Green Industries SA, $2,000,000

Departmental Advisers:

Mr V. Levitzke, Chief Executive, Green Industries SA.

Dr I. Overton, Deputy Chief Executive, Green Industries SA.

Ms C. Yin, Manager, Finance, Green Industries SA.

Mr J. Wheeler, Manager, Government Business, Green Industries SA.

The CHAIR: Estimates Committee B returns with the final session for the day from 4.15 to 4.45pm. We will be examining proposed payments in relation to the portfolio of Green Industries SA. The minister appearing is the Minister for Environment and Water. The estimates of payment are as referenced earlier in the day, with the addition of Green Industries SA. I advise that the proposed payments remain open for examination and refer members to the Agency Statements, Volume 2. I also declare the proposed payment of Green Industries open for examination. I call on the minister to make an introductory statement if he wishes, and to introduce his advisers.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: I introduce the departmental officers assisting me here today from Green Industries South Australia: Vaughan Levitzke, the Chief Executive; Dr Ian Overton, the Deputy Chief Executive; Catherine Yin, the Manager of Finance; and Josh Wheeler, the Manager of Government Business. In the interests of time, given that this is a very short one, I will not do an opening statement.

The CHAIR: Lead speaker for the opposition, are you wishing to make an opening statement?

Dr CLOSE: Only to thank the staff, and I think that maybe one of the leaders is retiring soon—have I heard a rumour?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Not too soon, but it will be his last estimates.

Dr CLOSE: So, in advance, thank you for everything you have done.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: After how many estimates?

The CHAIR: I think the correct answer to that was 'too many'. Perhaps, member for Port Adelaide, if you would finish the omnibus questions and then we can proceed to questions.

Dr CLOSE: Apologies to Green Industries, I tried to get it done in the last session but they are quite lengthy.

15. For the period of 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020, provide a breakdown of all grants paid by the department/agency that report to the minister, including when the payment was made to the recipient, and when the grant agreement was signed by both parties.

16. For each year of the forward estimates, please provide the name and budgeted expenditure across the 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 financial years for each individual investing expenditure project administered by or on behalf of all departments and agencies reporting to the minister.

17. For each year of the forward estimates, please provide the name and budget for each individual program administered by or on behalf of all departments and agencies reporting to the minister.

18. For each department and agency reporting to the minister, what is the total cost of machinery of government changes since 1 July 2019 and please provide a breakdown of those costs?

19. For each department and agency reporting to the minister, what new sections of your department or agency have been established since 1 July 2019 and what is their purpose?

20. For each department and agency reporting to the minister:

What savings targets have been set for each year of the forward estimates?

What measures are you implementing to meet your savings target?

What is the estimated FTE impact of these measures?

I refer to Budget Paper 4, Volume 2, page 202, highlights 2019-20. The third dot point refers to the waste strategy for 2020-2025. In that context I would like to ask about what is occurring with the proposal from the Southern Region Waste Resource Authority for a MRF (material recycling facility). Has the minister been approached to provide any funding, which is required to get commonwealth matched funding?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Many, many times, deputy leader. This is a project which the state government believes is a good one in terms of the resilience of the waste processing sector in South Australia. The deputy leader would probably be aware that we have a fairly sophisticated materials recovery facility in the north of the city at the NAWMA facility, which is owned by councils in the north. That has received various government grants over many years to reach the point where it is.

It would be very good for the resilience of the sector. When we talk about the resilience of the waste management and resource recovery sector, we often talk about what would happen if a site closed down or was lost in a fire. That does happen more than happens to other sorts of sites, because of the nature of the work that happens. I think it was in Western Australia, or Perth, a couple of years ago that fire destroyed their only materials recovery facility.

