Natural Resources Committee: Pinery Bushfires

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. S.W. Key:

That the 116^th report of the committee, entitled Pinery Fire Regional Fact-Finding Trip, be noted.

(Continued from 28 September 2016.)

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (11:57): The Pinery fire on 25 November 2015 was an awful day in the life of South Australia and a very awful day for the electorate of Schubert because it is the third time in three years that my electorate has burnt down. I was lucky enough to spend some time with the Natural Resources Committee, which was very good in inviting on the trip the local members whose areas were affected. We spent some time looking at revegetation projects. We spent some time on a farm looking at how they were trying to deal with the fact that their topsoil had essentially burnt off and how they were worried about the latent nutrient levels in their soil. If we fast-forward 12 months, we see that some of the farmers across those affected areas have had the best crop in a long, long time—and a lot of that was due to rainfall—and how quickly the country recovered.

Fair enough, there are a lot of emotional scars and there are still physical scars, but I think that the season that we have just had has done so much to help bring about confidence and positivity to a community that was on its knees and had been punished by the natural environment in a way that it had not seen for generations. To see the country bounce back so quickly I think is exciting. As some farmers said to me, they were looking at 10 years of trying to rebuild their topsoil in order to get back to where they were. Those fears have certainly been allayed.

The Natural Resources Committee has gained another hardworking community, looked after by the member for Ashford. It is out there trying to tackle some of the real issues on the ground and look at practical solutions to help the country recover after such an event. Touch wood, we have been through this season without a major bushfire, which is I think the first year in about four or five years that that has been the case. Hopefully, we can survive the next month. Summer is over today, so hopefully we are okay. Hopefully, we can look forward to learning some lessons out of the Pinery fire, which was a different fire from Sampson Flat, from Eden Valley, from Wirrabara and all the other larger fires we have had over recent years. It was a lot of flat, farming country, and I think the learning we can take out of how the country does recover will be extremely valuable as we move forward to the next fire.

The NRC, in its work in helping to retain some of that institutional knowledge, can hopefully continue that work into the future. With that, I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.