School Natural Resources Management Action Grants

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:26): My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation. Will the minister update the chamber on how this government is supporting South Australian communities and education about sustainability and our environment?

The Hon. P. Malinauskas: He might take it on notice.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:26): I thank the honourable minister for his kind suggestion, but I might give it a go. I thank the honourable member for his very important question. Unlike the Hon. Terry Stephens, who seems to be nodding off across there, uninterested in this topic and this subject, I think teaching students about the environment actually helps to form a lifelong understanding with those students. It is a very important part of their education. It is an important part of the role they play in building a sustainable future for all of us. The Hon. Terry Stephens should do his best to stay awake during this answer; he might actually enjoy it.

For this reason, it is very exciting to share with the chamber that 41 schools were successful recipients of grants through the 2017-18 School Natural Resources Management Action Grants program in the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Region. The grants are allocated each year by the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board. Schools can apply for grants of up to $2,000 each and communities can apply for grants of up to $5,000 for projects or activities that promote sustainable management of our natural resources.

The 41 schools that received grants totalling more than $70,000 will use the funds to support environmental projects including creating bush tucker gardens, building frog ponds, restoring bandicoot habitat and generally help students to create a sustainable future and to learn about the environment and how all things are interrelated.

Williamstown Primary School is one of the schools, I am advised, to receive funding and will use its grant for a Zero Waste project including purchasing bins, creating signs and educating the community about recycling, while the Star of the Sea School in Henley Beach will create a habitat for local indigenous plants and animals. Birdwood Primary School will use worms, compost and plantings to create sustainable soil systems and Sunrise Christian School in Paradise will create a vegetable garden, I am advised.

These creative projects are just a few of the many funded projects that will provide some very valuable learning experiences for all the students and also the educators who are involved. Our young people will be the environmental stewards of tomorrow, and these grants are just one way that our NRM boards are helping them gain the skills and knowledge needed to care for water, land and biodiversity.

This grants program is an example of how this government, through our nationally recognised NRM boards, is connecting with local communities to support education about the importance of sustainable environmental management and how all South Australians, regardless of their age, are an important part of achieving this. These grants that I have outlined would all be at risk, of course, under the Liberals' announced NRM revamping.

The Hon. J.E. Hanson: Oh, no.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: The Hon. Justin Hanson says, 'Oh, no,' but I have to say, 'Oh, yes.' These are all at risk because on Sunday 5 November, the state Liberal Party announced their much talked-up policy on natural resources management. As far as I can see, the biggest reforms they are making are ditching the environment, sacking regional staff to outsource their functions and recreating all the problems inherent in local politics by replicating council-type elections for positions on NRM boards.

The policy explicitly states that they will focus on soil, water and pest control. Barnaby Joyce, the former deputy prime minister, would be very proud that the Liberal Party in South Australia are taking NRM out of the environment, out of the hands of the greenies, and giving it back to agriculture. That's what Barnaby Joyce boasts about and that's what the Liberal NRM plan will do. Forget about biodiversity, forget about native vegetation, forget about marine biodiversity and climate change. None of that got a mention, and they are all part of the activities that NRM boards are engaged in, mixing up their joint responsibilities to deal with the environment and the agricultural sector in a holistic way because we all know that they are intricately interconnected.

The Liberals, both here and in Canberra, just don't care about the environment. The Labor Party supports our farmers, our irrigators and the environment they all depend on. The only way we can ensure our primary producers have jobs into the future, jobs for their children, is by ensuring that the entire ecosystem is managed with a view to sustainability as well as productivity. We already work with our farming communities on projects such as no-till farming, which has resulted in a significant reduction in soil erosion risk. This will help to ensure that precious soils are not lost in significant wind or rain events, and it underpins our reputation as the home of premium food and wine from our clean environment.

In addition to these projects, NRM works on projects such as Naturally Yorke, to work with the community to reintroduce mammals, manage pests and restore habitats across 300,000 hectares of southern Yorke Peninsula. This has been generating benefits for agriculture, ecotourism and Aboriginal employment in the region. It is simply a system-wide approach, which will be abandoned by the Liberal Party, should they ever be re-elected, under their new revamped NRM policy. They also say that they are going to force NRM boards to outsource their functions. That means that they are going to sack about 300 local, regional NRM members and outsource those functions outside of NRM to goodness knows who, bodies that may not actually come from the local community. They could be outsourcing these functions to companies from Melbourne or Sydney.

That is what their NRM policy is all about: sacking the locals, who live in the community delivering these programs, and outsourcing them. I think that the community in South Australia will have something to say about that come March. This is not a policy: this is a fizzer. This is something that they have stuck together to try to appear to be doing something to NRM, but what they have done is unstitch it in the best possible Barnaby Joyce way.