Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – I pay tribute tonight to the many passionate people of the City of Clarence, residents who have come together with great support and vigour to say no to Charles Hand Park and the Rosny Parklands being the place for a high-performance centre on the eastern shore in the City of Clarence.
As I understand it from the large public meeting held last week, which some 400 residents attended, there was an overwhelming level of support to have a high-performance centre on the eastern shore. The motivation for the public meeting was that more than 1000 people had signed a petition to say they want to protect their precious parklands and that they absolutely reject the manner in which the council made a decision to gift public land – precious public open space – to the AFL on its terms, without any consultation about alternatives that the community would support.
Charles Hand Park is a special place. I believe it was named after a person who was responsible for a board of inquiry in Clarence, I think in the 1950s. He was obviously such a loved person that the residents named a park after him. It is a place that is cherished by dog walkers; there are so few places on the eastern shore where people can walk their dogs. Charles Hand Park has incredible large trees and beautiful open space, and that is where people gather to meet each other and to do recreation.
It is also the home of the likely best skate park in Tasmania, only very recently completed. It is an amazing source of competition – in the best possible way – for young people coming together and having fun. It only just got started. All of this, if the council bows down to the AFL and State Growth’s demands, will be completely obliterated. Along with the loss of all the trees, the public open space and the amazing skate park, there would also be the loss of all the outdoor space for Rosny College – all of the grounds that are used by Rosny College students. Such an important place would be gone. It would be lost, and it would be concrete and spaces that students cannot go to, instead of students sitting outside under trees while they are in year 11 and 12.
In addition to that, the other half that the AFL demands to have, bullying their way into the Clarence community, is the Rosny Parklands. The Rosny Parklands, for three years, has been the subject of intense community consultation about the future for a city heart. The city heart of Clarence – the heart of Clarence City – is the Rosny Parklands area. It is an incredible place that is being looked at as a source of rewilding and restoration, and that has the big public open space that is needed for the urban infill that is also planned as part of the city heart. This is the incredible irony. In rushing to do the bidding of the AFL in granting its personal pick of where it wants a high-performance centre in Tasmania, the Clarence City Council is prepared to junk a good-hearted community engagement process and all the trust that has been built up about what the future of their city could look like, and instead take away all the public open space and all the potential for urban infill.
The residents of Warrane, Bellerive, Rosny and Rosny Park, have all been engaging in this process for three years, expecting to come along to a master plan that they have signed up to. And what does the Clarence council do? It has done what it has done time and time again – it has given the hand to residents and gone off and made a decision. Worse, it has not even informed councillors – who were falsely told when they were pushed to make a decision on the rush about a heads of agreement with the AFL on the position of this centre – that the community had a proper consultation process.
What garbage! No‑one knew about it. None of the dog walkers knew about it. None of the people who are residents opposite Charles Hand Memorial Park knew about it. No‑one knew about it. There was effectively no consultation on this most enormous decision, and what we have now is a draft heads of agreement between State Growth and the Clarence City Council to put a high-performance centre in that spot.
We know that there is a large number of people in the community who would much prefer it goes to Clarence Plains. Clarence Plains is the space you should have a high-performance centre. It is exactly where it should be. It should be in a community that embraces it, in an area that has no trees, no parkland, no master plan – nothing. It is an open space ready to be developed in this way, with a community that would embrace it. Instead, they are ripping the heart out of existing fantastic facilities that are designed to give people exercise spaces.
There is an irony to removing all of that to provide an exercise space for the AFL over local skaters when you can have your cake and eat it. I thank all of those people who on 3 March got together over the shock of hearing that their park was going to be taken away without knowing anything about it and organised 350 people to come to a snap community meeting. On 15 March another 150 people came, and then 1000 people signed a petition. Some 400 people went to a public meeting. This is a widespread group of people who want a win-win for their community, and I implore the council to listen to them instead of the AFL, which is bullying them into doing their bidding.