From a policy point of view, we do want to support the southern waste facility getting off the ground. It is a facility that I know very well from my time on Marion council. SRWRA is owned by Onkaparinga, Marion and Holdfast Bay councils. It is a fairly successful going concern and has a reasonable level of financial sustainability, as far as I am aware. I have met with the Mayor of Holdfast Bay, Amanda Wilson; the Mayor of Onkaparinga, Erin Thompson; and the Mayor of Marion, Kris Hanna, about this, as well as with a number of councillors, and with the representatives of the private entity that they are likely to do—or I think they have done—a deal with to go into operation with to run the materials recovery facility.

It is a project that we want to support. It is just working out a mechanism to do that. There will not be a budget appropriation giving them a particular tranche of money, but the various grant schemes run by GISA are accessible by SRWRA and we would be encouraging them to put forward an application to fund components of that facility, in the same way as the northern MRF has done over the last decade or so.

There is money there for them to apply for. It is obviously a competitive grant round. I have been very clear with the various people who have lobbied me and my colleagues over an extended period of time that there is a pathway to funding. It would certainly be very competitive. I do not choose where this grant funding goes. A successful application could certainly unlock some federal funding. There has been some confusion as to where that federal funding is from, whether that is a particular federal appropriation just for this facility—a budget line item or something like that—or whether it is from the China Sword response funding, which is provided to the state to then distribute to projects that meet certain competitive criteria.

There is a pathway here. We think the project is a good project. We want to back it. Can we back it to the quantums they are after? Well, people always want more money than we have. All governments experience that. I do not think we will be able to come up with the funding that they have quoted. I am not sure if the deputy leader has a figure that they have told her, but we will work through that. The federal funding is still being negotiated and is yet to go to cabinet, so we do not have a figure on that federal tranche of money which would then be potentially matched by state funding.

Dr CLOSE: Has the state signed up yet for the commonwealth Recycling Modernisation Fund?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: That is the fund that I just mentioned in closing, the China Sword response fund. We are working through the negotiations with that at the moment.

Dr CLOSE: Have other states signed up already? Are we later than some other states?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: No, I do not think so. I cannot speak for the current state of play, but I understood that most states were in a similar position to us in terms of the negotiating process. Some have, I think, now. The ACT has, New South Wales has not. We do not know any more than that.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: My question relates to Budget Paper 4, Volume 2, page 203 and that final dot point there about the reference to bushfire waste and debris clean-up. As the local member for Kangaroo Island, I would like to begin by thanking everyone for their efforts on Kangaroo Island after the devastating bushfires last summer. But there were a few concerns raised and I would just like to ask the minister some questions today if I can about the efficiency of the system as it rolled out. Is it true that the EPA initially was tasked with doing the clean-up and they had done a fair bit of work and then Green Industries came in a few weeks later and started things over again?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: No, that is not the case. I am happy to give a reasonably detailed response here but I will start and then I will let the member for Mawson steer this question because this is something that it would be useful just to get on the record and discuss. I think it is fair to say that this was an unprecedented situation—an overused word, but it was. We had not had fires of this extent, if you look at Adelaide Hills and Kangaroo Island, that took out so many residential and commercial properties, for a long time—since the 1980s.

GISA have stewardship of a disaster waste management framework, the sort of policy document that is triggered when something like this has happened. That had never been triggered before because we had not had an incident of this magnitude, which left so much devastation in its wake. So that triggered it. I will go right to the end of my answer: we now need to evaluate that. I think it worked pretty well but I think the whole team would agree that there were various things that we learnt as we went along: 'It will be better if it was done that way, this was done that way.' The nature of a disaster is that it is a disaster and there was a lot of chaos and challenge there.

I was really impressed by the way the team went about rolling out this framework. We are absolutely evaluating that at the moment and working out what we could do better. The EPA were involved very early, along with GISA, around trying to make decisions around the disposal of dead animal carcasses and where you would put them, dealing with asbestos, chemical spills, and, to a lesser extent on Kangaroo Island but still relevant, CCA, the treated posts and vineyards and things like that. There was not much of that in Kangaroo Island. It was present, but that was a very big issue for us in the Adelaide Hills.

