Bushfire Recovery Support

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (15:06): My question is to the Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development. Can the minister update the house on how the state government is supporting SA's recovery through grants to bushfire affected communities, including my own?

The Hon. T.J. WHETSTONE (Chaffey—Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development) (15:06): I thank the member for Kavel for his very important question. I shared a number of meetings and public hall meetings with constituents directly after the fires, working with those communities that had been devastated by fires, not only the community members, but we saw primary producers that had seen a substantial amount of livestock and land losses as well as a large number of structures impacted.

We all know the Marshall Liberal government came, listened and acted very quickly after the bushfires. While we were acting very quickly, one of the key commitments was developing $75,000 bushfire grants for those primary producers to help rebuilding the recovery efforts. The other thing to remember is that these grants are helping not only primary producers but businesses—their assets, the farming essentials—while also supporting the clean-up and rebuilding activities. We were helping the agricultural operations get back up and running as soon as possible.

As of 29 May, under the grant we have seen 264 applications that have been approved, delivering $18.24 million across the state. Kangaroo Island received $9.76 million; Adelaide Hills, $6.87 million; Yorketown, almost $600,000; and the Keilira fires, just over $1 million. What I would say is that we recognise the importance of getting that money out and getting it into those communities so that they can address the clean-up, the hardship, getting food on the tables, making sure that we had fodder in place for livestock. It took on average, from application to the funding distributed, 9.9 days. That is an extremely good turnaround in the application.

We were also supporting the affected wine industry, which has been subsidised, particularly with smoke taint. The impact on a lot of those wine grape growing areas in the vineyards, particularly in the Adelaide Hills, which is very well documented, and Kangaroo Island, has seen the ability to engage the Australia-wide research institute in being able to test those green grape samples so that it gives a very clear indication to those wine producers very early on if they had smoke taint so they would not have to continue to put inputs into their vineyards as well as the unnecessary expenditure for grapes that would not have realised wine worthy to be put into a bottle.

It is also the initial commitment of $180,000 to get donated fodder onto Kangaroo Island. That was an outstanding achievement—South Australian primary producers standing by those fire-affected Kangaroo Island communities in donating the hay. To get the hay onto the island, it obviously had to get onto the ferry, and that comes at considerable cost, and so that $180,000 was a great way of contributing to making sure that that fodder was there for livestock that had not perished in the bushfires.

That initial commitment was also bolstered by the South Australian government that had collaborated with the commonwealth government for $3.7 million for a six-month period so that we could get fodder onto the island, making sure that so much of that pasture, so much of those hay stocks that were burnt would be repeated by getting it onto the island, making sure that our livestock had feed, making sure that those communities that had been dealt such a severe blow had the stocks to keep their animals alive.