KANGAROO ISLAND FIRES

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (12:22): I move:

That this house condemns the Minister for Environment and Conservation and those departments under her control for their wholesale mismanagement of national parks, conservation parks, wilderness protection areas, heritage areas and roadside vegetation in relation to fire protection and animal welfare measures, particularly on Kangaroo Island following the enormous destruction caused by the fires in December 2007.

I return to the issue of the fires that started on 6 December 2007. I am a proud South Australian but, more importantly, a proud Kangaroo Islander. There is something about being an islander that sets us apart in our ways of thinking. One of my colleagues here was also an islander. In relation to the fires that occurred, I point out more particularly the major fires of Flinders Chase, Western River, Cape Gantheaume, Seal Bay and Vivonne Bay, and numerous other fires that took place. These fires in the main occurred in areas under the control of government agencies, and I am appalled and disgusted at the manner in which these fires were allowed to develop to the extent they did and, more particularly, the failure of the leadership of the Minister for Environment and Conservation to dictate to her own departments what should be happening.

These were natural events: there is no question that they were. There were thousands of lightning strikes on that afternoon and evening on Kangaroo Island, and we are lucky we only had as many fires as we did and were able to get on top of them in due course. They may have been natural events, but they were orchestrated disasters purely and simply because of the mismanagement of the national parks and associated bushlands under the control of the Minister for Environment and Conservation.

The bureaucrats are running roughshod over the minister and nothing is happening. She has a total lack of control over departments under her purview. We have a Native Vegetation Act and authority. The act is outdated and seriously needs addressing. The authority is out there on its own doing what it likes, being dictatorial, threatening people on occasions and making life a misery for South Australians. More particularly, on this occasion the people of Kangaroo Island have suffered the full effects of that incompetence by the Native Vegetation Authority.

We also have the Environmental Protection Authority, which plays its part in it; we have the Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation, which also has its two bobs worth; and we have a national park system in which we have people who do what they want to do. All this needs is a common sense solution. We never, ever want to see this happen again—trust me.

We are always going to get natural fires, but we can do something about it; and I will come to that. What happened is that we put thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We have 90,000 hectares of country burn on Kangaroo Island, about 75,000 hectares of which is national park, wilderness protection areas, and so on. It is absolute stupidity in my view.

The fact is that we have had a lack of controlled burns over many years. They are just starting to get real about doing some controlled burns, but the fact of the matter is that what is taking place is nowhere near adequate. Mickey Mouse burns of seven hectares around headquarters, and Mickey Mouse burns around protection assets are just a waste of time and space. If you really want to get serious about it, if you really want to get out there and do some decent burning, do some cold burns at the time that suits. Get in there and light it up a day or two days before a big rain comes. You know what will happen. They can predict the rain. Light it up; it will be out in the autumn or in the spring. That is when you burn.

You do not try to do strategic burns when the weather is warm and everything around is dry. You just do not do it like that. The fact is that I have heard the CEO of the Department for Environment and Heritage say that they have not got the skills—well, it is an arrant nonsense. The skills are there. The skills are in the rural communities of South Australia and Australia and, more particularly, the skills are with the long-term residents, farmers and landholders of Kangaroo Island, who have had the skills for decades and generations. But they are not even asked, because Mr Holmes says that it takes years to build up these skills. It is absolute claptrap; I have never heard so much nonsense in my life.

If you want to get down to what really happened over there, I will point out Flinders Chase. Flinders Chase National Park is nearly a third of Kangaroo Island, and it is an enormous area. Do you really want to know what happened down there? I will tell you what the fishermen saw down at the west end along the south coast. They saw thousands of kangaroos, wallabies and possums dead in the sea. These animals had jumped 300 foot and 400 foot cliffs to their deaths, and were washed out to sea. The sea was awash with them. There were thousands of them. There were thousands and thousands of dead birds on the water. I am not kidding. The fishermen will back me up all the way; there were thousands of them.

These animals perished because of the huge intensity of the fires and the fact that there were no burnt breaks to stop them, to slow them down, to give the animals chance to go somewhere that was burnt two or three years ago. I place the responsibility for the death of those animals purely and simply on the mismanagement of those parks by the Department for Environment and its minister. It is an absolute disgrace. And I will take it one step further.