The EPA were involved in licensing and making sure we had access to the borrow pits to bury things in, and they had an ongoing role. Vaughan, did you want to clarify the EPA's role versus GISA?

Mr LEVITZKE: Sure. The EPA is primarily in charge of all the regulatory aspects around it. We had to work very closely with them to make sure that we could get licensed facilities able to accept. We had to get the waste levy waived. There were a number of steps also in working with councils and making sure that the people who were carting the material were licensed and all of that sort of arrangement. They were really quite responsive in all of that.

We have always had a great working relationship with the EPA and that continued through the bushfire crisis. As the minister said, we had the framework. It was the first time it had ever been used. But, to be fair, we had not had a framework before towards the end of last year, either, so it was a testing point for it and no other state has one. I think it served us in good stead.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I thank both the minister and the executive for those answers. Having seen the angst and the concern of people there, it was a bit heartbreaking when they still had their homes to be cleaned up weeks and weeks later and, in some cases, months. It is really heartening to hear that feedback. Will you be talking to maybe some of the people on the ground in Kangaroo Island in your review about how you might be ready to roll it out quicker next time?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: I think we will be. There are only a couple of players in South Australia in the industry at the higher level, so it was getting them engaged but then making sure we could drive down the work, so that not only did we get it to happen quicker on the ground but we also made sure that people on Kangaroo Island were getting work out of this, which was really important to us. I was fairly heavily engaged in that. I would often speak to the contractors on the ground. They were frustrated, saying, 'We need some work. We're seeing these trucks rolling in.' I think that, bit by bit, we got everyone more work than they needed, actually. They really got work out of it, but it took those initial two or three weeks.

You are right to highlight the stress of having a house lying there still, burnt and collapsed around them, and the reminder that it is. With all these things, there is going to be someone cleared up first and there is going to be someone cleared last. We think we could go quicker, there is no doubt about that, but I am also conscious that, once we got going, we did go reasonably quickly, compared with the situation that happened in other jurisdictions. Obviously, they had larger areas burnt and more people affected, but their relative speed was slower. That is not to say that we could not do better, but it is an interesting reflection.

We had a really good response from a lot of industry players, who found this to actually be quite a life-changing experience, going over there connecting with people—the empathy they had to provide and the counselling they had to give. Something that was quite different on Kangaroo Island compared with the Adelaide Hills was that we kept on finding more houses, particularly out in the West End.

That sounds like a very strange thing to say, but there was the farmhouse where the kids lived, and there was the house that grandma had lived in, and there were the soldier settler blocks around the corner in the laneway. We would clear one house and then they would say, 'Are you going to clear the one around the corner?' and we would say, 'We didn't know there was one around the corner.' So the list on Kangaroo Island kept on growing.

Interestingly, on Kangaroo Island, compared with the Adelaide Hills, I think 100 per cent of the properties—so every residential property we cleared—had asbestos. Again, that was in the West End, where there was poorer quality housing from the soldier settler days. We learnt a lot. Yes, we could do better, but I have gone out of my way to thank the team for getting a system off the ground that did not exist the week before Christmas and now it does.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Thank you, minister, for that response. You mentioned that you had been in touch with a few contractors, and I think you might have spoken to some of the people who I was speaking to as well, and heard the stories about how alarming it was to see the vehicles from the mainland going past their place when they had been out for three or four weeks with their machinery, building breaks for free and helping in the firefighting efforts. They felt really let down that they were not engaged. Whether that is right or not, that was how they felt at the time.

