Chief Executive Officer
[email protected]
Development Number 361/1549/2016/3B
Applicant Shia Community of South Australia, PO Box 472 Marden. SA 5070.
NATURE OF THE DEVELOPMENT PLACE OF WORSHIP WITH ASSOCIATED ACTIVITIES AND A CEMETERY…
LOCATED AT 256-258 Bridge Road, Pooraka, SA 5095
CT 6156/573 ZONE INDUSTRY.
I make this representation in writing by this email. No hard copy in writing.
I oppose a determination that this application should be granted.
And I understand that I am authorized to make this representation and supported by these people on just 24 hours xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I note that “Detailed amended plans” are not provided and not available for comment.
The application is required to be assessed on “its merits”
A cemetery next to a retirement village with regular funerals close by is not meritorious.
A cemetery in an industrial zone is not meritorious.
The cemetery and Islamic centre takes up space in a much needed industrial zone.
1000 people attending will adversely affect traffic flow – access to residents and access to industrial facilities.
The proposal is inappropriate in terms of land use and car parking.
The zoning is for industrial, warehousing, storage and transport use.
The self described “large scale” Islamic centre of shop, school, counselling centre. meeting hall, offices, kitchen, dining restaurant, and cemetery does not fit and is not appropriate.
The report with the application uses the words that such a development “creates obvious potential land use conflicts with residential areas”. This is even more obvious when a retirement village is less than 30 metres away.
It will not just adversely affect residents it will adversely affect access to those using the industrial zone for its primary zoned purposes.
Such “large scale” Islamic sites have a clear history of impacting adversely and conflicting with other land users that interface.
Industrial interfacing users require ready and un-interrupted access. Residential interface less than 30 metres away require quite enjoyment of retirement. Not being woken by early use at 5.00 am. Or kept awake by late users and large crowds leaving from 150 car parks and up to 1000 attendees at least 8 times per year.
A cemetery adjacent to a residential area. Specially a retirement village area should not be imposed on existing residents. It may be different if residents choose to purchase close to an existing cemetery but there is a clear adverse impact by introducing a cemetery into an existing residential community.
Funerals according to Islamic Shia traditions are not described. It is not known what impact they will or may have.
The grave sites will be raised above current bench land levels thereby having a greater public impact and will dominate their surrounds in conflict with residential use.
The supporting report says that a “dwelling located … at the interface of a large vibrant activity centre must expect a reduced level of amenity…” and “ noise emanating from the site” is a reason for it being on the periphery of an industrial precinct. What of the existing retirement residences just less than 30 metres away and fronting the same street?
There is no realisitic “level of separation” from the existing residences that will ameliorate the reduced level of amenity and noise emanating from the site and traffic parking conflict when 1000 people attend with only 150 on site car parks. Application of the Council rule of One car park for three attendees renders this totally unacceptable.
The parking section of the addressing report fails to note that at least 8 times per year 1000 are expected and it refers only to a maximum of 300 to 450.
It is not relevant that it will “take some years” for usage of the site to reach saturation point. The impact on residences and industrial users needs to be taken in to account at the planning stage.
The impact is not considered acceptable and the application for this development in this location has no merit.
The conclusions in the accompanying report are not well founded.
The proposed development will decrease the amount of land available for industrial purposes by utilizing the land for a different purpose altogether and by impacting as a “large scale” development with unpredictable huge traffic crowds of at least 1000 at least 8 times a year and discouraging industrial use on adjacent sites where un-impeded access is always needed.
The proposed development will prejudice the ongoing development and use of the land in the industrial zone for the same reasons.
The proposed development is not appropriately sited. It is a school, a cemetery, a counselling centre, a meeting hall, offices, a kitchen and restaurant, and a retail shopping outlet at the interface of residential and industrial zones.
It cannot be appropriately managed to ensure no unreasonably amenity impacts. Indeed the supporting report says that noise and traffic will impact on the interfacing residents and retirement village and industrial access.
