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Not My Park Please

Tuesday, 14th March, 2006

In the suburb of Newton in the South Australian city of Campbelltown there's a 10,000 square metre reserve with an asbestos fence around it. The nearby residents love the reserve but hate the asbestos so last November they went to the Campbelltown Council with a request that the fence be replaced. Faced with a potential cost of tens of thousands, councillors thought they should have a look at the requirements for open space and found that Newton, even without the asbestos fenced hectare, had more than the average of the council's other suburbs. Hence a decision to sell off four fifths of the reserve to pay for removing the fence and turning the remainder in to a proper local park with anything left over to " be used to reduce Council's debt and contain rate rises."

The response of residents has been angry. They called a meeting and invited state election candidates to listen to their pleas that the Local Government Act should be changed to stop the sale of public land without a vote by the affected community.