Adelaide Beach Management Review

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Climate, Environment and Water. What consideration has the government given to the Adelaide Beach Management Review, and when will action be taken? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr COWDREY: In a document circulated by the City of Charles Sturt to members of the community, titled 'Coastal management: Adelaide Beach Management Review update', it says, and I quote, 'This was scheduled to go to cabinet in late 2023, but was pulled from the cabinet agenda by the government.'

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer) (14:53): This project and process is being managed by the Attorney-General in the other place, but I am happy to take the question in his stead because, as members would know, at the election we made a commitment, as the Labor Party, to review what would have been the catastrophically impactful plan of the previous Minister for Environment, the now Leader of the Opposition, to build a pipeline system from Semaphore down—

Mr Cowdrey: It's catastrophic on the southern beaches.

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Cowdrey: I'm sure the member for Gibson wants hers shut down.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Colton interjects, of course, presumably because he supported so strongly the plan that was put forward by the now Leader of the Opposition when he was environment minister.

Mr Cowdrey interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I can speak with some authority about why this review is necessary by highlighting what some of the impacts would have been, for example to my electorate, the electorate of Lee, and in particular the impact along—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —and the impact that would have happened along not only the beachfront but also through the coastal dune system and also what would have happened to residences and also a new connection that was proposed to be established under the project. For example, at the very southern tip of West Lakes, effectively what the end of the rowing course is, as it abutts up to Trimmer Parade, the proposal would have seen a trench dug between the top of West Lakes, all the way to the coast, in order to have a new outfall pipe into the West Lakes system. It is certainly not part of the original West Lakes design and certainly not something that residents would have expected when they chose to invest in housing down there and locate their families down there. But that's not the only trench, of course, they wanted to build.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: They wanted to trench all the way down through the coastal dune system between Semaphore, all the way down to that part of Grange, in seemingly flagrant negligence of the environmental considerations of the local area, because in the middle of that local area is the last tertiary dune system—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: 'Wrong' they yell out. It's wrong that there's a tertiary dune system there?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: He pretends to be a member for the western suburbs—pretends to be a member for the western suburbs. We undertook this review because we wanted a science-based approach about what would be in the best long-term interests of all of the coastal beaches—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —not what's just of benefit to one beach to the exclusion of others. We would take a science and a fact-based approach to what was—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Colton is on three warnings.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —in the interests of the whole coastline. I sympathise with those residents and users of West Beach, which is why we have funded and engaged in the largest sand-carting regime in the interim period while we come up with a more appropriate, less impactful, science-based approach to managing sand along the metropolitan coastline.

I don't think any residents, whether they are in my electorate, whether they are in the member for Colton's electorate or whether they are in any other coastal electorate, deserve to have the proposition put forward, that the member for Colton fulsomely backs, which is digging massive impactful trenches, having loud pumping stations all the way up and down the coast—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I am not going to be lectured by the member for Hammond who, quite frankly, is not adjacent to the local area.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister's time has expired.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Chaffey, order!