Bowering Hill Dam

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:28): Some days, sitting in this parliament, you are very proud of what happens here. You are proud to be a member and proud of the work other members do. Then there are some days when members abuse their positions, abuse the parliamentary procedures and throw dirt around in the parliament. Sadly, today was one of those days. We saw dirt being thrown around and allegations that were completely unfounded being raised here in question time, merely in the hope that some of that dirt will stick to a member and to create some air of conflict or suspicion where none exists. I refer to what happened during question time.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the member for Bragg, came in here to ask questions of the member for Mawson, the Minister for Agriculture, about his interests in wine holdings or vineyards in the southern region and any connections to proposals for dams at Bowering Hill. She had no evidence whatsoever that any of that was the case and, of course, none of it is the case because, as all members would know, you can easily find out any of our pecuniary interests just by looking online because we all declare our interests.

As the member for Mawson said today, he owns his house in McLaren Vale. He does not own wineries or anything like that in McLaren Vale. The reason she came in here today to ask those questions was to throw dirt, to create suspicion and to hope that these completely unfounded allegations would create an innuendo that would stick around this issue. What was her research for doing this? She found some random Facebook post from back in January this year where somebody who was very disgruntled made up these allegations and posted them online.

Apparently that is the standard now: you see something crazy on Facebook, you come into the parliament and ask ministers questions about their personal holdings based on that. I think that is a pretty poor effort from somebody who hopes to be the Deputy Premier and who hopes to be the Attorney-General of this state. I would have thought that somebody who wants to be the chief law officer of this state would hold themselves to a slightly higher standard than just using some rubbish on Facebook to come in here and wave around accusations like that.

Of course, we know that this whole proposal for the Bowering Hill dam is being proposed by a gentleman called Jock Harvey. Jock Harvey was putting himself forward for Liberal Party preselection. He is a well-known Liberal in the southern suburbs and he was putting himself forward for preselection for the seat of Mawson. Apparently, he pulled out for Mawson at the last minute. It was not last sitting week or the sitting week before that we had these allegations coming in here to the house. It is only after he has pulled out for preselection for the Liberal Party that we get all these questions—11 questions this week—about the Bowering Hill proposal being put up by Jock Harvey and other winemakers in the southern suburbs.

If he were to be the Liberal candidate for Mawson, you can bet they would be supporting it. They would be doing everything to support him and to support the project, but since he has pulled out now they are suddenly against it and they are suddenly trying to create all this smoke and dirt around the whole issue in the parliament. The other thing we know very clearly is that this whole project is being funded by the federal government. It was the former member for Mayo Jamie Briggs, who has long departed the federal parliament now, who proposed this whole project, got $2½ million to fund it, got the support of Senator Anne Ruston and got the support of Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to get that funding for the project.

This is a Liberal, federal funded project. Now the deputy leader is coming in and creating suspicion about the member for Mawson, completely unfounded, to try to attack him. We know there are some quite significant community concerns about this project in the southern suburbs, given that it is not an ordinary dam. It is a 14-metre tall 'turkey nest', as they call it. To most people, it would look like a big mountain of dirt as they drive around the southern suburbs, if this project were to proceed. It has not been through the development assessment process through the council, so it has not been approved.

It is still state government-owned land, owned by Renewal SA, as I understand, so the land has not been sold yet. The only element that is in place is the funding from the federal government. I think what should happen is that the deputy leader should come into this place and apologise to the member for Mawson. Not only that, she should stop using these sorts of allegations if she wants to be Attorney-General because this standard is far beneath somebody who wants to be Attorney-General in this state.