Parliamentary Committees

NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: ADELAIDE AND MOUNT LOFTY REGION NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT LEVY

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:02): On behalf of the Natural Resources Committee, I move:

That the quantum of the regional NRM levy as proposed in the Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan for the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Region, made under the Natural Resources Management Act 2004 and laid on the table of this house on 12 June 2012, be disallowed.

I think it is fair to say that all of us on the Natural Resources Committee appreciate the work that is done by the natural resources management staff and members, and we enjoy not only going out into the field to meet with members and to see the work that is being achieved but also the presentations that we have from time to time in the committee. One of our responsibilities, of course, is to consider and make recommendations on levies proposed by a natural resources management board where they exceed the CPI rise.

I would like to thank all of the people who were involved with the committee during the consideration of the levy proposed by the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board for 2012-13. The committee believes that overall the boards do an excellent job, as I have said, and play a critical role in the management of South Australia's natural resources. We understand that for the boards and their hardworking staff and committed volunteers there will never be enough funds to undertake all the NRM projects worthy of support.

However, the committee has consistently expressed reservations about the NRM boards proposing above CPI levy increases. We believe that increases above CPI should be the exception not the rule and that the increases should be well justified. This year, all the NRM boards, apart from the South Australian Arid Lands and the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges boards, proposed to keep their division 1 levy increases within or just above CPI, while the Arid Lands board proposed an increase of 50 per cent. The committee made an exemption, accepting the board's arguments and justifications that their proposed increase was warranted.

The committee supports the process of equalisation of division 1 levies across local government areas, as pioneered by the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board. However, after careful consideration, members came to the conclusion that in the current economic climate this is above the CPI division 1 levy proposal and could not be supported, and that it would be better for levy equalisation to occur at a lower level than that proposed by the board. Rather than suggesting an amendment to the levy, which was one option open to the committee, members chose instead to object to the levy, thus bringing the matter of the NRM levies up for debate on the floor of the house.

The Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board ably administers the largest budget of all the state's NRM boards, with more than $27 million for their budget in 2011-12. The committee trusts that, regardless of the final level of funding, the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board will be able to cut their cloth and continue their excellent work in 2012-13.

I commend the members of the committee (and this is one that was of some debate, I might add)—Mr Geoff Brock MP, the Hon. Robert Brokenshire MLC, the Hon. John Dawkins MLC, Mrs Robyn Geraghty MP, Mr Lee Odenwalder MP, Mr Don Pegler MP, Mr Dan van Holst Pellekaan MP, and the Hon. Gerry Kandelaars MLC—for their contributions. Finally, I would like to thank the members of the parliamentary staff for their assistance. I commend this report to the house.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (11:07): I will add a few brief comments to those of our chair, the member for Ashford. I would like to put on record my support for the work the NRM boards do. I think they do the very best they can, often under difficult circumstances. Essentially, they are asked to do what some people would view as absolutely everything in regard to the environment. The reality is that the budget can never do all the jobs, and one of the hardest things for NRM boards is that, in the mind of the broader community, they are set up to fix any problem or concern anybody might have in regard to the environment and, of course, that is just not possible.

Quite understandably, they try to get a greater and greater budget every year to do this never-ending work and, of course, that is not possible either. The act makes it very clear that they are expected to stay within CPI increases for the levies they charge and that they need the agreement, essentially, of the parliamentary standing committee for natural resources for increases over CPI. Over quite a few years now, those requests for increases in excess of CPI have been granted; in many cases I think a bit reluctantly, but they have been granted.

Our committee has decided not to grant that request on this occasion, and it is not a decision that is made with any detrimental view of the work the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board does; it was specifically in regard to how their request for a levy increase sits with regard to CPI. I would also like to put on record my own personal decision, as a member of this committee, that I would vote against any levy request in excess of CPI. On this occasion, the majority of the committee was certainly of the same view as me, and I think that is appropriate.

