Beach Driving

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:36): I have a question for the Deputy Premier. Will the Deputy Premier advise which beaches will be shut off to beach driving? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr ELLIS: Birds SA members were recently advised that trials of vehicle bans on beaches would commence on a number of beaches, up to five according to the correspondence. Constituents of mine, especially those around Wauraltee Beach and Flaherty's Beach, are interested to know whether any local ones will be included.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:37): Thank you for the question. Members may remember that the Natural Resources Committee of the parliament during the last session, chaired by the member for Heysen, had an inquiry into the effect of beach driving. Once that report was finalised with a number of recommendations for consideration, promptly and immediately nothing happened. Since then, we have had an election, and we have been looking carefully at the results of that report.

It is apparent that two things are true at the same time. One is that beach driving is very much loved by at least a portion of the population in South Australia and, indeed, by a lot of Victorians who come over here because they cannot do it on Victorian beaches. In fact, I think we are almost the only state that allows any significant amount of driving on beaches, so we tend to get quite a lot of interstate tourism.

At the same time, it is also true that there are some places where damage is being done not just generally to the natural environment but specifically to rare birds such as hooded plovers, who perhaps tragically regard it to be an adequate nest simply to hollow out a little bit of sand and sit themselves on it, blending in beautifully, unfortunately. This is what was confronted by the Natural Resources Committee, and it is what is confronted by our community.

What the department is proposing to do is come up with a trial whereby—and they have not yet identified the beaches, just to jump to the end of the story—we can identify some beaches where there will not be significant community pushback on not having access to driving and where there could be some significant environmental benefit at least for the breeding period when hooded plovers are on the beaches. I am yet to receive that briefing, but I am looking forward to seeing it, and I am hopeful that it will be greeted with a degree of goodwill to see if we can trial ways in which we can better manage those two realities.