Bills

Native Vegetation (Road Verges) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (10:31): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Native Vegetation Act 1991. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (10:32): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This is the second time that I have introduced this bill and I hope it is not like the health bill that we are doing for the third time in this place at the current moment. Last time I introduced this bill was in November 2012, and I remember that day well, because it was an extreme fire danger day in South Australia.

There had been a fire not far from our farming property between Kangarilla and Meadows. The whole state was on red alert that day and the need to have common-sense legislation about managing native vegetation in this state was no more evident than on that day. If we want more evidence about that, just look at the recent history of bushfires in South Australia.

This is a common-sense piece of legislation, in anybody's opinion, other than a few of the absolute greenies. While I am not allowed to display in this place, I have circulated a photograph of a road near our farming property and it just shows what I am aiming for on the left-hand side of the road and what is currently the situation on many roads in South Australia on the right-hand side. I know what I would like people to be able to do using their own common sense.

My legislation, which is a fairly straightforward piece of legislation amending the Native Vegetation Act, uses the word 'reasonable'. Under the Acts Interpretation Act, 'reasonable' has an interpretation. You are not napalming the verges; you are not getting out the D9 and clearing every piece of vegetation and topsoil from the verges. You are doing what is reasonable to make sure that when—and I do say 'when', not 'if'—there is a bushfire, you are able to drive down that road and escape your property if the need arises, if you have not otherwise left early.

We saw on the West Coast the numbers of deaths of people on the roads who were caught with masses of native vegetation on both sides. There were flame-overs, their vehicles were caught, and they perished. That happens over and over again. From personal experience, I have driven fire trucks where you have got flames coming through tons and tons of fuel load and litter on the sides of the road, and you have got flames leaping up the side of the fire truck. You know that, had there been some common sense, reasonable clearing of the verges, you would not have been in the perilous position that you were in having to go and try to control bushfires and save people's properties.

As I say, this is not about desertification of our verges: this is about a reasonable undertaking by property owners. I actually trust South Australians to do the right thing. I trust them to carry out clearing and reducing the fuel loads for bushfires by using common sense. I trust them to do that, and this is what this legislation is going to do.

There will be councils jumping up and down because they will not be getting the revenue from their people going out inspecting and taking photographs of people wanting to burn off a small pile of vegetation to clear it. One of the most ridiculous situations we have in South Australia is where, in some local government areas, they do allow their landowners to go and do reasonable clearing and reasonable fuel reduction but, in other areas, you have got to apply for a permit.

The inspector comes out, takes a photograph, goes back and considers it. You get a permit for a specific time and a specific day. If it is pouring with rain that day, well bad luck, you have got to go through it again. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted because of that bureaucratic nonsense. What this bill aims to do is allow people to undertake reasonable fuel load reduction, in this case on the road verges.

I would like to see it extended to rural properties as well. Everybody in this place should go back and talk to the people at Sampson Flat who were involved there—the property owners and firefighters. Ask them what they would think of this legislation and I would guarantee that 100 per cent would agree that this is a sensible thing to do. I do not see anybody in this place who could say this is not a reasonable thing to do. If you do say that, the first thing I would ask is: do you not trust South Australians to do the right thing? I do, I know the Liberal Party does, and I look forward to members in this place doing that exact same thing.

Just this morning, while coming into this place, I was listening to ABC at Port Pirie. They had the assistant chief officer of the CFS speaking there about the coming severe El Niño that has been predicted. We will get the winter rains, we will get drying off earlier, and we will have an extended fire season. The time to start preparing for the fire season is when things are starting to look like they are drying off.

You cannot do that, at the moment, with the current legislation. I encourage everybody in the place to have a look at the photographs I have got—if you have not got one, I am happy to hand you one—of what we are trying to achieve. The fuel load has been reduced significantly. Just remember that flame height is about three times the height of the fuel load. So, on one side of this picture, you have got fuel load reduced down to a matter of a few centimetres. On the other side, you have got Phalaris that is about a metre and a half high.

What would you rather face? Flames you could jump over that are 20 centimetres high with very little intensity and very little heat that is not decimating seed banks, and small creatures have got time to escape from, or would you rather have flames that are five or six metres high generating thousands of degrees worth of heat that are going to decimate seed banks and decimate any little hidey holes that creatures might be in, never mind the creatures that are in them?

You are actually doing the right thing by managing the native vegetation on the side of the roads. The Aboriginal people used to do it. Go and read Bill Gammage's book The Biggest Estate on Earth that tells how Aboriginal people used to manage our vegetation. They did not allow it to accumulate for year after year so that you were getting tons and tons of fuel waiting to burn when that bushfire came.

Yes, I am very passionate about this, because I have seen trucks burnt in bushfires. I have seen the unnecessary spread of bushfires because of massive fuel loads that were not able to be cleared and controlled. So, I just plead with the members in this place to look at this legislation for what it is. Ask yourselves: is this a sensible thing to do?

The minister might say, 'No, we can't do that; there are too many things that might go wrong. The precautionary principle will come out.' The precautionary principle basically says: if you cannot prove that something might go wrong but you suspect or think it might go wrong, well, let's make sure that we put rules in place so that whatever we were going to do can't be done. If you apply the precautionary principle to itself, it fails. So, let's not use the precautionary principle approach on this piece of sensible legislation.

I challenge members on the other side, if you have the courage of your convictions, come over en masse. They cannot disendorse all of you; try it. Just do what they do in every other labour party in this world: don't vote en bloc, don’t vote per the minister's whim, don't vote as the Labor Party says you have to vote. Do what you were elected to do, stand up for your constituents, and vote for this decent legislation.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: What anti-Whip behaviour!

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are you on your feet, member for Newland?

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: After that disturbing and distressing speech from the member for Morphett, I move that debate be adjourned so that I might recover.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.R. Kenyon.