Regional Landscape Levy

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:07): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Will the minister please inform the ratepayers of the Yorke Peninsula Council why their regional landscape levy is so much higher than ratepayers of the Barossa Council. With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr ELLIS: The Yorke Peninsula Council have been charged with collecting almost $1.2 million for the Northern and Yorke Landscape Board, with a dividend of just over $6,000; the Barossa Council, with a significantly larger rate income, is charged with collecting less than $550,000, with fees payable to the council being just less than $6,000. Why are the people of Yorke Peninsula doing all the heavy lifting?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:08): I thank the member for Narungga for his very valid question. We have to go back in history a little while to the bad old days under the Labor government to see why this anomaly occurs. It is because under the city-centric Labor government the regional natural resources management boards had a much higher levy rate than the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board. That meant when we changed the boundaries and there was crossover in the transition—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —between the landscape system and the natural resources management system, where boards came together with bits of the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Board and bits of the former Northern and Yorke board, there is a discrepancy between the way that levies are calculated.

Over time, so that no-one is worse off—and, in fact, levies drop for a significant proportion of the member for Narungga's electorate—there is a levy transition scheme put in place. So that that drop doesn't happen in a dramatic sense, there is a transition scheme in place over several years to equalise. Over some years, the Yorke Peninsula Council and other councils in that region will see their levy slowly stepped down to meet that former levy calculation as was calculated by the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board.

It is quite a complicated process. It is a legacy from the broken, bureaucratic, centralised, out of touch system known as natural resources management in South Australia. Our new landscape boards are back to basics, grassroots, sort out the pest plants and animals, get sustainable agricultural programs in place, sort out water quality and water resource management—get those things right so that the platforms of sustainable landscape management are in place building resilience across the landscape so that biodiversity will survive and thrive.

This is our approach—local people on the boards. I am delighted by the Northern and Yorke board and their work so far, chaired by the Hon. Caroline Schaefer with a whole range of really excellent people from across that region. I had dinner with them in the Clare Valley last week, talking about the projects they have been advancing: weed control and pest control projects, working out those very tricky water allocation plans that are required throughout the region and working on coast protection projects, particularly in the Narungga electorate.

Importantly, one of their really strategic flagship projects is the Marna Banggara project, formerly known as the Great Southern Ark, a fence across the bottom of Yorke Peninsula capturing the land where we find Innes National Park and also quite a bit of other farming country, removing pests from that landscape and reintroducing a number of native species, including bettongs. That will be a great environmental project, and it will also be a real tourism drawcard to the member for Narungga's region.

That is the back-to-basics landscape levy in action. The residents in Narungga can be assured that, rather than being gouged as they were under the previous Labor government that had no care or interest in regional South Australia, we are getting back to basics and we are reducing their levy over the coming years so that it matches the Adelaide region where the Barossa used to be.