South-East Coastal Lakes Review

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:24): My question is to the Minister for Environment. Can the minister give an update to the house on the South-East Coastal Lakes Project? Mr Speaker, with your leave, and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: The South-East Coastal Lakes Project, to look at the management of lakes in my electorate including Lake Bonney, Lake George and Lake Hawdon, was put out to public consultation in May 2023 and closed in July 2023. It has been 15 months and we still don't have a decision from the minister on how and if the use of the lakes will change.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (14:25): Thank you for the opportunity to update the house on this. As I think I have said in parliament previously, and I wish to make it absolutely clear on this occasion, there will be no more activity on those changes that were consulted on a year or two ago, until the native title has been settled on that area.

So the First Nations of the South-East have indicated that they are interested in settling native title there. There has not been any native title extinguished over the Crown land in the area and there is no point, in my view, in persisting in a project—although it went out to consultation after I became minister; it was initiated under the previous government—until that has been resolved, in the meantime recognising there are a lot of people who love those lakes and are interested in various activities associated with those lakes.

I visited Lake George recently with the member and I caught up with some people who made me promise to go back and do some fishing with them on Lake George. What we have decided to do is establish a community working group to enable stakeholders to continue to participate in talking about management decisions and so on with those lakes. We are expecting to draw that together towards the end of the year from recollection and starting to have meetings from next year. Recognising how long native title processes can take, I don't imagine that we are going to hear any more about any of those other suggestions that were made, which included changing the status of protection and restricting some activities. We will not hear about any more of that for some time to come—years.