Coast Protection Board

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister update the house on how the recently delivered Coast Protection Board grants will benefit regional coastal communities?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (14:40): Thank you, member for MacKillop, for your interest in our coastal environment. Obviously, your electorate has a substantial coastline, and it is a coastline that will benefit from the recently announced Coast Protection Board grants. Of course, this government has made, prior to becoming the government of South Australia, a very clear commitment to coastal protection and a substantial increase in funding for coastal protection activities, whether that be our research and development fund, which we are setting up to pilot projects and programs around coastal protection, or our creation of natural reefs or sand replenishment activities on the metropolitan coastline.

We have identified that our 5,067 kilometres of coastline in South Australia not only contribute significantly to the lifestyle enjoyed by South Australians and the economic input potentially through tourism activities but also form the front line in the defence against climate change in this state with increasing storm events, the potential to see sea level rises and erosion that is a consequence of that, combined with the ever present impact that human activity has on our coastline.

We have identified particular vulnerabilities and we have made it very much our commitment during our time in government to tackle some of these big challenges. Often those challenges are characterised along the metropolitan coastline, around 100 kilometres of metro coastline that have particular challenges. But of course the vast majority of our coastline in South Australia is found in regional communities and plays such an important role in that regional lifestyle, the regional quality of life and the regional environmental resilience that is so important.

The coast protection grants, $325,000 in total, leveraging about $650,000 in investment overall, will see the vast majority of funding go to regional communities to help regional councils undertake, in some cases, practical works and, in other cases, research and development studies in order to understand the coastline better. In your own district that you represent, member for MacKillop, we have funding going to Kingston council, Wattle Range Council and Robe council to tackle coast protection matters there. We are also seeing funding going over to Whyalla council, Streaky Bay council on Eyre Peninsula, and also being directed towards Mount Remarkable council for a project there.

One of the projects that is receiving funding in the South-East of the state is one that I referred to last week in parliament, which was the Wattle Range Council's work that has been done around Southend Beach and which recently won a Premier's climate change award for the adaptation and planning work that has been undertaken there around the coast to ensure that coast has the resilience to deal with the change in climate and the particular impacts that are associated with our coastline with regard to this. This government's commitment to coast protection is strong and practical, and no doubt there will be many other opportunities to share with the house about some of the actions that we are taking to protect our state's coastline.