Barren Hill Dam

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:01): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. Does the minister support the Barren Hill dam proposal at Aldinga?

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) (15:02): It's not actually in my area for approval, so I think you have asked the wrong minister. However, I can tell you that I support getting extra water for the growers of McLaren Vale because the wine industry is so important to that area. In January last year, as we were heading towards the business end of vintage, the company down there to whom SA Water sells recycled water, which is then onsold to growers, had actually sold more water than they had to provide to the growers. It is a serious problem for the people of McLaren Vale. We do need more water.

There is a proposal out there to build a huge dam at Barren Hill. I have been out to the property owned by the Boyds which neighbours this proposed dam, and it is the wrong spot for a dam because, firstly, it is prime agricultural land. We have a site at Plains Road at Aldinga which is really Biscay clay, and that would be a more suitable place to build a dam for recycled water. It is where we built the first recycled dam about six years ago. That should probably be a precinct that we look at for recycled water to be stored in that area.

When Paul Holloway was the minister for planning, I fought hard on behalf of our local area to lock in Barren Hill as land that would be preserved and that could not have gutter to gutter housing on it. That was a really important move. It preceded the work I then did on the character preservation bill for McLaren Vale and, at the same time, the character preservation bill for the Barossa, which the current Deputy Premier and Minister for Planning ushered through both houses of this parliament.

What we have done with that is lock in that land forever, or until both houses of parliament agree that gutter to gutter housing is better than what we have on those lands at the moment. On those lands at that moment we have prime agricultural production and we have fantastic tourist activity, as well. Since we introduced those character preservation rules around McLaren Vale and the Barossa, the price of land for vineyards has gone up significantly.

We are seeing the sort of investment in tourism that we did not see before because there was uncertainty there about whether, if you built a tourism icon, like The Cube will be, which will open at d'Arenberg in December—and currently it is surrounded by vineyards and rolling hills and wonderful vistas—and we had not brought these character preservation protections in, we could have had gutter to gutter housing between McLaren Vale and McLaren Flat or Willunga and McLaren Vale.

So we as a government I think have done an extraordinary job over many, many years and several planning ministers. I want to thank the Deputy Premier and former minister Holloway as well for the leadership that they showed in getting this through. It was what the local people down in McLaren Vale wanted, and I was only too happy to champion their causes and bring people together as well. We had the environmental groups, we had the business groups, we had the winemakers, we had the grapegrowers. We had everyone working together.

I will continue to do that. I applaud people's ambition to get more recycled water storage down there, but we have to make sure that it is on the right spot. Next door to the Boyds I do not think is the right spot. It is a massive dam with a 15-metre high wall, and the Boyds are down there with their property. They do not need that next door to them, neither do the other people in the vicinity.