Drought Conditions, Kangaroo Island

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (15:25): I want to speak about drought in this state. At a time of severe drought and enormous stress, the Kangaroo Island Landscape Board, driven by general manager Will Durack, has insensitively proceeded with a water compliance program flying totally at odds with what was agreed and opposite to every other landscape board in South Australia.

Livestock producers on the island are experiencing the worst drought conditions like most of the rest of the state and many of these farmers have been carting water for several months at crippling costs to keep their stock alive. They are bewildered by Mr Durack's obsession in pushing letters out across Kangaroo Island warning and threatening landholders about the water holding capacity in dams on properties in a show of bureaucratic bullying. The board indicated letters would not go out until July but I understand the letters went out in the last few weeks.

A few weeks ago, I was on the island and saw for myself the impact of the abnormally dry conditions. I barely saw a dam with any water in it, it was dry from one end to the other and the feed height was as high as the floor in this house. What is ridiculous about this is that most of the dams on Kangaroo Island are dry. Kangaroo Island farmers do not need Mr Durack putting the boot in on this issue. They are predominantly graziers and make provision for water storage in a sensible and balanced way as they have done for generations.

In the lead-up to the 2026 state election, the last thing Minister Close would need is an employee of hers causing chaos in a Labor-held electorate. It is an act of political madness by Mr Durack who has been tone-deaf on this matter and shows no compassion whatsoever for the Kangaroo Island community as they battle to survive drought.

Enough is enough. The minister needs to step in and put a moratorium on this matter on Kangaroo Island until conditions improve. It seems that Mr Durack is pushing a philosophical agenda of his own. His staff are abandoning ship and not comfortable. I am told he is not ready for this role and is showing no compassion at all for the farming community of Kangaroo Island and the unprecedented drought conditions they are dealing with. People on Kangaroo Island feel it would be best if he was moved on to a city office to avoid political embarrassment. Leave island farmers to manage the situation and let families farm without this pressure. It is un-Australian and totally at odds with common sense and decency to pursue draconian policy in the middle of this severe drought we are currently undergoing.

Minister Close, I urge you to put an immediate stop to this nonsense. Use your ministerial powers to put in place a moratorium and start the water security policy actions, if needed, at a much later date. I will add that if it were not for the previous Marshall Liberal government putting a desalination plant on Kangaroo Island, the island would have run out of water and be in a more dire situation than they currently are.

I was shocked when I toured the island. I have been over there a couple of times since 2020 when I went over to assist with the CFS mopping up after the bushfires. To see the state of the island, it is as with many dryland farming communities right across the state—no feed, hundreds of thousands of sheep to feed, tens of thousands of cattle, most of the dams dry, and a terrible situation for farmers and their families to put up with. And this is happening only five years since that unprecedented fire activity of 2019-20.

Farmers have enough to battle with the vagaries of the weather without the vagaries of the government and this bureaucratic nonsense of putting restrictions in place when there is literally no water falling from the sky. There is literally no water falling from the sky, yet people are trying to put in rules to manage the situation when it is not even happening.

Farmers are spending a fortune to keep their stock alive not just with water but with carting hay and grain in from the mainland, and this is not assisting with the mental health of farmers and their families. They need to prosper into the future, and they need support from this Labor government and not these draconian rules that the local landscape boards are trying to implement.