I would also like to point out that the Natural Resources Committee has never voted along party lines. It is a very good working group and includes Family First and Independent members. We all come with a clear mind and leave with a clear conscience with the decisions we make together. I appreciate the fact that all members of the committee work that way and the staff support us in exactly the same vein. With those few words, I certainly support the decision the committee has made in this instance.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (11:10): I also as a member of that committee indicate my support for this motion. I believe that for too long now perhaps sometimes the parliament has been a rubber stamp for the NRM boards in determining their levies, and through this motion we will put them on notice that in future they must be much closer to CPI than they perhaps have been in the past. I did not have a problem in supporting the Arid Lands levy proposal. Whilst that was well above CPI, we must bear in mind that the quantum they raise for the vast area they look after is very minimal, so I did not have a problem in supporting the Arid Lands levy proposal, but I certainly do with the Adelaide Mount Lofty Ranges region.

I also point out that I think the NRM boards do a tremendous job in looking after our environment, and this motion is certainly not a reflection of the boards themselves. As a parliament they have to be put on notice that in raising their levies they must be much closer to CPI and make sure that that money is spent on the things it should be spent on, such as looking after the environment. With those few words, I support the motion.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (11:12): I will say a few words initially about the role of NRM boards: overall they do a very good job. Some people do not like any restrictions on their activities. I think we have moved beyond the sort of cowboy approach to managing the environment, and I think people expect a lot from the NRM boards. Clearly they are put through the hoop more closely than is any government agency that I know of. I was a member of the Economic and Finance Committee when the old catchment boards had to front, and they were put under the microscope literally: every single item of expenditure and whether or not their administration costs were too high as a percentage of their total costs.

The sort of procedure and practice that I think should apply to all government agencies—not just to the NRM boards but to all government agencies—is that they should be put through the hoop, not through the estimates process, which is not rigorous and is a hit-and-miss question-type approach. All government agencies should be subject to rigorous examination by parliament and parliamentary committees. To some extent, the Budget and Finance Committee of the other place does some of that, but as a whole the total approach needs to be revised and made more rigorous and vigorous.

In respect of the levy, I hear members saying that something above CPI needs to be questioned. I ask members to look at what is happening in the local government area. They will argue that in local government they do not buy cornflakes or bottles of tomato sauce and that therefore CPI is irrelevant. If it is irrelevant for them, you could argue likewise for the NRM boards because they are not buying cornflakes either. There is a bit of an inconsistency there. I am not advocating putting up charges unnecessarily.

Often organisations decide what they want and then they look at what revenue they can bring in. Most people normally do it the other way around: they look at how much revenue or money they have, and then decide what they can buy or spend. Increasingly we are seeing agencies putting it the wrong way around. The NRM boards perform very useful functions.

The environment will never be 'saved' as a lot of people would argue, and I know with the rise of the Greens, people talk about the environment often in derogatory terms because they link it with the Greens. They have an unfortunate title for their party because a lot of the issues they are involved in—and I am not expressing a view one way or another about same-sex marriage—I would not have thought had a lot to do with the environment or as Green issues.

I think the Labor party still maintains some commitment to the environment, not in the order as it was when we had people like Don Hopgood, Don Dunstan and people like that in here, and I think the Liberal Party really needs to get up to speed in terms of the environment, because it is seen in the community as basically anti anything that is put forward as protecting the environment.

We saw that with the Coalition partners and Senator Boswell coming out and immediately attacking a proposal for marine parks. There are a lot of people out there who would normally vote for the Liberal Party who will not because they are seen as not supportive of anything to do with the environment. Sadly, in terms of management, the environment often comes down to issues which have little to do with what I would see as core environmental management and the management of national parks and the protection of native flora and fauna, and it becomes sidetracked into other issues.

The carbon tax is an important issue, and I have said to people in government that they need to be telling people, for example, why there is a carbon tax. It is not being done for the hell of it. It is being done because of global warming and issues relating to the effect of carbon on the earth, so it is in relation to future generations as well as the present one. People seem to forget that, and I would urge the government and the federal government, and all federal and state MPs to focus on, for example, why we are having a carbon tax.