There were members of the community—professional shooters—who wanted to shoot koalas in the trees, which were going to get burnt. They were ordered not to by departmental officers. So, what happened? The fire went through, and these koalas in the trees were screaming in agony. And I can tell you that it has had a profound effect on those who witnessed it. It is absolute murder, quite frankly, and I hold the minister very much responsible for this nonsense that has been allowed to get to this stage.

I find it absolutely appalling in this day and age that that can take place. If you want to get realistic about it, if you want to show some common sense, if you want some leadership, grab this whole area by the scruff of the neck, listen to what the opposition is saying, listen to what the Hon. Graham Gunn will be saying about some draft amendments to the bill, and do something about it.

I have spoken to government ministers who have the wherewithal and the guts to have a go at this and sort it out, because, for the life of me, I never want to have to go down there again in my lifetime. If you do not do something, in eight, nine or 10 years it will all go again. Climatic conditions, lightning strikes, wind, and dry seasons—it will happen again. If you want to have all these animals dying again and everything that took place there happen again, it will be on your heads.

In my view, the Department for Environment and those responsible—whether it be the minister or whoever—are environmental criminals. They are environmental criminals and they are worse than that: they are corporate criminals. If you and I ran our businesses in the way that they are mismanaging their business, we would be in gaol, quite frankly. I am not prepared to be in the parliament of South Australia and not stand up and have my two bob's worth and speak up for my community. I am not prepared to put up with this any longer. I am sick of it. I have been going to fires in national parks in those areas for 40 years, and for the last 20 at least we have been saying, 'You've got to do this, you've got to do that.' We have had committees visit, and everyone nods their head in agreement and says, 'Yes, you are saying the right thing.' But what happens? Absolute sweet Fanny Adams: nothing.

The time has come to get some action and to change this situation. If climate change is here (which it would appear to be) more of these situations will arise. We need to get in and do some targeted strategic burns. We need to put in some decent big breaks through parks. Breaks do not stop fires; they were never meant to do so. Breaks are there to burn back when the weather conditions suit.

Let me just turn to the topic of burning back. John Symons, a Kangaroo Island farmer/landholder, single-handedly ran the Western River fire. It was the best managed fire on the island. He was the one who went out, as far as I know, along with Sam Mumford, Peter Davis and a few others, and burnt back on the northern perimeter of Borda Road from Western Highway to Cape Borda, some 30 kilometres. They burnt back at night time. Some of the people who were there said, 'No. We are here to put fires out, not to light them.' Well, you burn or be burned, as the Hon. Ted Chapman used to say, and you can get in and do it. Those people saved the whole northern coastline. They knew what they were doing: they lit it up at night. That stuff is like kerosene, trust me.

This fire has cost millions of dollars. The jury is out on how much it has cost. However, I understand that it could be anywhere between $6 million and $8 million. Figures of $18 million to $20 million are totally incorrect, I have been told. Hundreds of volunteers and paid staff from the Country Fire Service and other agencies were involved. It held everyone up for a week or a fortnight. That is a nonsense: it never needed to happen. Action could have been taken more quickly, in some cases, and that is something that I know Euan Ferguson will address. He is a very good man, and I pay tribute to him. I hope that they listen to the likes of John Symons, Sam Mumford and Peter Davis; people who are out on the traps and know what they are doing and who get on with it and try to fix it up. That is the important thing this time.

Along with the volunteers who came from interstate there were also paid members of staff—and there are some fairly ordinary stories going around about a few of their activities in relation to where they stayed, what they ate and everything else, which is unfortunate. However, that is the case. This has caused total disruption to the Kangaroo Island community and its daily routine. It has also caused total disruption to the tourism industry, which is ongoing and which will take some time to be sorted out, not to mention the absolute disruption to the farming community and the farmers around Vivonne Bay, who were burnt out severely. It also impacted on the farmers on the north coast. As I said the other day, they are still working; they are flat out trying to clean up and get going.

