National Parks

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:15): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister update the house about the role of national parks—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Narungga. This has nothing to do with that person in Queensland. The member for West Torrens is called to order, as is the Deputy Premier. The member for Narungga has the call.

Mr ELLIS: My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister update the house about the role of national parks in promoting the recovery of South Australia?

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (14:15): I thank the member for Narungga for the question. There is no doubt that South Australia has been through a tough time in recent months both in the bushfires at the end of December and early January and then leading into the COVID-19 crisis, which has had a huge impact on our tourism sector and created a situation for an extended period of time where people have until recent days been unable to travel into the regions. Of course, that has affected our tourists who would normally go from metropolitan Adelaide, particularly in busy times of the year such as the public holidays in the Easter season that we have just gone through. This has meant significant pain for regional communities, perhaps magnified more so than might have been experienced in metropolitan Adelaide.

We, as a government, made a very clear decision in the aftermath of coronavirus becoming apparent in this state. We said that we would keep our national parks open. We decided to close the campsites and areas of congregation within national parks, but we said we wanted people to go into our national parks, immerse themselves in nature, do so in a socially distanced way but continue to visit these parks. We had great results from that. The statistics show that our national parks and conservation parks across the state have had a visitation increase of 120 per cent over the last couple of months. I really hope that a silver lining from the dual economic and health disaster of coronavirus is that more people have had an opportunity to explore national parks in both their local community and, in the medium to long term, in regional South Australia as well.

Not only have we said that it is okay to visit regional South Australia but, as a government, we are encouraging it. We are saying to people in Adelaide, 'You can't go interstate very easily at all and it's almost impossible to go overseas, so why not head out into our beautiful regions and visit our national parks?' Some 21 per cent of our state's land mass is comprised of national parks, conservation parks and wilderness areas. They are fantastic drawcards, and people have the opportunity to head into those places, immerse themselves in nature and, of course, connect with locals in those communities, spending money and stimulating regional economies along the way.

As the Premier mentioned in the answer to his question just a moment ago, we have seen a tenfold increase in the number of campsite bookings since we reopened the campsite reservation system on parks.sa.gov.au. That was reopened at 9am yesterday morning. In the 24 hours until 9am this morning, we have had 871 bookings. As I said, that is a 1,000 per cent increase and a real sign of confidence that South Australians want to head out into the regions, experience nature and stimulate the regional economy as well.

The top five parks that that were booked were Deep Creek Conservation Park, Mount Remarkable National Park, Murray River National Park, Innes National Park in the member for Narungga's constituency, and Onkaparinga River National Park in Adelaide's southern suburbs.

Just running through that list, the top five really takes us into every corner of this state. I think the sixth one was Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park in the outback. We have had a great ringing endorsement of what our regional communities have to offer in terms of their natural assets, and we are looking forward to seeing South Australians, particularly Adelaideans, head out into regional South Australia and spend some money.