Shellfish Reef Restoration

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:17): My question is to the Minister for Climate, Environment and Water. How will the state government's summer plan increase the resilience and long-term health of the South Australian marine environment?

The Hon. L.P. HOOD (Adelaide—Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (15:17): I would like to thank the member for Davenport for her question. I know how incredibly passionate she is about the environment. I had the pleasure of joining her last week in her electorate, alongside the member for Black, for an environment forum. It was wonderful to hear from her local community and the passion that they have for the environment.

As I was saying earlier, it was a privilege to stand alongside our federal colleagues today to announce our summer plan: $102.5 million, fifty-fifty between the state and federal governments. This really has three core objectives so that South Australians can enjoy that iconic summer at the beach—backing our coastal businesses and communities and, importantly, backing research and environmental resilience and recovery.

On that point, it was a real privilege to be able to announce more than $20 million towards environmental resilience and recovery initiatives. We are using nature's recovery tools to build more biodiversity in our marine environments, along with improving water quality and supporting vulnerable and threatened species.

One way we are doing that is around the idea of shellfish reef restoration. That is going to build on our reputation as a leader in large-scale shellfish restoration as well as community shellfish reefs. We will be constructing new limestone native shellfish reefs in our coast and supporting additional community shellfish reefs.

On the latter, that is a great way of being able to allow the community to contribute and give back. We have been hearing from people in our algal bloom community forums. I have had the privilege of hosting a number of them, including last night in your electorate, Mr Speaker, at the Aldinga Football Club. We have had more than 1,800 people attend our community algal bloom forums.

This has been an incredible way in which we can hear from the community about the information that they want and the funding that they want to see invested. We know that many South Australians are incredibly passionate about our environment and so we are backing that passion with action. One of those ways is around the establishment of community reefs and limestone shellfish reefs. Importantly, these new reefs will help return a vital part of South Australia's marine environment that has been absent since the mid-1900s.

At the time of colonisation, native shellfish reefs covered up to 1,500 kilometres of South Australia's coastline from Ceduna on Eyre Peninsula along the coastlines of the Spencer Gulf and Gulf St Vincent to O'Sullivan Beach on the metro coast. When European settlers arrived, they had a vast appetite for these oysters and oyster saloons sold oysters for about $3 to $4 per dozen and it was a really cheap and accessible food source. These oyster fishers came to take those oysters and used heavy rakes and chains to scrape the layer of oysters off the top of the reefs and, once they were removed, they would move on to another location leaving a reef devoid of life. Thick calcium carbonate reefs had formed underneath those layers of old condensed shell and were identified as a rich source of lime. It was removed from the sea floor and commonly used to make cement and mortar for building.

Now the fightback is on to return those native oyster reefs to our oceans and for the last 10 years, the state government, led by the Department for Environment and Water, has been working with various groups to build these large-scale oyster reefs.