A lot of this has also been attributed to the vegetation on the sides of the roads—which is fantastic; it looks terrific. I have no argument about that. However, if members know anything about burning candles, they would know that they have a wick, and this is what the vegetation along the roads is doing. It runs like a wick all over the island—backwards, forwards, north, south, east, west; everything is wicks. It is almost impossible to deal with in the wrong conditions, because you just cannot stop the damn stuff, quite frankly: when it is burning it is intense. The vegetation changes dramatically on the island: it is highly intense and you cannot stop it.

I will not go back to the tragedy that occurred at Vivonne Bay. However, the fact is that the wick that makes up the roadside vegetation is no good. It needs to have substantial breaks in it from time to time. So, what happens? You cannot do it because of the Native Vegetation Act. What a load of hogwash! On top of that, I have heard that native vegetation officers are investigating one of the people who was affected in the D'Estrees Bay fire for putting in bulldozer breaks; he created clearance on the property. Now, you tell me that that is right! And here we have a totally incompetent, nonsensical minister allowing all this to happen.

The minister ought to go now. She ought to disappear—sit on the back bench and do something useful, because there is nothing useful happening with her where she is at the moment. It is an absolute disgrace. When the acting premier at the time, Mr Foley, visited the island, he made some comments regarding vegetation and people living where they live. Those comments were seen and heard. Some people did not appreciate them, but Mr Foley said some things that needed to be said and put on the record. So, I have enough confidence in some of the senior members of this government that they will grab this thing by the scruff of the neck and give it a great big shake, and in giving that shake they can shake the Minister for Environment and Conservation out the door, as far as I am concerned.

Our farmers on Kangaroo Island have had it. They are absolutely worn out. They have been working non-stop since 6 December, with the exception (probably) to gulp down a sandwich instead of Christmas dinner, and they have had it. Everyone has bailed in to help them: they have given up their daily tasks and they have gone in to help them.

While I am talking about the management of the fire, I would like to pay tribute to Mark Thomason, the regional commander, who spent days and days there. There are many others, and we always get into trouble for not naming everybody, but Mark Thomason was available, he was cool and he worked to the best of his ability from the central location (Parndana) running that fire for most of it, assisted by other officers from time to time. I also mention Inspector Kent McFarlane of South Australia Police. They did a mighty job. As I said, I am leaving some out but I cannot deal with them all here today.

In addition to the national parks, wilderness protection areas and farmland that were burnt, a pine plantation went up. That is gone because there was nothing to stop the fire from coming through from the national parks and the wilderness protection areas to save it. Mr Malcolm Boxall, who is chairman of the KI Forestry Plantation Committee, tells me that the forest that has been wiped out is valued at $40 million—$40 million has gone. So, we have got $40 million worth of forestry gone, 90,000 hectares burnt, about 75,000 hectares of which belongs to the Crown, we have lost thousands of animals, and in addition to the native animals we have lost sheep at Vivonne Bay.

I make the point that what took place over there is a corporate criminal act, given the size of that fire and the arrant stupidity of what is taking place under these departmental banners. Get rid of the Minister for Environment and Conservation and bring someone in who can fix it up. We will support changes to the Native Vegetation Act on this side, don't you worry. I hope that my colleagues on the other side will do so also. As I said earlier, I do not want to see this ever happen again, and it does not only happen over there, it happens on the mainland regularly in high rainfall areas. Go back to Wangary; go down to the South-East. Ngarkat burns about every 18 months, it seems, and that is low rainfall country.

What took place in that week commencing 6 December horrified me. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It absolutely horrified me. I was out there in the thick of it, getting around and finding out what was going on and doing my bit to help, along with seemingly everybody else on Kangaroo Island. I thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Time expired.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:38): I commend the member for Finniss for introducing this motion and I am very happy to support it. Much has been said today, and on other occasions, about the destruction arising out of the Kangaroo Island fire in 2007. The human toll and the financial and economic burden has been referred to. In supporting this motion today I want to talk about the effect as a result of the incompetence and gross neglect, at best, and criminal incompetence, at worst, of the Department for Environment and Heritage, its minister, its policies and the legislation which has resulted from its history.

