Natural Resources Management

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:23): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Will the minister update the house on the government's plan to reform natural resources management and the commitment to ease cost-of-living pressures in regard to the NRM levy?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (14:23): As the member for Stuart mentions, it is another good reform for our state and a reform that will deliver cost-of-living improvements to South Australians.

Natural resources management is something that I know has a significant interest for the member for MacKillop, and it has been a pleasure to be able to work with the NRM board in his region recently and to see the appointment of Fiona Rasheed as the new chair of the NRM board in the South-East. Fiona brings a significant amount of experience to the role, and I believe she will do much to reposition that board to be a highly relevant and reform-focused body for rural affairs in the South-East.

When I became the shadow minister for the environment last year, it became very apparent to me that there were significant problems with natural resources management in the state. The original intent of natural resources management had been lost and that original intent was focused on bringing together soil boards, water catchment boards and pest control boards into an integrated model. That sounds like a really good thing, and in principle it is.

However, through that process, NRM boards became increasingly centralised and members in this house who represent regional communities, in particular, would know the many problems that that created, including a loss of that back to basics, on the ground environmental restoration and repair work that those boards were traditionally known for. That focus delivered economic, as well as environmental, sustainability for our regional landscapes.

That change led to a loss of goodwill and increasing centralisation of decision-making and a breakdown of partnerships between local governments, between NGOs, between people managing the land and between the state government that was administering these programs in a centralised way. It also led to a significant rise in NRM levies, which put a significant cost pressure on households, landowners and business owners particularly, again, in regional communities.

We have seen in the last year, and will in the forthcoming year, a 6 per cent increase in the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM levies. Members would know that that again is a significant cost pressure on South Australian households and businesses. Our response is to create the landscape South Australia act, which we will be bringing into this parliament during the first term of government. We will be repealing the NRM Act and we will be bringing landscapes SA to this parliament, which will have a very significant focus on back to basics, soil quality, water management, pest control, as well as looking at biodiversity and economic sustainability—such important things for our regional landscapes.

We will be looking at increasing community voice on NRM boards. Three NRM board members will be elected from the community, adding confidence that NRM boards are standing up for communities, particularly regional communities, like the communities represented by the member for MacKillop. We will be creating a $2 million grassroots grant program, and we will be creating three new boards to cover the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges region, taking that decision-making back to communities.

In particular, we will be bringing in a cap on the NRM levy going forward, ceasing the tax grab that this was for households and businesses and putting cost of living at the heart of NRM and also looking at biodiversity, back to basics and economic sustainability, which is so important for our regional communities.