ARKAROOLA WILDERNESS SANCTUARY

The Hon. M. PARNELL (15:02): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Mineral Resources Development a question about protection for the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

Leave granted.

The Hon. M. PARNELL: This week, following Greens' pressure, public submissions into the future of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the Northern Flinders Ranges, in the document entitled Seeking a Balance, have finally been published online. Although not all the submissions are available (including the one from Marathon Resources, the company that was caught red-handed illegally dumping radioactive waste at Arkaroola), under freedom of information I have obtained a summary of the submissions prepared by the environment department.

The message could hardly be clearer. Of the 450 submissions, less than 1 per cent of the respondents are supportive of the government's suggested future for Arkaroola in Seeking a Balance, a whopping 82 per cent support further restrictions on mining with another 8 per cent marked as 'unclear', leaving a bare 10 per cent wanting more mining. However, it is not just the raw numbers; what also stands out is the quality of the submissions. These are not one page proformas; there are submissions with detailed arguments from academics, scientists, business operators, even mining companies, all saying that Arkaroola is too precious to mine.

Six PhD level scientists and two museum collection managers contributed to the submission from the South Australian Museum, which described parts of the government's document as being greatly flawed, and suggested that it should be rejected totally as it is likely to lead to species extinction. The World Conservation Union, the world's oldest and largest global environment network, a democratic membership union with more than 1,000 government and NGO member organisations, described the Arkaroola region as one of the great geological heritage sites of the world, and certainly one of its finest teaching sites for students of geology. The University of Melbourne submission highlights concerns that, in the currently unprotected areas of Arkaroola, there is an ancient reef which, it states, potentially contains the remains of the oldest animals on earth.

Finally, even mining companies have raised concerns. The exploration manager of Petratherm called for the protection from mining of the central zone of Arkaroola to be upgraded. He said:

The current zone 3 area between Arkaroola village and the Yudnamuntana Gorge are high visibility zones for the thousands of tourists who visit the area each year and who make the ridgetop tour. Any form of mining operation in these areas would have a significant negative impact on the appeal of this world-class geo-tourist region.

My questions are:

1. Considering that less than 1 per cent of the 450 respondents approved of the government's plan for the Northern Flinders Ranges Arkaroola region, does the minister accept that the government got it wrong in Seeking a Balance?

2. Will the minister now act on the advice of some of Australia's most eminent geologists and ecologists, including our own South Australian Museum, and rule out once and for all mining activity in the core of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary? If not, what more evidence does the minister need?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (15:05): As the honourable member said, those submissions, at least those where the submitter did not request that their submissions be kept confidential, have been placed on the web. The government has been going through those submissions, and I hope, in conjunction with the Minister for Environment and Heritage, to make a statement fairly soon as to the outcome of that.

The honourable member is quite correct. A number of those submissions were very detailed; they were not just one page submissions. I think they contained a lot of useful information, and that is why the government has been carefully going through them. I would hope that we will be in a position fairly soon to make a statement in relation to the next steps.