This fire in December 2007 started from multiple bushfires and ultimately burned nearly 95,000 hectares, most of which was in national parks and the wilderness area. I grew up and am a member of one of many families who had, over decades, not years, put presentations to this South Australian parliament to establish the wilderness area and the national park area of Flinders Chase. As the member has pointed out, this covers nearly a third of the island. In recent decades, the national park areas in the western end of the island have been enhanced at Western River and on the southern boundary of the island.

We have areas which are commonly known to people as the Flinders Chase National Park, the Ravine de Casoars Wilderness Protection Area, the Gosselands, the Upper Rocky River, the Breakneck River, and these covers tens of thousands of hectares.

We have, from Cape Borda down to Cape Du Couedic a coastline of incredible significance. We have varieties of species of flora and fauna which were to be protected—and I say this for the house's benefit. When these parks were established they were to be sanctuaries for flora and fauna because the mainland of Australia had been infested with rabbits and foxes. That was the primary purpose, to ensure that we would have an area of conservation to protect natural species which had otherwise become infested on mainland Australia. Very important.

The ravaging then of the Flinders Chase National Park in the December fire was the greatest area of expansion of fire that is known in Kangaroo Island's recorded history. We have had park fires of over 10,000 hectares in 1931, 1953, 1954, 1958, 1968, 1970, 1991—which was an absolute torture—and then in 2002. They were major fires in those parks and none of them—none of them—have burnt to the extent of what happened a few months ago. None of them. Almost the entire area of that park was incinerated.

When the member tells us of kangaroos and wallabies jumping off at Cape Borda and plunging into the ocean, I want this house to reflect on a feeding frenzy of sharks that are waiting at the bottom, spilling blood and killing our native fauna. It is a disgrace, as he says, that this was allowed to happen. Why has this happened? This government's Department for Environment and Heritage produced a bushfire plan that was to be carried out from 2004 to 2009. It said all the nice words, which were that there must be an emphasis on the protection of life and property, that is, everyone's life, from kangaroos, to people, to the fauna, to the flora, to the stock, to the harbour, to the crops, you name it—all of it.

It set out to appoint a new manager and 11 fire management staff in the department, one of whom was to be based on Kangaroo Island. It put the team in place. This was after we had had two major inquiries on fires. This followed two federal reports on bushfires. It followed several interstate reports on fires and, since then, we have had the Wangary coronial inquiry. We have had a few more since then but, leading up to the 2004 and 2009 bushfire plan, published by the department, it took note of these areas which needed to be protected. It recorded in this plan—and I am going to read it to you—the importance of understanding the damage of large fire events. It said there is high fuel accumulation; there is a high incidence of lightning strikes, more than anywhere else on the island, in the western end; there is a low humidity; there is a decreased soil and fuel moisture; and there are high winds shifting direction during the course of the fire.

We cannot stop lightning; this is a given. We will always have lightning strikes. We will always have some fuel accumulation. I will come back to that in a moment. We will always have high winds. We will always have changeable winds. We will always have oxygen there to burn. They are all givens. The plan records the importance of that and it highlights the damage of wildfires to the native vegetation and the impact of that if it fails to have fire management.

It set out in this plan a very important initiative, I think, and that was a summary of the priority of works for each of the blocks, whether it be in the Flinders Chase National Park, whether it be in Gosselands, or whether it be at the Kelly Hill Caves area, West Bay, etc. It sets out a plan for each of them. Some of them do not get a mention at all, which is disturbing in itself. They do not get any cold burns. They do not get any prescribed burns, as they are now known. They do not get any strengthening or control of the lines of the perimeter, which is the necessity to have the breaks, etc. Some of them do not even get a mention, but some do. It is set out that there need to be two at Breakneck River, there need to be three in Gosselands, there need to be four at West Melrose, and there need to be seven at Ravine Des Casoars wilderness protection area.

They actually set out a plan, and that is a good thing. But what I say is that the minister needs to explain why even these have not been happening. Well, she came to Kangaroo Island after the fire last year and said to one local (which I thought was absolutely offensive), 'Isn't it lucky that Kangaroo Island was not badly affected by the fire?' I can tell members that the person who reported that to me nearly threw up. I was so angry when I heard that. It is all very well to go over there and offer money to mop up the mess and say sorry, but how could she turn up there and say that when these people have fought the fires night and day? They are still over there cleaning up the mess.

