Heritage Grants

Mrs POWER (Elder) (14:54): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister please update the house on how the community has responded to the first round of the heritage grants that have been reinstated by the Marshall Liberal government?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (14:54): I thank the member for her question and her commitment to preserving heritage in her electorate. She obviously represents the electorate of Elder, which includes that important state heritage area in the suburb of Colonel Light Gardens, and she regularly speaks to me in my role as the state's Minister for Environment and Water as to how we can work better to preserve our state's heritage.

We know that, under the previous government, the heritage grants, which had been in place for a long time, were cut in 2014, and we went to the 2018 election saying that, after five years without those grants, we would reinstate them, giving people who have stewardship of heritage assets within this state the great opportunity to partner with the government and for government to give them a small helping hand towards caring for and revitalising those heritage assets that they have care and control of.

Many people enjoy living in heritage buildings, but we know that they do come with an added financial burden from time to time when it comes to the upkeep of those heritage buildings. So, it is the Marshall Liberal government's show of good faith and goodwill towards people who have the care and control of these buildings that we want to partner with them and help them with a series of fairly small grants, but we hope that they will be able to be built on by those people who have those buildings and who can contribute matching funding and undertake these important works.

Not only are we putting faith in people who have these heritage buildings and valuing these buildings but we are also sending a signal to those who are involved in heritage trades. That is a fairly small area at the moment, which, unfortunately, was let wither by the previous government but which we do see very substantial opportunities in. It has been good to talk with the Minister for Industry and Skills about the opportunities that lie to develop heritage trades to ensure that we have those skills in South Australia so that when heritage works do need to be undertaken, we don't need to buy in that expertise from other jurisdictions but we have it here. We see substantial opportunity in South Australia to develop a heritage trade sector, and I look forward to working with my fellow ministers as we do that.

With respect to the first round of heritage grants—$250,000, part of an amount of $500,000 in total over two years—applications for that round closed last week on 15 March. We had, as I mentioned, a budget of $250,000 but it was very heavily oversubscribed, and that is not a surprise because people who have these heritage buildings had that access to support curtailed under the previous government, and people have been putting their hands up in droves to be involved this time around.

We have had a very high level of subscription to these grants: 68 applications in total, requesting $855,000 worth of support. Obviously, that is oversubscription, but there will be another round opening up in the very near future and there will be another opportunity for those property owners to access the support. Funding will be made available in the coming weeks under several categories: simple grants, under $5,000; complex, under $10,000; and then major projects, $10,000 to $20,000.

These are an exciting opportunity for people who have heritage assets under their care and control. We see this as putting faith not only in the heritage trade sector but also supporting people who own heritage buildings, who want to invest in them and who want to contribute to the unique character of our state.