It was not my preferred option. I would have gone about it in a different way. I would have put controls on the major polluters and said, 'You meet these standards by so many years' time or else you pay a heavy penalty,' and I would not have had a tax. But we have a tax, and it is coming into effect shortly. The point I am making is that, in terms of the environment, some people think the environment is being 'saved', whatever that means. The environment is never saved: it is always under threat in terms of people doing things which will harm it. Whether it is a threat to endangered species, whatever it is, there will always be people out there who will put money and greed above concern about the environment.

I can understand why the committee has rejected this increase. I trust it will not stop the NRM boards carrying out their important functions, but I think all agencies of government need to learn to be efficient and effective in the way they use money and not simply see the taxpayer, the ratepayer, the farmer, whatever, as an easy source of revenue to pursue their particular organisational goals. I understand the reason for this motion, and I trust that the NRMs will be able to continue playing what is a very vital role in our society.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:18): I want to make a few brief remarks. I am absolutely delighted that the committee chose to reject the 11 per cent increase that the Adelaide Hills Fleurieu NRM Board wished to proceed with. I thought it was outrageous, quite frankly. They seem to have a total misunderstanding of how hard it is out there for the residents in their area to pay these increased levies. It is bad enough having to pay at the rate of CPI. I might add that those people who fall under the jurisdiction of various NRM boards want to see outcomes.

I am not part of the member for Ashford's committee, but I would suggest that perhaps the committee did not see the outcomes to justify the 11 per cent rise—I am unsure. But how they think they can get away with putting forward an increase such as that defies comprehension. It is improper. It was out of place, it was not needed, and the committee has done a good job in knocking it back. I hope the committee keeps its finger on the pulse with a few others around the traps which may, from time to time, become a problem as well.

The NRM boards—from their amalgamation in the days when we used to have the animal and plant boards, the soil boards, and whatnot—were designed to produce outcomes. I am not entirely convinced that in some of those areas the outcomes are proceeding as they should be. In fact, I was talking with some of my colleagues yesterday about what the various offices and NRM boards, which came out of the other organisations that were doing the work beforehand, are doing now, and they are actually filling in a lot more paper and pushing pens a lot harder without achieving outcomes.

They do achieve some outcomes, and I know the boards across my electorate seek to achieve outcomes; however, the 11 per cent increase in rates (in this case to the Hills board) was not appropriate. I wonder whether we should not seek to revisit the whole structure of this NRM Act and put the control of those organisations back under local government. It has been put forward by one board in my area that that happen, that local government has more direct control over it. I am unsure of what local government thinks about that, but it might be time to revisit it.

I attended the meeting of great minds at the tollgate when minister Hill was minister for the environment, just after this government came into existence, and everything was going to be rosy, according to minister Hill at that time. We all went away thinking the future was going to be lovely. There may be others in this place who attended the meeting on that day.

Mr Brock interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: The member for Frome indicates that he was there as well. It was more polish and sunshine than anything else, but it has not turned out in some areas exactly as it should have, and this is a step in the right direction by the parliamentary committee. It is worth reminding these boards and other bodies that they fall under state government jurisdiction and state government legislation and that from time to time they are not free to rush off and do whatever they want to do and impose even greater imposts on the poor old taxpaying public of South Australia. I also noted the comments of the member for Fisher a while ago, and I will have a little bit more to say about that a little bit later on, but I am pleased to support the motion in this particular case.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (11:23): I thank the committee, which has considered the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Natural Resources Management Board levy proposal for 2012-13, and I thank it more particularly for its decision. My electorate, amongst a number, is within this region, which accommodates a large slice of South Australia and about one million of its inhabitants. It is a very important region, both in productivity and also for the residents, who are an enormous part of the population of this state.

On the weekend, I noted that the Hon. Robert Hill, a former federal minister for the environment, kept up the extraordinarily longstanding Liberal tradition of being recognised in the Queen's honours for his contribution to the environment, particularly climate change and the setting of targets way before they were fashionable. I think it needs to be remembered how significant that contribution has been for the Liberal side of politics. I can go back to Malcolm Fraser putting the Great Barrier Reef on the international heritage list. The list is long.

In the natural resources management of this state the member for Davenport was in a government which identified the importance of bringing together the responsibility for water catchment, soils and pest management in this state on the clear understanding, which I think is a very good one, that you need to look across the board on these issues. Dealt with in isolation, they would often be in conflict with each other and it was a waste of resources and the like.

