Native Vegetation (Road Safety and Roadside Fuel Reduction) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 14 April 2016.)

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (11:22): I am on my feet—

The SPEAKER: Members will resume their seats out of respect to the member for Flinders.

Mr TRELOAR: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Especially the members for Unley and Morialta, who are still in the gangway.

Mr TRELOAR: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your protection and support.

The SPEAKER: The member for Kavel will be seated. The member for Flinders.

Mr TRELOAR: I should be good now. I rise to continue my contribution on the bill to amend the Native Vegetation Act brought to this place by the member for Morphett, who has on a number of occasions brought a bill similar to this, but on each and every occasion, unfortunately, has been defeated. I know that the member feels very passionately and strongly about the need for legislation in this regard, and it is all to do with allowing roadside verges to be managed.

At the moment, there is that opportunity, but it is a very convoluted process. The application process to clean up native vegetation is a difficult one and it is time consuming. Often landowners and responsible people give up in disgust and decide that it is all too hard to go through the application process, knowing full well that they cannot progress what they might want to do because it is actually against the law. This bill would make it possible and much more acceptable for those landowners who feel the need or requirement to remove some vegetation, or at least clean up along their private property.

I spoke last time about the importance of having a safe landscape and a safe environment. In fact, it is almost three months since I last contributed, so it is a pleasure to come back to this bill. One of my real passions is the environment and the landscape, and what we are starting to do in many circles now is talk about a planned landscape and a designed landscape. It is a concept that is not uncommon in Europe and even in North America, but it is a relatively new concept in Australia.

It is not something we have engaged with, but I think we really are at a point, as landscape managers, as landowners, where we should start to address the whole of landscape management, making it not only productive but secure. The reason it needs to be secure, of course, is that we are prone to natural disasters, we are prone to floods in the wintertime here in South Australia—at least flooding rains and often floods in hilly terrain—we are prone to bushfires, particularly in our long, hot and dry summers. Our fuel loads are often high and I suspect that we have had good rains already again this autumn and winter, the early part of the winter, so there is no doubt that fuel loads will be high again.

Landowners do their best to protect their properties around their homes. The message is finally getting through with regard to firebreaks, safe areas, having adequate sprinkler and watering systems in place so that farmers and landowners can protect their properties. But this actually takes it a step further. It takes it to the point where, when a bushfire is roaring across the countryside, roaring across the landscape, it adds that extra security. Landowners who have the opportunity will be more prepared than ever; they will clean up the road verges and it will be less likely to carry a fire. Even if the fire does get into that roadside verge, it will be far more manageable—firefighters will be able to combat it, it will be less likely to roar up and down the road verges.

I have seen it happen: often, on Eyre Peninsula, the road reserves are three chain wide, which in modern terms is 60 metres, but they were always measured at three chain, often at one chain. The sealed part of the road, or the sheeted part of the road, is probably only one chain of that, so often there is a significant amount of dense vegetation. Even the Mallee vegetation can be dense, often undergrown with broom bush, and then the occasional taller eucalypt, often a gum tree or a melaleuca, which will carry a fire at a significant pace.

We are all too familiar with bushfires in the state. Just this last year, of course, this last summer, we had the devastating Pinery bushfire, which, sadly, took lives and burnt around about 80,000 hectares in an afternoon. That is 200,000 acres in an afternoon. It was an extraordinary bushfire; nobody has the capacity to combat that. The reality is that, even if work had been done on the roadside verges, there was probably little that could have been done to stop that particular fire, because it was such extreme circumstances.

But it is part of a whole package of protecting property, of protecting homes, and of protecting farms, livestock and machinery, all those things, and it just adds to the armoury, if you like, of defence against a raging bushfire. I do remember, as a young man, Ash Wednesday, way back in 1983. Even though it didn't affect us on Eyre Peninsula, it certainly impacted much of South Australia and Victoria.

I know the member for MacKillop was caught up in the bushfire that day—that was in the South-East—and I also realise that a large part of the Adelaide Hills went up in smoke that day, and I am going to put this to parliament today: it will happen again. There will be another bushfire next summer; if not next summer, then the summer after, and I don't want to be scaremongering, but there will be another big fire in the Adelaide Hills at some point. A lot has happened since 1983, and there are far more people living in the Adelaide Hills than there were 33 years ago in 1983. Far more people have been allowed to build, and I do not blame them for wanting to live in the Hills—

Mr Duluk: They are beautiful.

Mr TRELOAR: Yes, they are absolutely beautiful, as the member for Davenport says, and he would know—he has a delightful electorate there. The views are magnificent and often homes are nestled amongst a natural environment with woodland and many gum trees but, gee, it could be and will be a death trap on one particular day during one particular summer.

These are the sorts of situations that this bill, brought by the member for Morphett, is designed to help address. He wants to make those people safer, he wants to make the environment safer and he wants to make the landscape safer. I commend the member for Morphett for bringing forward this eminently sensible and sound bill and congratulate him on the work he does in encouraging people to be responsible and to help South Australians everywhere combat the threat of bushfire.

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