building in Old Government House, which is the original government house of Australia, because, as I said, it is in the Governor's Domain. There are conditions that any building that takes place within the sight lines of that world heritage building conform to the heritage requirements of that building. All of those things seem to have been pushed aside by the state government in the decision to abolish this pool.

Also ignored was that Parramatta Council, not knowing that it was going to be abolished, quite recently put in $7.8 million to upgrade the pool, including new filtration systems for four pools—because it does have four—new entrance, change rooms and kiosks, major repairs to the Olympic pool, bench seating for 460 spectators, making it a truly remarkable facility. We were originally given warning that the pool might be demolished when we saw the North Parramatta heritage precinct plan some two years ago. This showed a rezoning of the pool and eight-storey buildings on its location. But the state member, Geoff Lee, assured us it was a typo and that nothing was going to happen. Then we heard that the pool might be demolished, and UrbanGrowth assured me that the entire planning for the pool was delayed, it was put off, it was not going to happen and they would deal with it later. Meanwhile, the plans were already up on the government website. The state member was still saying that there had not been any firm plans, yet the community consultation, as such, had already taken place by then.

To give you the full picture, the community consultation was two fan forums on 18 January and 9 February for representatives from NRL teams the Bulldogs, who are Canterbury, not Parramatta; West Tigers, who are Campbelltown and Leichhardt, not Parramatta; Parramatta Eels, who are, yes, Parramatta; Western Sydney Wanderers, who are also very strong in Parramatta; and Football Federation Australia. So when they consulted about ripping up this extraordinary facility, this pool used by 1,300 people on one day last summer, when they considered taking more land from the Parramatta Park Trust, one of the oldest designated parks in the world, when they considered building a stadium taller than the tree lines, which would not conform to the heritage requirements of a world heritage site, they decided they would consult the fans of football teams. That is important to do, but it is not the only consultation you would have, particularly since the Parramatta Park Trust Act requires that consultation take place. It requires that any use of trust land have extensive consultation, and that was the full extent of the consultation.

Even taking the trust issue out, even taking out the issue that it is on public land—which has been public land since the days of Governor Macquarie—that is not community consultation. That is not consulting your community about their views on a $300 million stadium. It is $41,000 per extra seat, because we have a stadium there at the moment. They will be demolishing that stadium. We will be without a stadium for two years, and then this $300 million stadium will go up on what is currently the pool. There has been no community consultation to speak of in that decision. While we love the Eels and we would not turn down a new stadium, nobody has discussed with the community why you cannot have both. Yet we have a state member once again saying, 'We'll talk to council. The state government should contribute to a new pool. We have no location for it.' They are discussing it apparently. Meanwhile, in the state parliament, Stuart Ayres, the relevant minister, when asked at senate estimates recently, made it totally clear that he did not believe it was the state government's responsibility to fund a new pool.

We have one of the best pools in New South Wales—a CBD pool, by the way. It is half a kilometre from the CBD. You can walk to the Parramatta pool in your lunch break and train. I used to do it in the morning when, even in winter, we had cold outdoor showers. I am one of the tough people that has trained at the local swim club at Parramatta pool for many years when it was outdoor showers in winter and cold water. It is much better than that now. It is a CBD pool, which is one of those incredibly rare things in our city centres.

I know Sydney CBD has several pools, but in places like Parramatta it is a rarity. If you take it away we will not get it back. In spite of the rhetoric of the local member, who talking about how he is talking to council and trying find a new location, there is no money from the state government. When they do talk about a new location, they talk about putting it in another part of Parramatta Park. So taking another bit of green space, another bit of open space, taking 7.9 hectares out of Parramatta Park as it is now—including the carpark to the north, the stadium, the pool, the carpark to the south and west, and the training oval, taking all of that—and building a big stadium, and then taking another bit of land and another bit of the park to build a new pool for which there is no funding. This is not the way state governments treat local residents.

People in Parramatta know their own community. They know it. They know what we need. They know what we value. We do not need a state government that is so arrogant that it thinks it can walk into a community without consultation and make a decision to take away basic infrastructure without replacing it, without community consultation. I urge the state government to consult seriously with the local community about their needs and rethink the demolition of the Parramatta pool.