So, we embraced, as a party, the structure that would develop the natural resources management boards and their support structure independent of the principal departments; namely, the department of primary industries, the department of local government, the department of environment and the then newly appointed Department for Water, which the government had progressed.

We welcomed that. We thought it was a very important initiative to follow on from the previous Liberal government, that it should maintain its independence and that it should be able to be stand-alone with significant local input and expertise that would marry together to ensure as best as possible that we would reduce the tension between social, economic and environmental pressures that inevitably come together when we deal with the proper protection and/or conservation of precious natural resources. All that is great and it was a great ideal. Since that time we have seen the government, in my view, savagely interfere with the independence of NRM boards in this state, some of which function very well. I read all their reports every year. This one in particular has some wins on the board but it has also had some very expensive losses. I will come back to that in a moment.

What I say is that the government's decision to savagely interfere with that independence is very clear. They have now made it an arm of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. It is not a bad thing to be associated with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources but it totally undermines the claim that they are independent and therefore able to effectively manage a balanced approach to the charter which we imposed legislatively, in this parliament, on these boards.

I am glad that the committee exists. It has a mandate and a responsibility to ensure that levies are not increased above CPI unless for very good reason, and I thank the committee for its consideration. In my electorate the local media and local people—including local councils who have to collect the collection fee for these payments—would not tolerate an over 11 per cent increase without demonstrable data that a new initiative was going to be undertaken by this particular board that would be meritorious and of benefit to the people who are paying the price.

The other aspect that concerns me—I went to a meeting yesterday which minister Caica arranged to launch 'Our Place. Our Future', the state natural resources management plan. The presiding member, Mr Andrew Inglis, and members of his committee, presented us with a new document which is to provide the umbrella for the future plan up to 2017. There is not much in this document that could be criticised: the umbrella statements are all pretty motherhood. Nobody would disagree with them. I was disappointed to note, firstly, that there was no demonstrable measuring structure, no framework in place. I am told that is 12 months away but in the meantime we have to rely on the yellow dots, the green dots or the red dots. That is not a level of measurable accountability, in my view.

Nevertheless, I thank Mr Inglis for the preparation of this report which is to sit above the natural resource management boards, one of which we are canvassing today—the one that covers my electorate. Sitting below that in its plan with respect to the increase in native vegetation and ecosystems, it has in its target, still, provision for an increase to 30 per cent of the region to have the full extent of functional ecosystems. When I have asked them about this they have said it is 5 per cent at the moment.

The targets that have been presented in the submission from Professor Daniels to this committee say that 200 hectares have been placed under conservation heritage agreements—nothing else to identify that there has been any advance of this target—nevertheless, I have asked them, 'How is this going to be achieved? How is this possibly going to be achieved in the region that we look after? Are you going to bulldoze the towns? Are you going to buy out the farms? How is this going to be achieved and what is in place to ensure that we manage the natural vegetation and ecosystems that are developed?'

This is the critical issue: there is not much point in locking up tracts of land (or ocean, for that matter, as we have seen with marine parks) unless you have a plan about how it is going to be managed and the cost that goes with it. I have noticed in this year's budget a bit about the Heysen Trail in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources but nothing about marine parks, so the poor old fish are left out there unprotected again, not that the actual parks boundaries are going to help them.

I raise this point: I like to meet with my natural resources management board each year; in fact, last year in November minister Caica asked to be present during that. I want to know what they are doing in relation to pest control in my electorate, how they are dealing with weeds, how they are dealing with other issues. I just want to place it on the record, and I hope that the chairman of the committee takes this on notice, because it turned out that the NRM representative had the date wrong, so the minister and I were left in the minister's office to have a meeting by ourselves. Notwithstanding that I thank minister Caica for the interesting conversation we had.

I wrote to Mr Alan Ockenden after that meeting in November and set out to him the schedule of information including the statistics on pest APC, which is the application of the work they did for the previous year's period. I wrote to him on 13 December reminding him of that and hoping that it might be provided. It had not been in the intervening period from November when we then met that day when he had not been able to turn up. He arrived at the meeting without any of the information, so we followed it up.