One family has buried its son and she has the audacity to turn up there and say that. Now, what is her excuse for this plan not being implemented, for this plan not being listened to and for her department not even activating what is here? She says, 'Well, we actually planned to do eight prescribed burns last year, but we did only one of them because there were not the right conditions. There was too much wind. We did not have the available resources on the day.' She gave all the excuses in the world. They planned to do them, and the one they did do was described to me by a local as a 'balls up big time', and let me tell members why.

They planned a prescribed burn of 10 hectares and they burnt 1,000. I am very angry. I am very cross for the people of Kangaroo Island who have worked hard and contributed to the development of these parks to see them burnt up and incinerated because of the gross incompetence of this minister to make sure that her department does not only what it is supposed to do but to do more, and the people over there are paying the price for that disgraceful situation. The department claims to be aware of and understand biodiversity, but we have to ask why this is the worst fire. Why was more incinerated? Back in 1931 they did not have planes to fly over and put out fires; they did not have all that equipment to bulldoze. They had to go out, axe and match in hand, and deal with it.

That is what they had to do back in 1931, 1958 and 1968, and you can keep going through it. Now we have satellite surveillance, motor vehicles, pieces of equipment, earthmovers, planes and helicopters, you name it, which the Treasurer is paying for—although it is South Australia's money no less. All of that is there, yet we have this massacre of the landscape and of those who inhabit it. I really am concerned about this continued failure to deal with it. Of course, we have had the Native Vegetation Act and we have had a movement to say, 'Let's expand this.' Well, it is time it was reviewed, as the member for Finniss says.

Time expired.

The Hon. K.O. Foley: Why do you have to scream? Let us have a discussion, not a shouting match.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The Treasurer is very helpful in bringing down the mood of the house.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (12:48): I will try not to raise my voice and upset the delicate ears of the Treasurer, because—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am not concerned about the delicate ears of the Treasurer, but I am concerned about the delicate ears of the Hansard staff.

Mr WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I will take the Treasurer's lead on this, because in the 10 years I have been here I have noted that the Treasurer never raises his voice. He is always concerned about the Hansard staff and other members. I will take his lead. This is a very important matter the member for Finniss brings to the attention of the house, and I congratulate him for doing so. What really concerns me is that, in the 10 years I have been here, we keep talking about this same issue over and over. We keep getting these disasters and we keep failing both our native vegetation and our native fauna through a misplaced sense of care and what I can only describe as the incompetence of the department, its attitude and its complete lack of understanding in terms of what it is dealing with.

In my electorate there is an extensive park. It is the largest park within the settled areas of South Australia—Ngarkat Park. It crosses the border between my electorate and the electorate of my colleague the member for Hammond; south of Pinnaroo between Pinnaroo and Bordertown.

This is a very extensive park and like Kangaroo Island it is regularly subjected to fires initiated by lightning strikes. It is a fact of life that Ngarkat goes up. A fire starts there on a regular basis. The thing that we do not need to have happen is for a quarter or a half of the park to go up spectacularly every couple of years but that is what has been happening. It certainly has been happening for at least the 10 years I have been a member representing part of that area, and it has been happening because the department has the wrong attitude to the way it manages the park. It certainly has the wrong attitude to the way it manages fires.

Many members of the community who go out on the ground and the fires within the park are beekeepers, who use the park to winter their bees and have a commercial interest in the park, otherwise they would not be there. A lot of others are just concerned community members, and some are neighbouring farmers who want to make sure the fire is put out before it gets out of the park. They have been battling for years to develop a decent firefighting strategy in the Ngarkat Park.

At last we have a fire management plan which I hope will work. This is about the third iteration of a fire management plan that I have seen in the last 10 years. We are slowly getting to the point where we will have a fire management plan which, in my opinion, will work. The intransigence of the department has been such that it would not allow either controlled burning, back-burning or decent breaks to be put in which could be used in the case of an incident occurring.

It will not allow disturbance of the soil; it will only allow rolling. Quite often, it discourages the local firefighting authorities (the CFS) from going out and working on the fire front at the time when it should have been worked on, and that is in the middle of the night. These fires in the scrub, as the member for Finniss has described, particularly during daylight hours when the temperature is up and the humidity is down, you cannot get within cooee of the fire, and it is probably not wise to exercise back-burning strategies under those conditions.

