Grievance Debate

MURRAY LAKES CLEAN-UP

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:12): On Sunday 6 April, my wife and I got a great deal of pleasure from assisting in the Clean Up the Lakes Day down at Goolwa. Indeed, we were out on Hindmarsh Island and I think that it is worthy of the house to note the enormous effort that was put into this particular day. I know that it went further up the lakes and other organisations and other towns, but it certainly was a great display of community spirit down there on Sunday.

I got tangled up with the Goolwa Rotary Club and we cleaned up bags and bags of rubbish, buried untold numbers of moorings, brought in wharf piles out in the middle of the lake, and generally cleaned the area up and, of course, that was in tandem with numerous other service clubs and community groups that assisted on that day.

Along with my colleague the member for Hammond and his family, we enjoyed a barbecue put on by the Rotary club at Rankine's Landing. I think that it is most significant that the community banded together in such a way to clean up the almighty mess that is down there, which has been brought to light by this appalling drought that has impacted so heavily on the Murray system.

The question that was asked by a number of people is why, further up the river, are people continuing business as usual, to a certain extent, with 32 per cent of their allocation of water, whereas down in our area there is none, and what water is there is indeed rapidly becoming unusable for any sort of purpose whatsoever. I think that it is an absolute disgrace that six years after this government came in, still not one single drop of water has been put in place to replace the water that is needed for Adelaide. It is currently being pulled out of the Murray, and the Lower Lakes and those communities are being sacrificed and treated with disdain by this Rann government.

One thing that really caught our attention on the day—and I think it is something that should be followed up—is the plight of the long-neck tortoises, which is just quite incredible. Some 100 long-neck tortoises were brought into a recovery place on Hindmarsh Island where local volunteers took up to an inch and a half of bristle worm off their backs and from under their legs. These poor little devils are dying. They are coming out of the salt water onto the banks, and they are covered in bristle worm. I am not an expert in the anatomy of tortoises, but my understanding is that they breathe by moving their legs which activates a diaphragm—they do not have lungs—and this bristle worm is covering them up to the extent that they cannot move, so they are dying.

Ms Breuer interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: It is actually very profound, and certainly I think the member for Giles would have had the same depth of feeling as I did to see these poor things brought up there. They brought in a hundred and they recovered. They cleaned up a hundred and put them into freshwater, and after an hour it was just amazing to see how they came back to life and they were taken further up the river. If they cleaned up a hundred, there would be thousands, if not tens of thousands, dying down there. The question I would put to the house, and that I put to the government is: what is the national parks organisation doing about it? I could not see that they were active. Apart from taking them up the river, they did not seem to have had any part in cleaning them up. They may well have had in other places, and I will stand corrected on that.

However, it was community groups and volunteers who were doing the work, and I thought that it was just a terrific example of cleaning up man's mess and fixing up those tortoises and giving them another chance of life further up the river. I know that the member for Hammond's children were absolutely captivated by it. I hope it never happens again, but the fact that the opportunity came to clean up 100 or so years of man-made mess down there was unique. The mess down there on those flats is just absolutely amazing. What is down there by way of rubbish and wrecks of boats, and this and that and everything else, will continue, and my one big concern is that in 12 months' time there will be even more of the lakes exposed and we will be at even more risk of acid sulphate soils, and the concern, of course, is where this is going to finish. One thing that will fix it up is many, many months of rain, and we sincerely hope this will be the case. I do not think there is any question on either side of the house that this drought will not break, and that will be attended to. But it is going to take a lot to fix it up.

Time expired.