I spoke to him on 21 January. I wrote to him again on 20 February 2012. I even set the date for November 2012 that suited the minister for this year's meeting. I wrote to him again, to the minister, just keeping him in the loop obviously because we still had not had the information, and he was reasonably entitled to that as well. I wrote on 14 May 2012, again to Mr Ockenden. I got an acknowledgement back from the minister, and I thank him for that. In the meantime he said, 'Yes, the November date for 2012 is all in my diary and ready to go.'

I wrote again on 21 May 2012. I then got some information. Amazing! I was stunned. So I wrote to him again saying, 'I have some information about a booklet that you have prepared and I appreciate that. Thank you very much. But I still haven't got the pest monitoring information that I have asked for from last year. As we only have a few days left to this financial year, please get started on this current financial year's data because I will be wanting it for the meeting when we meet for the November meeting with the minister.'

I am the local member. I have an obligation, as all members here have an obligation, to answer the questions of their constituency. If we have a weed problem in a certain area, if the Cleland Conservation Park is under attack from rabbits or anything else, I need to be able to deal with those issues. I need to be informed and I am entitled to be informed. The NRM in this area has an obligation in this instance to me and every other representative in this parliament who is within its district—and to the committee.

So I say to the committee chair and to the members of the committee that this situation cannot be tolerated. The minister should not put up with it. It is not acceptable. I do not know about other members but I like to be kept informed, I am entitled to be kept informed. I am very cross that I have not been kept informed. The minister should be insulted that he has not be kept informed. In the meantime I have perused the 50-page submission and it does not justify the increase.

Time expired.

The SPEAKER: The member for Port Pirie. The member for Frome.

Mr BROCK (Frome) (11:33): Frome. There was an electoral redistribution but I don't think it went that way. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I join with the other members of the committee in supporting this disallowing of the levy well in excess of an 11 per cent increase that was sought by the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board. As the member for Stuart has indicated, there was a lot of discussion regarding this and whether it has happened previously and whether increases have just been automatically approved by the standing committee, but that is another issue. Our committee, as the member for Stuart has already indicated, works very well. It does not work on party lines. There are members of the government there, there are members of the opposition, and it includes Family First and Independents. We take our role as a committee very seriously.

This committee analysed vigorously the submission from this NRM Board. It is hard to make a decision on it and there is no criticism of what the NRM boards do across the whole region, but it is not our duty to rubberstamp any increases. We need to justify that. It is an impost on the ratepayers of the community. They are already being slugged with the emergency services levy, the NRM levy and also council rates. We all need to manage and ensure that we do not overburden our communities with imposts all the time.

I think the member for Fisher has already indicated that local government also needs to go through the same sort of critical examination. Even in my council at Port Pirie, last year their rates went up 12 per cent residential, and in the rural area they were up nearly more than 30 per cent. That is an absolute impost, and there is a public meeting tonight regarding the draft budget. I think they are increasing the waste management levy to nearly $175 per ratepayer plus a 9 per cent increase in the rates. Again, I encourage communities, wherever they may be, to critically examine what their local councils are doing.

The other issue is that local councils are also involved with the collection of the levies. They also need to be very vocal and examine any increases made by any government agency, particularly the NRM boards, because the local councils are the ones who need to collect it, and they need to be the front-line people able to defend the issue.

The member for Bragg indicated some displeasure on certain things, but I will say that I have had the opportunity to actually go to a lot of forums in my electorate with NRM, and I welcome that openness from the Northern and Yorke board. It is a very good one, and I have great communication with them, so I am aware of all the issues that may be happening within my electorate. Again, I certainly support the motion by the Hon. Steph Key, our committee chairperson, and fully endorse the disallowance.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:36): With a great deal of pleasure, I rise to support this motion. I have long been an advocate of the Natural Resources Committee and its predecessor (I think it was formerly a function of the Economic and Finance Committee) to take a bit of a stick to the NRM boards and their wont for raising the levies by excessive amounts.

