Coorong Summit

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (15:16): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister inform the house how the government is responding to the findings of the Goyder expert panel and Coorong Summit reports into the health of the Coorong?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:16): I thank the member for MacKillop for the question. I know his representation of that part of our state is very important. It's a fragile landscape, which he has a particular interest in representing.

When I became the Minister for Environment and Water, it became very apparent to me that there are many environmental challenges facing our state, some of which we have control over and some of which we unfortunately don't. One particularly pressing challenge, for a whole range of reasons, is the health and sustainability of the Coorong—that incredibly important Ramsar-listed wetland at the mouth of the River Murray.

The Coorong has particular challenges historically, but more recently, since the Millennium Drought, there have been particular areas of the Coorong, specifically the southern lagoon, which have failed to recover in a substantial way from the effects of the drought. Whereas other parts of that wetland have shown quite good signs of recovery, the southern lagoon has certainly not. It has substantially degraded since the drought and it has, as a consequence, lost quite a significant number of species of animals, plants and particularly birdlife.

However, it was apparent to me that we didn't have the grasp, the understanding, as a government, as a bureaucracy, that we needed in order to make decisions around the Coorong and in order to fund projects in the Coorong in an evidence-based sense, so we convened two bodies: one a scientific and community summit, which was held on World Environment Day at the beginning of June this year, and at the same time we ran an expert panel in partnership with the Goyder Institute, the Goyder Institute being an independent body that sits apart from government and holds substantial expertise on water policy and water science.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: This body of work sought to gain scientific consensus as to what the priorities for the health of the Coorong would be. There is substantial debate in the scientific community around what the priorities are, so I was very keen to say to that group, 'If you could do two or three activities to improve the health of the Coorong, what would they be?' That is what we were able to release to the South Australian public a couple of weeks ago with the report from the Goyder Institute, which we put out into the public domain, which had the findings of that panel saying what the real challenges were for the Coorong and what we needed to either know or do to take further action.

The recommendations from that panel can be divided into short, medium and long-term activities. Some give us no-regret quick wins, we hope, while others require further long-term investment in science and research to gain a greater understanding of their impacts. Activities that we hope to advance in the coming weeks, months and years are further community engagement, further scientific research around cycling water in the Coorong and understanding flows through the Murray and the South-East and the impact of those flows.

We are also keen to investigate the creation of refuge wetlands to enable birds and other wildlife and plants to grow and stay healthy while other parts of the Coorong are allowed to recover. This will require funding. I am pleased that I have already been able to meet with the federal minister for water, David Littleproud. I headed over to Sydney a couple of weeks ago to meet him, and I am very hopeful of being able to forge a cooperative partnership with the federal government as we seek to uphold the health of the Coorong.