During night-time, however, probably after 10 o'clock in the evening until the early hours of the morning—probably a bit after dawn—the humidity is up, the weather usually modifies, the wind usually drops, the temperature drops considerably and it is an ideal time to go out and do extensive back-burning.

It is the only weapon that we have and, as my colleague the member for Bragg just said, we have been using these practices for a hundred years in Australia and, all of a sudden, with all the equipment and technology at our disposal now, why can we not fight fires? It is because we have forgotten the best tool that we ever had, and that is back-burning: establishing a reasonable break, having that ready, and when the fire starts, going out in the evening. Most of these fires seem to go over several days. We have the opportunity on the first evening after a fire starts to go out and back-burn against established fire breaks.

You will lose a little bit of park. You can back-burn in a controlled way and keep the temperature down. You will do minimal damage to the flora and hopefully absolutely minimal damage to the fauna. It is not what happens when you get a wildfire going, burning day after day in the middle of summer in a national park. When I visited the Ngarkat Park after the last incident a couple of years ago—the fire in January 2006—it looked like a war zone.

It looked like someone had dropped an atomic bomb. It was just bare dirt with the odd blackened stick poking out of the ground. No animals would have survived. The flora comes back remarkably quickly, but every time we do this and if we do it continually—and that is what is happening in Ngarkat—you actually change the nature of the flora, because some plants respond better and come back better after fire than others. So if you have a fire on a regular basis, those plants that respond more quickly and more vigorously after a fire obviously become dominant. So, you change the very nature of the scrub; you change the very nature of the flora you are trying to protect. And that is what has happened in Ngarkat. So, the very people—the department—who are trying to protect these areas are the biggest problem.

One evening, some months after the fire in Ngarkat, I attended a debriefing at Lameroo, and a number of personnel were present. I felt very sorry for a CFS volunteer who happened to be the incident controller during at least part of the incident. He was asked why he would not give permission for back-burning on the northern boundary to protect some of the farmland, and he said that he got the distinct impression from departmental officers there—and he was not aware of the act—that he would first have to get permission from the Minister for Environment and Conservation. That was the sort of thing the departmental officers were saying.

I pointed out to him that the act gave him not only the authority but also the obligation to put out the fire, and it gave him the authority to back-burn to do that. He was unaware of that at that stage, but he did tell those present at the debriefing that he was under the impression that the departmental people would demand that he get permission from their minister. That was a load of hogwash. These are the very people who are causing extreme damage to our national parks through their incompetence and mismanagement.

I want to take the last few minutes of my time to bring to the attention of the house another matter that is very concerning to me and my constituents—and no doubt to other members across the state—again something that is borne out by the attitude of this department and its officers in relation to the Native Vegetation Act; that is, whilst they are allowing places such as Flinders Chase National Park and Ngarkat Park to be burnt and destroyed, they are relentless in pursuing farmers across South Australia for minor infringements of the Native Vegetation Act.

I have a case in my electorate, and the farmer concerned will not talk about it because he has been threatened and bullied by the department. He was taken to court, and he won the case. The court threw out the government's case, but not before he had expended something like $160,000 on legal advice (I was told this not by him but by some of his friends to whom he has obviously mentioned this matter). That person has no avenue for obtaining recompense, and I can say that this is not an isolated case. He has been told that, if he talks about the case—if he complains or whinges—the government (that is this minister we are talking about) will appeal the case to the High Court and it will cost him a lot more money.

Mr Pengilly: It's a disgrace.

Mr WILLIAMS: It is a disgrace. It is a disgrace that the government of South Australia would bully its citizens in such a manner. The only reason this particular family has extensive native vegetation on their farm is that, generation after generation, that family has done the right thing. There are plenty of other families who do not have a problem with native vegetation because their family, generation after generation, made sure that there was none left. This particular family has probably done more to save native vegetation in the South-East of this state that any environment minister or officer has ever done, yet they are pursued in this manner, and I think it is an absolute disgrace.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

[Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00]