With the island, it is different from a region, say the Adelaide Hills or somewhere, where you do not really know where the contractors are coming from. On the island, you know exactly who is stepping over the drawbridge or onto the ferry. Is there anything in train to try to come up with some local procurement guidelines that could be used in a hurry next time around, not just for Kangaroo Island but for other regions?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Everyone is pre-accredited now. One of the challenges was knowing who could do what, because on the island some of contractors who could have done things were taken out: their equipment was burnt or their sheds were gone or there were family impacts. Now we have a really good understanding of who can do what, both on the mainland and on the island, but I think that for Kangaroo Island, from this point of view and a resilience point of view, it is more important to really know who can do what. I think the Wilsons were some people who I spoke to.

So we have this pre-accreditation now, if this happens again. We do not want it to happen again and we touch wood that it does not, but if it does, we have that list ready to go, as an appendix, I suppose, to the framework. Vaughan, do you want to add anything more?

Mr LEVITZKE: We had people on the island, contractors, while the fire was still going and at one stage we had to pull them back off because it probably was not safe where we had intended to send them. I think there were a number of issues, particularly on Kangaroo Island, that made it more difficult, such as getting equipment on and off the island. We had two major contractors already working on the island who made contact with us, so it was easy to engage them very quickly, particularly for controlling the asbestos—they were spraying asbestos in the very early stages to make it more safe.

But then we started to uncover and we actually advertised on the island to find out who was available and who could provide equipment and services. I think we gave them a huge amount of work and we broke the work up into tranches of work. It was competitive, but, whilst we could give certain work to locals where we felt that the local involvement would probably be helpful, particularly around sports clubs and some of the other infrastructure on the northern part of the island, we also used two local companies out of Adelaide—Royal Park Salvage and McMahon's—who had heavy gear that could shift a lot of material.

Then, of course, we had to get Gosse pit up and running. There was nothing there before, so that was a major undertaking. We worked with the Fleurieu Regional Waste Authority to get that happening, along with the Kangaroo Island Council. A lot of material went into that hole. There was also the Kangaroo Island Resource Recovery Centre. So, yes, it was a big operation. A lot of tonnes came off Kangaroo Island.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I do not have another question, but I do want to pass on my thanks once again for all the work that Green Industries and the EPA did on the island and my gratitude that things will be improved because it was like a first hit-out, as the minister said. I guess this also shows that this estimates process can actually be used not in an adversarial way but in a way where we can have a conversation so I can go back to my community and give them some assurances that their voices were heard and that the system will be improved to be even better next time around. Hopefully, that will be a long time off.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: While we are having the conversation, can I steal 30 seconds and say that the next body of work we need to do is the green waste clear-up. We have to be careful there. I am not wanting to slash and burn or cut up native vegetation. There has been a little bit too much of that potentially along the way, but GISA's second stage clean-up 2.0 is getting the green waste sorted. There is a lot of vegetation lying half burnt across the fire scar. Do you mind if we give a 30-second update on that?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: No.

Mr LEVITZKE: We have contractors currently operating on the island and also up in the Adelaide Hills. It has been outsourced through a service level agreement for the majority of it through the local Kangaroo Island Council, but we had other contractors already working along two main roads on Kangaroo Island to clear up a lot of the damaged trees that are likely to fall on the road and cause hazards.

I think that is pretty much finished along those two main roads, but there is still the body of work to do back inland from those. We are hoping that that will be completed as soon as possible, but the crews tell me that it could be as late as February, depending on the weather. I really wanted to get it done much earlier, but it has taken a while to get through a procurement process and also to work out arrangements with local government to enable it to happen, but we are in that clean-up now, so I am hoping it happens pretty quickly.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Thanks again.

Dr CLOSE: Can I take you back to page 202. There is reference in the targets to progressing the phasing out of certain single-use plastic products. Can the minister update us on when he expects the act that was recently passed to commence, when the products will actually be phased out and whether there has been any recent assessment of how much it is likely to cost hospitality providers in replacement products while we wait for the shift to more widely available cheaper sustainable products?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: The deputy leader would obviously be very aware that the legislation passed in September. We wanted a transition period, a period of encouragement, to those early movers and adopters—there are plenty out there and, equally, there are plenty who are not—for six months or so. My intention is to activate that legislation for 1 March 2021, so that is the plan.

