Grievance Debate

River Murray Flood

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (15:07): I rise to talk about the recovery process in regard to what is happening with Murraylands and River Murray communities, but certainly will focus on what is happening in my neck of the woods in the Mid Murray and Lower Murray areas. We see town levees coming down in Mannum, which is a good sight to see as part of the recovery process moving forward.

The DefenCell has all gone, and a lot of the temporary levees have been removed. The one on Mary Ann Reserve will be reduced in height. I think the flow rate is probably going to range somewhere between 120 gigalitres and 150 gigalitres a day and the levee will be landscaped as a feature of Mary Ann Reserve so that it does not look like a huge levee as it does at the moment. If that has to be reactivated in the short-term, DefenCell can be used to do that.

I notice that the ferries are running at Mannum. We cannot have traffic over onto Hunter Road because that is being rebuilt and it has about another four weeks to go. That road was completely washed away but people from Haythorpe and Bolto reserves can get over there with light vehicles to access their properties. Also there is a passenger ferry in place to get people across the river to the main site of Mannum and that assists schoolchildren coming across as well. I note that there is a bus to get from the ferry, roughly two kilometres up to the school.

I am pretty sure the Mannum caravan park is reopening today. That has suffered significant losses through being leveed off, so to speak, against the river. The Pretoria Hotel, the good old Pretoria Hotel, a Hurley hotel, opened on Monday. I note that they have a bit of landscaping to do but they were very fortunate that it did not flow into the top floor, and I think it was by a few hundred millimetres of water that that did not happen. I note that SA Water have restored sewer outlets to over 120 homes and businesses in the low-lying area of Mannum to get them back on track with their sewer and wastewater usage.

Councils are working hard—the Mid Murray Council is especially working hard on getting some of their facilities open and through inspections of the Community Wastewater Management System (CWMS). There is a lot of work to do there. That will be progressed through those river communities.

Boat ramps are a huge issue. The councils are doing what they can, including the Rural City of Murray Bridge and Mid Murray. I urge the state government to provide logistical support to get these boat ramps open. I know they are council property but in the Mid Murray Council region there are at least 50 and there are quite a few in the Rural City of Murray Bridge region. They need to be worked on to make sure that engineering is up to speed, that they are checked for damage and that sort of thing. Now that the river is open we vitally need to get that tourism aspect of the River Murray back up to full speed again. Public toilets are getting switched on and there is work on reserves alongside the river.

Pumping water from agricultural swamps has begun. I met with Scott Ashby, who has been contracted by the Department for Environment and Water (DEW), and he is meeting with them. There are 20-plus swamps that need pumping and I note the support that is ongoing by the government about supplying pumps and diesel. It is a long and complicated response.

Some of these swamps are smaller than others and the levee bank is in place so they can pump water over it, but there are more complicated areas, like Mypolonga, where the levee bank had a breach of 180 metres. Obviously you have to have the levee right before you can pump the water clean to get that valuable agriculture process going. That is being worked through. The Mid Murray Council has 200 kilometres of roads that are coming out from under the water and that will need a lot of work. I note that the Green Industries collection of waste and debris will be a massive effort, from what I am hearing, right on the scene.

One thing that will be absolutely vital moving into the future—as we know that some people's shacks will have to be knocked down and rebuilt—is the planning process. It will have to be right up to speed and align directly with code, not just to assist those shack owners and landholders but to make sure that we get the right insurance outcomes for these people in the future. I am certainly working with the communities in all these river areas to make sure we get that recovery in place well into the future.