Adelaide Beach Management Review

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (15:13): I rise today to speak again on an issue that is incredibly important in my local area: the Beach Management Review that is being conducted by this government. Really, I am here today to make a call to action to the government to get on with it. This government has been very good at reviews and taking its time to consider things, but the time for action is clearly now.

I want to again make it abundantly clear that I have no preference or view as to what technology or method is used but just simply that sand needs to be recycled from north to south in our section of beaches, as is the case on the southern section of beaches on the Adelaide metropolitan coastline and has been the case for more than a decade. To have a different standard depending on which side of the Glenelg Marina you live on is something that should not be acceptable to anybody.

In response, over the last couple of months towards the end of last year, the government conducted a dredging trial, a trial that I think was received with mixed reviews from parts of the community—certainly when it came to the aspect of proposing to dredge West Beach to refill West Beach, the sandbar there that was a proposed sand source having never been mentioned or consulted on prior to the start of the dredging trial.

The key part of this Beach Management Review and what we are seeking the government to do, which is to release the results of the trial publicly and make it abundantly clear what the government is actually going to do in this regard, comes down to page 12 of the government's own document where the review committee made it very clear that there was insufficient information to determine the viability of proposed dredging methodologies. In particular, the three outstanding questions that still need to be answered surround these key things.

The first key issue is the availability of sand in sufficient volumes and appropriate grain size and composition. That is something that needs to be made clear to the community when the results of the dredging trial are released because, as I have said many times in this place, we are happy to consider whatever methods as long as they are real and as long as they are viable, just as the government's own document calls out.

The second point is around the operational feasibility and availability of plant and equipment with adequate timeframes and the ability of dredging infrastructure to recycle volumes that are required, particularly understanding the impacts of weather on operations and operational limitations. Again, this is important. If we are going to go down this track, we need to understand that those target volumes and total volumes can actually be achieved given the weather. We saw on multiple occasions during the trial where the dredging equipment was not able to do its job because of the weather impacts.

The third point concerns broader environmental impacts; for example the proximity of sand source to seagrass meadows and potential impact on seagrass recovery due to disruption of seed banks within sediment and noise levels, and visual amenity impacts.

I just want to go back to the very start of this where we were looking to find a long-term solution to an issue that has plagued the northern section of beaches along our central coast here in metropolitan Adelaide for a long time. For a period of time under the former Labor government, we had thousands upon thousands of truck movements each and every day impacting multiple communities along our coastline. The Adelaide Sailing Club for the last nearly 10 years now has had semitrailers going in and out right next door to their club while they are trying to undertake activities over and over again.

It is my firm belief that everybody in this place, no matter which side of the aisle, actually wants to see a sensible solution implemented here where we can reduce the impact on our community groups and clubs, where we can get to a point where we have a suitable impact, but we cannot keep doing what is currently happening forever. We cannot keep trucking sand from a quarry out in Mount Compass down onto a beach.

For a start, the beach condition is at some of its worst impacts for years. Henley Beach South now is a effectively a low-tide beach only. It is one of the most frequently visited beaches in the entirety of metropolitan South Australia. The government needs to release the review of the dredging trial. They need to nail their colours to the mast about what they are actually going to do for the communities that I represent because far too little has happened in the three-plus years that this government has been in charge of this matter.