We are working on an education campaign at the moment. That is fairly well advanced in terms of the creative and what that is going to look like, so we will probably roll that out in a pretty consistent way after Christmas, I would imagine. That is just my thinking at this stage, but I think that is probably the way we will go. There has been a bit of, 'Should it be earlier? Should it be later?' I think a six-month period or thereabouts from the passage of the legislation, 1 March, is a clean period of time. I think the community are quite hungry for this.

We have been very consistent, I think, about taking everything through our task force. Our task force that we put together to inform this legislation has people from catering and the hospitality industry, peak bodies, the Hotels Association, disability organisations for obvious reasons, conservation organisations, the Conservation Council, KESAB and the like. We are pretty confident that industry as a whole is feeling the consumer demand is such that they want to make this transition from 1 March and that cost increase.

We know with every passing day the cost of the alternatives is falling. This time last year the cost of bamboo cutlery was much more expensive than it is now. Businesses tell us, 'Look, our customers demand it. If we give them plastic cutlery, people walk out the café, or the takeaway shop.' We do not have a figure. It is a bit, 'How long is a bit of string?', I suppose, in terms of the cost pressure for business, but the message we get from businesses from all walks of life is they are reasonably comfortable with making this transition, because it is what customers are asking for.

Dr CLOSE: To follow up on that line of questioning, we all profoundly hope that this will not be the case, but should there be another series of restrictions that hamper hospitality's capacity to serve, increase the amount of takeaway and so on, will the minister reconsider the 1 March date, or is that set in stone?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: I would reconsider that. If it had not been for COVID-19, we might have got away with the 1 January date. It would not necessarily have been as long as you might normally have for transition, but I think consumer and hospitality industry interest and demand would have been probably embracing of an earlier date. Let us hope we do not get in a tricky place again with coronavirus, but that date, 1 March, certainly—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: It has been a long day. Anyway, it is a flexible date for me, if something untoward should happen. One of the awful things—there were many awful things—about COVID-19 was seeing the amount of things that went to waste. The preventing of KeepCups and all sorts of things was a hopeless thing to see, but it was the reality.

Dr CLOSE: If I may ask about the few matters on this page and the next: Waste Reduction, Resource Recovery, Circular Economy and Green Industry Development. Local government reports that a 40 per cent increase in solid waste levy, which was announced in last year's state budget, has cost councils an additional $8.5 million. Can the minister advise how much of the funds accumulated in the Green Industry Fund are being reinvested to local communities for waste recycling and resource recovery that support a transition towards the circular economy?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: It is not that figure—not the full amount. The deputy leader would be aware that governments of both persuasions have used this levy for other things related to conservation and climate change and obviously funding the role of the Environment Protection Authority as well.

In terms of the grants that we have given out in 2019-20, local government specifically—and things went to industry as well, which could be seen to be enhancing the circular economy from a private sector point of view—the grants in the centres to local government, $2.1 million. Kerbside performance around food organics benefitted. That is the distribution of those BioBags and ventilated caddies, $2.1 million, which now cover 415,292 households—that is a fair chunk of the households in South Australia—and $265,366 went to councils in recycling infrastructure grants.

There was an amount just short of $700,000 in regional transport subsidies to help councils bring their waste out to landfills closer to the city, just short of $500,000 in the council modernisation grants to help them reach all their operations and $87,390 in circular economy market development grants.

The CHAIR: With that answer, perhaps we will say congratulations for one last estimates to Mr Levitzke and wish him the best. Given that the agreed and allotted time has elapsed, there are no further questions, and I declare the examination of the portfolio agency Green Industries SA completed and the estimate of payments for the Department for Environment and Water, administered items for the Department for Environment and Water and Green Industries now closed.

At 16:46 the committee adjourned to Wednesday 25 November 2020 at 08:15.