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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2007-11-13 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

DEEP CREEK

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:27): Just a few short weeks ago in this house, we talked at length about the Natural Resources Committee's Deep Creek inquiry. I would like to return to that matter today in the form of this grievance regarding that report and the dreadful way in which this matter has been handled by the Minister for Environment and Conservation in another place. If ever we have had a bumbling, stumbling, incompetent minister, it is this minister.

Contempt, ignorance and arrogance has been shown toward the good people of Finniss and others in relation to the outcome of this Deep Creek inquiry, which was a bipartisan inquiry of the parliament. Its membership came from across the board, from different political parties, and we produced a good report with a lot of good material in it and a lot of good recommendations. Unfortunately, the key recommendations have been totally pooh-poohed by the minister and not taken on board. She has totally disregarded the long-standing residents of the electorate of Finniss and scientific advice, which I will come to in a minute, and she has shown a lack of tolerance for any other views apart from those, it would appear, of the bureaucracy in her own department. That is where it is causing major concern.

The Times newspaper in Victor Harbor has been very actively following this campaign for many months and it was down there when the committee visited the Deep Creek area. It has come out loudly lambasting the minister's lack of guts in dealing with the recommendations.

By way of interest, a report was tabled entitled 'Fleurieu Peninsula Swamp Ecology, Swamp Hydrology and Hydrological Buffers', which included the swamp and pine trees very close to it. It was written by scientists Michelle Casanova and Mr Lu Zhang. The way that this report has been put to one side and disregarded by the bureaucracy causes me a great deal of alarm, and it should alarm members of this house and the wider South Australian community that the bureaucrats in this instance have totally taken over.

The major recommendation of getting a buffer zone between Deep Creek and drawing the pine trees back has been totally disregarded to the extent where the minister for the environment in another place just explained it away as the fault of the drought. Well, I am sorry, minister, but the fact of the matter is that those trees have been there for 30 to 40 years in the pine plantations. Forestry is a great industry in South Australia.

When the report was presented, there was a great deal of acrimony from government representatives. They were not at all happy with the hydrology aspects of the report and extremely unhappy about the swamp ecology report. Comments have been made that Michelle Casanova (one of the authors) was contemplating suing the government representative for slander about comments made about her. I think this is an absolute disgrace.

Michelle Casanova also went on to state that the existence of a pine plantation above a swamp will impact severely on the amount of water available for the swamp. This information was conveyed to government officers. Government officers are actually saying that this report has been disregarded, that it really did not have any impact on hydrology, etc, and the land surrounding the Fleurieu pine forests around Deep Creek. They did not like what the scientists came up with, so they, it would appear, said to the minister for the environment that, 'No, Ms Casanova and Mr Lu Zhang have no idea what they are talking about; we are right and they are wrong. Minister, you have to go out and say that we are not going to retract this buffer zone.' What an absolute lot of arrant nonsense. What a disgrace! What is this state coming to when the bureaucrats are completely riding roughshod over the minister on this most important issue?

Government officers actually advised the inquiry that a technical paper was reviewed but no published paper was available at that point. These government officers misled the minister, the government and the committee. I think it is an absolute disgrace. I will not name the officers, but the report is available if anyone needs it. The government officers misled the committee inquiry on a number of occasions by stating:

The government agencies did not know whether pine plantations in the Mount Lofty Ranges as they matured and reached the age of 15 to 20 years would have a similar effect on the water balance as those in the South East.

Here is the report. Here it is—eminent CSIRO scientists totally refuted by the seemingly knowledgeable bureaucrats in the Department for Environment and Heritage, who say that they are wrong.

Time expired.

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