Drought Conditions, Limestone Coast

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:19): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update the house about his meeting with primary producers on the Limestone Coast? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: On Friday, the Premier attended an informal get-together at historic Glencoe Woolshed to hear from those impacted by the drought conditions.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:20): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question and also for the member's assistance to my office in making sure that we got to hear from some primary producers on the ground in and around his electorate last Friday. On Friday, I basically spent the entire day in a really sort of worthwhile exercise to yet again meet with primary producers from various different sectors. We did have one particular engagement at the Woolshed in Glencoe that the member for MacKillop arranged. I know Glencoe is close to your heart as well, Mr Speaker.

It was really worthwhile. It was a rather earnest, I wouldn't say robust, but really earnest, productive and constructive discussion around the impact of the drought. That's always illuminating, particularly for someone who lives in metropolitan Adelaide. There are a lot of briefs from PIRSA and they're pretty high quality. As anyone who is engaged with PIRSA would know, they are a pretty well regarded government department, but briefs don't quite tell the same story that you hear from someone on the ground. There was a lot of that and it's always illuminating because you get different perspectives from different industries.

More than that, there were some quite constructive suggestions around our drought package and things that we can do to inform the way that's implemented and allocated and how we might consider it in the context of any future adjustments. There were also some other ideas that sit outside the drought funding package that are already being examined within government that I won't necessarily go into here without a more detailed response, but I know the member for MacKillop might be able to recall what some of those exercises were.

What is quite interesting in the context of the South-East in particular is there has been rain in some parts more than in others and we do see the impact of that. The South-East is a greener part of our state at the best of times but, notwithstanding that, there are still major challenges and that goes to the timing of the rain, which I thought was quite interesting, particularly when we think about livestock, in particular cattle versus the way that sheep will graze in various circumstances. That is quite telling in the context of people not necessarily appreciating that rain falling is one thing but rain falling at the wrong time is another again that actually only adds layers of complexity.

Apart from livestock, we also had a lot of discussion with the dairy industry and there was another separate meeting that we had with dairy farmers in the South-East as well. As a government, we have demonstrated that we are very keen to provide assistance where we can. This was discussed at length, as the member for MacKillop will recall. Government offers support to the tune of tens of millions of dollars to drought-affected farmers. Whenever we do that, there is always a risk of certain things not being calibrated in the right way even with the best of intent and I do think there is an opportunity for us to make sure we constantly think about how we engineer those support programs to always make sure that the support is going to those people who need it most.

The various phrases around making sure that we support those farmers who are most likely to be able to have a lasting impact on the land and its productive use is something that is not lost on me. We also need to think about the impact of the drought not just on primary producers but on towns and people who rely on all those incomes. It was a really worthwhile exercise and I want to thank the member for MacKillop for his work in facilitating that. He leads his community well in this regard and I appreciate him for his efforts.