James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to take this opportunity to keep the House updated on the work that we're doing in the local community around our vision for Linear Park. Linear Park is a great asset and attribute that stretches not only through my electorate of Sturt but right through metropolitan Adelaide. It runs along most of the banks of the River Torrens. The River Torrens has its source up in Mount Pleasant in the Adelaide Hills, and then runs down through my electorate. At times it's, in fact, the boundary of my electorate. It also goes through the electorates of Adelaide and Hindmarsh and out into the Gulf St Vincent. The Torrens River, like many of the great rivers that run through the great metropolises, is a great asset for Adelaide. But we are particularly lucky, thanks to Colonel William Light, who master-planned Adelaide city, that he engaged the river in a very special and unique way in planning the greater layout of the city of Adelaide. The famous Adelaide Park Lands have the River Torrens running through them, and Linear Park then runs both sides of the Torrens, in both directions of the parklands that envelop the city.

We've got a vision for Linear Park with the parklands, as well, to become an even greater natural asset for our community. I want to see the Adelaide Park Lands listed as a World Heritage site. As someone who grew up living in a World Heritage site, on Norfolk Island, I've got a particular passion for the protections and the significance that World Heritage site listing will bring to the Adelaide Park Lands—an important protection of an important asset for the city. Then, of course, Linear Park runs through my electorate. I also have a vision to see that invested in, to further enhance it and, particularly, make it a greater recreational asset and a greater environmental asset for my community and for the people of all of Adelaide. There are parts of Linear Park that we've been able to secure funding for over the years. I'm proud of the progress we've made, but we want to finish the job. In particular, we want to work with all levels of government—local, state and federal—to co-invest in Linear Park so that we continue to get these enhanced outcomes and families have more recreational assets along Linear Park to better engage with that amazing natural asset. We also hope to see investment in environmental projects that will ensure that, where we've got pests and weeds and degradation, it is corrected and we have a great local community asset that is both of the highest environmental standards and also a great recreational destination for the families of my electorate and all the people of Adelaide.