I have written to committees previously, certainly in regard to the exorbitant increases by the NRM board in the South-East of the state which covers my electorate. In fact, the board had a policy until quite recently that the increase in the levy on an annual basis would be CPI or 5 per cent, whichever was the greater. They were running an active policy of having a 5 per cent annual increase, irrespective of CPI being considerably less than that.

I was delighted to learn quite recently, when discussing the matter with the now chairman of that board, that that policy has been overturned and that their policy is currently to only seek to increase the levy by the CPI. Even that I find objectionable, given that the increases that occurred in previous years were in the order of 13, 14 or 15 per cent, year on year in some instances. It was at those times that I was writing to the relevant parliamentary committee, requesting that they disallow those rises.

I think the parliament needs to revisit what we have done with the whole NRM business model. We created in the first place a community-based board which would bring community-based discussion to the NRM function. I can remember (I am pretty sure it is in the Hansard as it was in the house) when minister Hill was then minister for the environment and, in answer to a question that I raised about the NRM board in the South-East, he suggested I go and talk to them because, after all, they are my people, and he suggested that it was my board.

I think the member for Bragg alluded to this a few moments ago. I cannot speak to the NRM board in the South-East now unless the minister has a delegate from his office sitting in on the meeting. I think it is outrageous that the NRM board, which was established to be a community-based board where the community could air their opinions about their local environment and the natural resource management of their local areas, has now become an arm of government.

It was always my suspicion that, under this government at least, the boards would become an arm of government. In the instance of the South-East, the NRM board replaced the former water resources management board with the introduction of the NRM Act in 2004, I think. Certainly, under this government, the boards have become an arm of government. In fact, in my experience, they have only taken decisions with the knowledge that that is what the minister wants to happen. They use the terminology 'the minister', but what they really mean is the bureaucrats in the department's head office.

In my experience, the NRM boards have very little autonomy when it comes to real decision-making. They are, by and large, a rubber stamp for the head office of the department. It is just a simple failure of what we set out to establish when the NRM Act went through this parliament. I point out that the opposition proposed something like 280 amendments to the principal act when it first went through the parliament all those years ago. I think the opposition can fairly say that it would have been a much better system if those amendments had been accepted by the parliament at that time.

One of the things that has disturbed me all along with regard to the NRM boards is that we have established a separate taxing body. That is basically what we have got: a body that we have given the power to tax. So now in South Australia we have the NRM boards with the power to tax, local councils with the power to tax, a state government with the power to tax, and a federal government with the power to tax. We now have four levels of taxing in this state.

In the early days, when the level of the NRM levies was quite small, it was possibly acceptable; it was never acceptable to me but the parliament obviously accepted it. As time has transpired, by and large the boards, again in my experience, have abused their taxing power and they have grown like Topsy.

It is on that basis that I fully support and endorse what the committee has done in this instance. I am somewhat disappointed that the relevant committee from time to time had not taken this sort of action in the past. I think this is a fairly rare event with regard to the NRM boards. I wish it would happen much more often.

Mr Pengilly interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: The member for Finniss suggests that we should do it to councils as well. I have never argued and never will argue that this parliament should have that sort of power over local government. If we think the local councils have got it wrong, let's go back and revisit the Local Government Act and get it right, but I do believe that local government should be autonomous. In my opinion, where the NRM boards find themselves now is far too autonomous with regard to their taxing powers, nowhere near autonomous enough from the bureaucracy (the government agency) when it comes to decision-making. I have argued for a long time now that we need to go back and look at the principal act with regard to NRM management in South Australia.

The member for Bragg made some very pertinent comments about weed management, the management of pest species—rabbits, foxes and things. Certainly in my part of the world I understand the calicivirus has done a great job in a fair portion of South Australia. It does not seem to be very effective in my part of the world where I suspect the climate is too cold for the survival of the virus, but it just does not seem to be doing the job there that it has in other places.

Certainly I get plenty of inquiries through my office about rabbits. The NRM board does not seem to be on top of rabbits. I do not know that they are absolutely on top of weed management across the state either. They are charged with certain roles. I question their effectiveness, to be quite honest, but I certainly question the amount of money that they are now receiving via the levies. I commend the motion to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.