It does not provide adequate parking. It projects at least 1000 attendees at least 8 times per year and provides only 150 parking places on site which is less than 1/3 of the required amounts. Parking will occur in the streets and impact on traffic, residents and industrial zone access.
The proposed development does not respond to community needs. There is no changing local community need.
The report refers to the South Australia Shia community not to any Pooraka or local need. There is no reference to any changing local community need. There is no factual basis for that claim provided in the report.
It is simply a “large scale” Islamic centre being imposed on the local Pooraka community.
The proposed development is not an appropriate form of development for the subject land and locality and is discordant with the relevant provisions of the Salisbury Council Development Plan and does not exhibit sufficient merit to warrant development plan consent.
SOCIAL IMPACT REPORT
Because the Development is to be determined “on its merits” and because it is asserted by the applicant that the application has merit based substantially on its own assertions that it:
“responds to changing community needs and facilitating the timely provision of social infrastructure and services. It is appropriate that as our society becomes more diverse, that the spiritual/religious/community needs of these communities are met.”
This assertion is challenged by me. Council is required to consider the merits of the development.
It is respectfully submitted to Council that it ought to require an independent Social Impact Report. These are much like “Environmental Impact Reports” but instead address the very issues that are being asserted by the applicants report with no supporting facts.
It is not appropriate for Council to accept the unsupported assertion of the applicant on these very important issues.
I request the opportunity to address in person the DAP on these issues.
John Bolton, Barrister and Solicitor, 0417 862201 or by email.
I enclose the executive summary of a paper on Social Impact Reports by
Dr. Frank Salter, BA (Hons.), M.Phil, Ph.D
Social Technologies Pty Ltd, ACN 154 127 518
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.socialtechnologies.com.au
Frank Salter
Social Technologies Pty Ltd
26 June 2016
(Revised 7 July 2016)
Download at: www.socialtechnologies.com.au
A social impact study provides planning authorities with information about how a proposed development will most likely affect a neighbourhood’s way of life, culture, sense of community (identity and social cohesion), social and architectural environment, health and wellbeing. Social impact joins environmental and economic impacts in defining a neighbourhood’s amenity. Existing social impact assessments of mosques were reviewed and found to be empirically incomplete, theoretically weak and ethnocentric.
The study adopts a biosocial theory, Ethnic Nepotism, that has proven useful in explaining and predicting the effects of ethno-religious diversity. Religions are conceptualised as entities that evolved culturally to solve adaptation problems. To generate a hypothesis concerning distinctive Muslim behaviour, overseas social impacts were reviewed. The results were two hypotheses of the social impact of Muslims on Australian neighbourhoods. Both involve loss of amenity.
The first hypothesis is that ethno-religious diversity causes a loss of trust and cohesion in Australian communities as it does overseas. The second hypothesis is that distinctive Muslim characteristics cause additional negative social impacts.
The first hypothesis is confirmed quantitatively by seven studies conducted between 2006 and 2013. Muslims formed part of the diversity being studied but were not a focus of the research.
One study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that in 2014 diverse communities volunteer less, as do immigrants of non-English speaking background. Four of the studies were surveys conducted by the Scanlon Foundation in conjunction with the Multicultural Foundation of Australia. The surveys, published in 2007, 2009, 2012 and 2012, all found that diversity significantly undercuts feelings of trust and safety, confidence in harmony, the quality of life, support for immigration, and acceptance of refugees.
The second hypothesis was confirmed quantitatively by seven lines of converging evidence. Muslim communities are associated with strongly negative social impacts for long-time Australians (third generation), much worse than those produced by ethno-religious diversity or by Buddhism, the other large minority religion.
