Pastoral Lands Visit

Mrs VLAHOS (Taylor) (14:34): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. Can the minister inform the house about his recent trip to the pastoral regions of South Australia?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (14:35): I thank the member for Taylor for her question. Last week, former premier Rob Kerin, who is now the head of Primary Producers SA, the member for Hammond and I travelled with PIRSA staff up to the outback of South Australia. There are about 15 properties up there that have had very poor rain in the past few years and are in need of assistance because on one of the properties in particular that we went out to see, Sharon Oldfield's property, Cowarie Station, they have not had decent rains for over two years. It looked much like a moonscape out there as we travelled around her property for a few hours.

As I said, there are about 15 properties up there. We flew into Leigh Creek and had a meeting at the Lyndhurst pub. We had about 40 people there, including the Fargher families and the Bells and many others who turned up and we had a really good discussion about what they see as the priorities. They say that they have never seen the dogs so bad out that way, so they want to see some controls put in place and maybe some baiting.

Some of the stories were from one family who have never locked their back door but the dogs are coming right up to the back door. They have a three-year-old son. The dog was up on the trampoline a few weeks ago. It is really quite a serious situation. So we have put $100,000 into a fund that Livestock SA will run and that will look after some dog-baiting and other programs. We have $175,000 that we have put into that same fund for some water infrastructure because that was another area where people around that part of the outback thought they could do with some help.

Later on, we went up to Oodnadatta and the member for Stuart joined us there. Again, it was a very good, productive meeting. We had Andrew and Donagh and many other local station owners and managers who joined us and we talked about the immediate problems but also what we need to do in the medium term and in the longer term as well, and we had some really good discussions around perhaps getting some solar panelled bores up there as well to reduce the use of diesel which obviously increases the sustainability of these properties but also reduces the annual cost of diesel to these people. All those sorts of things are pretty good ideas.

We then went down to Coober Pedy and met up with a lot of the tourism operators there and had a tourism forum. The following day we went down to Glendambo where we caught up with the NRM Board and the Pastoral Board which were having a joint meeting at Glendambo. It was a pretty good use of the amount of time that we had to get to speak to as many people as we could and to get some really good views.

What we kept explaining to everyone was that no-one is here to play politics with this issue. There are people there who are in serious trouble and we all want to work together. The member for Hammond and I have worked closely on the grain handling committee in recent years, we have travelled widely around the state and to Western Australia, and it was terrific to have him there, feeding in his ideas and listening so that we all heard the same stories at the same time. The member for Stuart was also there to hear those stories.

I must commend Rob Kerin. I think he is doing a great job with Primary Producers SA. He brought together a lot of different primary industry groups to come together and he has been a great advocate for them and it was a real bonus for us to have him along on the trip.

On Friday, I had a ministerial meeting with the state and territory ministers, and Barnaby Joyce was there. I told him about our $275,000 commitment and he said that he would be willing to match that money. Again, not just both sides of politics are working together but both levels are working together as well. We do not have that signed off. We have to send over some paperwork but I know the people in the outback we met with will be very pleased with that news as we try to assist them through these tough times. We do not want to leave anyone behind.