Cleland Wildlife Park

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (14:51): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier update the house about Cleland Wildlife Park's recent development?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (14:51): I am delighted to answer this question from the member for Waite, who is dedicated to supporting her community and also the environment, which Waite is more than blessed with. The Cleland Wildlife Park—I am not sure how many people are aware of the age of Cleland Wildlife Park. It was created in a very, very fine year, an exceptional year: 1967.

Mr Telfer: That's a long time ago.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: It's a long time ago. Thank you for reminding me. It has long been a place where people will go for birthday parties, or maybe if they have people from overseas they might go and show them a bit of South Australian wildlife there. I would suggest that it repays another visit, if you haven't been for a while.

Cleland Wildlife Park is not only continuing to be a wonderful place to take people—it has a fabulous cafe, you can see kangaroos, you can see wallabies and you can see a number of reptiles, which are always fun—but it has just had a magnificent new koala loft opened up. $2.6 million of South Australian government money has gone into creating this new koala loft. More than 20 koalas are in there. It is fantastic for them because it gives them room to be out more with the public or inside, more private and quiet. We all know that koalas like to sleep for many, many hours of the day, and sometimes they like to do that where it's a bit more peaceful.

It is also a place where people can come along and really understand koalas and what they mean for the environment. There is a room where you can have a koala experience, with a beautiful backdrop and a koala placed to do its very important eating, which is the other thing it spends most of its time doing: it's either eating or sleeping. You can go along and have your photographs taken with it, but, more importantly in some ways, you can talk to the keeper and understand more about the character of that particular animal.

What that koala loft enables Cleland to do is continue to contribute to our nature-based tourism—which is a remarkable part of our tourism; about $2.1 billion was estimated last year to have been spent on nature-based tourism—and also enable people to know that they are part of helping to protect, preserve and bring back our natural environment. It helps to have young people understand the importance of native species like the koala and also the way in which habitat is so important, and protection and restoration is so important—and to know that the money that is spent in going to see Cleland is going to be repaid to nature in protecting both the individual species you are seeing and also nature more generally.

One of the most magnificent exhibitions that we have had recently in South Australia is, of course, Chihuly, which just finished in the Botanic Gardens. Again, it pleases me so much to see that there is a place that people could go to enjoy an individual thing, in that case, art, magnificent art, and, in the case of Cleland, going along and seeing koalas up close, but at the same time getting into nature, appreciating our environment and therefore recognising how important it is that we continue to protect it and, importantly, that we continue to invest in restoring nature, in bringing nature back, because we are all so dependent on the health of our environment, particularly in the context of climate change.

I would emphasise to people, if you haven't been to Cleland for while, this is the time to go back and have a look. It is a wonderful visit. The koala loft, with the koalas and the keepers, is a brilliant experience, and I encourage you to share it with people who come from overseas, with your own family, or just go up by yourself and have a quiet coffee and a nature-based experience.