The Scanlon area surveys indicate that in areas with large Muslim populations, disapproval of Muslims is about five times the disapproval of Buddhists in areas with large Buddhist populations. This result has been repeated by every survey since 2010 when the question was first included. Even among strong supporters of multiculturalism, who generally accept minorities, in 2014 as many as 18 per cent were negative towards Muslims, but only 2 per cent towards Buddhists. In the same year, when the survey was conducted more anonymously online, overall negative attitudes towards Muslims rose to 44 per cent. The findings are replicated in patterns of reported discrimination. While ethnic groups within Islam were disapproved, the negativity towards the Islamic religion was stronger.
The Scanlon results were confirmed by a Roy Morgan poll in 2013, which found that 70 per cent of respondents distrusted Islamic influence, and a Progress Institute survey in 2015, Salter: General SIA of Australian Mosques (Revised 7 July 2016) Page 5
which found that only 24 per cent of respondents felt “very safe”, a sharp fall from the 42 per cent who gave that reply in 2010.
These extensive survey results were confirmed by imprisonment rates in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. Overall, Muslims are imprisoned at almost three times their proportion of the population. In addition, Muslim unemployment and public dependency rates are two to three times greater than the Australian averages. Finally, lack of affiliation with Australia is indicated by patterns of Muslim military volunteering. About five times the number of Australian Muslims have volunteered or attempted to volunteer for jihadist forces in the Middle East than are presently serving in the Australian Armed Forces. This despite a very high casualty rate suffered by jihadists.
These converging lines of evidence help explain the survey findings of a steep decline in social cohesion and a rise in fear and uncertainty in areas with large numbers of Muslims and a similarly steep decline in acceptance of Muslims nationwide.
Qualitative evidence offers further confirmation of these results, while adding behavioural detail. Muslim and Middle Eastern communities contribute disproportionately to terrorism and organised crime, according to state and federal security experts. Islamic terrorism is responsible for the National Terrorism Threat Advisory System warning that another act of domestic terrorism is “probable”, a high setting to which it was raised in September 2014. Muslims show ethnic variation in rates of terrorism, high for Lebanese, low for Indonesians. However, the latter constitute only 5.9 per cent of Australian Muslims, and jihadism is increasing in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Criminal Muslim families are so prominent in distribution of illicit drugs and related violence, that Victoria and NSW both have had crime squads dedicated to “Middle Eastern Crime”. These threats are predicted by experts to last for generations. Contributing to this are low Muslim intermarriage rates, also evident in Europe.
Organised crime and terrorism belong to a wider spectrum of anti-social behaviour. The qualitative evidence includes descriptions of anti-social behaviour, including the broad-spectrum crime described in earlier, anti-white assaults and harassment, and hyper-masculine and misogynist culture among young men. Similar accounts are provided by experienced journalists and police. The view from within Islam tacitly confirms these accounts either by calling for a more pacifist Islam in tune with Australian values, or by denouncing Australian society.
To summarise, quantitative and qualitative data indicate that Muslims exert negative social impacts on local neighbourhoods significantly beyond that caused by ethno-religious diversity. More than immigrants and minorities in general, Muslims weaken community identity and cohesion, reduce trust and sense of public safety, and increase anti-social behaviour, crime, and unemployment in local areas. In addition, Islamic populations and mosques increase the risk of organised crime and terrorism, a trend expected to last for generations. Salter: General SIA of Australian Mosques (Revised 7 July 2016) Page 6
Taken together, these negative impacts constitute a substantial loss of amenity to local residents.
As the number of Muslims grow, an area typically becomes less liveable for non-Muslims.
Mosques contribute to negative social impacts in their areas by attracting Muslims and by reproducing Islamic doctrines and identity. They also slow assimilation by promoting within-group marriage. These have been adaptive features of mosques and Islam because they preserve the identity and cohesion of Muslim communities. They have the same effects among Muslim immigrants in Australia but in so doing slow integration with the larger society, with resulting negative social impacts on local populations.
The policy implications of this general SIA are that: (1) proposals to build or commission religious centres should be accompanied by SIAs describing social impacts in the categories reviewed in the present study; and (2) councils should be empowered to preserve the cultural and religious identities of their communities.