Question Time

S. Kidman & Co.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (15:01): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation regarding the S. Kidman & Co. landholdings.

Leave granted.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: The family-owned S. Kidman & Co. is Australia's largest private landholder, with properties covering 101,411 square kilometres in Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland, which equates to approximately 1.3 per cent of Australia's total land area and 2.5 per cent of Australia's agricultural land. S. Kidman & Co. owns 17 pastoral leases and two freehold grazing properties, mainly in central Australia. The leasehold and freehold properties are currently for sale.

Over 80 per cent of the Kidman portfolio comprises pastoral leases situated in the arid desert rangelands of the Lake Eyre Basin of northern South Australia, and the channel country of south-west Queensland, including Anna Creek, Innamincka, Macumba, Durham Downs, Naryilco, Durrie, Morney Plains and Glengyle stations. In 1995 the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology was commissioned by the commonwealth's World Heritage Unit to investigate and report on the natural heritage values of the Lake Eyre Basin in South Australia. To quote the report:

Our assessment suggests that the significant natural heritage values of certain surface aquatic systems of the South Australian section of the Lake Eyre Basin are of World Heritage value. These systems are the Cooper and Warburton Creek drainages, Coongie Lakes, Goyder Lagoon, and Lake Eyre North and South.

The World Heritage Unit took the view that the South Australian section of the Lake Eyre Basin contains natural values of international significance, and a nomination to the World Heritage Committee would probably be successful. My questions of the minister are:

1. Given the significant impact of cattle grazing activities on these internationally significant lands, would the government consider working alongside the commonwealth and Queensland governments to acquire the pastoral leases over the tracts of land contained within the southern portion of the Lake Eyre Basin and the lower channel country of northern South Australia and south-west Queensland in order to convert this land into an iconic national park?

2. Has the government considered nominating this land for national heritage listing? I note that the current round for 2016-17 closes on 18 February this year.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:03): I thank the honourable member for his most important question and his very detailed explanation in advance of that question. A novel idea: I wonder whether the honourable member knows how much it would cost the commonwealth and the states of Queensland and South Australia to acquire those wideranging properties that encompass so much of this country. If he has that figure in his head, he might like to let us know so that we can take it to our respective treasurers and see what sort of an answer we might get. I can imagine myself what that might be.

Of course, this government has been very active in protecting the environments around the Lake Eyre Basin, not just on the South Australian side but also as it crosses the borders. That is why we took up the fight against the former Liberal National Party government in Queensland, which decided that it would try to unwrap, I suppose, the water licences that have existed up there for a long time.

In a very brief dissertation on that, it's very, very flat channel country. There are no places to store water. When it rains, it rains, and you use the water that's there, but most of it floods down through the channel system and eventually, if there is sufficient water, down to Lake Eyre.

The former Queensland Liberal and National Party government thought it was a brilliant idea to try to break up some of those sleeper licences and issue them further upstream so that they could be utilised by more players and therefore deprive the ephemeral water system of water that it desperately needs to get through those dry years and wait for those very particular heavy rain years. Luckily for all of us, that government was defeated and there is a Labor government in Queensland now who are rewriting that legislation as we speak, I have been advised. That is an issue that we have been working on with the Queensland government now and the commonwealth for some time.

In terms of national heritage listing, this is another bit of a bugbear with us, and not just with us but with other states as well. When talking to the commonwealth, they seem to take a view that they will only entertain one national heritage listing at a time, particularly those that need to be thought of for world heritage listing. We have already put in a bid, if you like, for the commonwealth to consider the Arkaroola area as an area that should be considered for world heritage listing, and the first step of course is the commonwealth government nominating that for national heritage.

We are competing with other states, and so I am not sure that it's in our interest to put an ambit bid of several. I think we best are as a state to focus on our strongest bid possible, and that's been the tactic that we have utilised so far. We are competing with bids from other states and, as I said, there seems to be some degree of reluctance at a national level to deal with more than one bid at a time.