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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-02-14 Daily Xml
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FLEURIEU PENINSULA SWAMPS

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:22): I am seriously starting to wonder whether we live in a free and democratic society, or more particularly, a free and democratic state of South Australia. I have received a number of phone calls in the last week, including a couple this morning from dairy farmers and farmers in general on the Southern Fleurieu. I want to know who is pulling the strings and what is happening with regard to the department of environment and some of the activities being undertaken in an area called the Fleurieu swamps.

Last Saturday, on an NRM tour, I went to one of those swamps, and I asked the young lad who was explaining to my group what they were doing why these swamps had suddenly been put on the so-called endangered list under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. I said, 'Who perpetrated this?' He said, 'A group of us.' I said, 'Did the farmers have any consultation before these swamps were put on this list?' And he said 'No, we just thought we'd do it, so we've done it.'

Now we have this group of petty bureaucrats running around, giving the farmers a hard time, wanting to know what they do on their land, trying to tell them how to run their properties, trying to tell them what they can do with their water, wanting to measure the amount of water and, generally speaking, being a pain in the proverbial.

This matter has come to a bit of a head, because a number of these farmers have received letters in the last 12 to 18 months from officers of the government asking if they could get some more advice. This would have been fine had the farmers been given a good briefing and some consultation, told what was going on, had a community meeting. But, no, that did not happen. So the farmers immediately got their backs up—which I would have done myself, and am probably doing now—and said no, that they could not come there.

So the farmers have now received a letter from this innocuous little bureaucrat named Ben Fee—and I name Ben Fee in this place because I have had a bellyful of him. The letters he wrote are terse, rude and totally bureaucratic, with no understanding of the way people operate and no understanding that people actually own their land. They farm their land, sometimes for generations, and they only seek to look after their families and put meals on the table and, generally speaking, provide economic support for this country and provide this country with food both for its own use and for export industries.

So I took it upon myself to ring the Minister for the Environment's office and suggest to one of her ministerial staff that perhaps it would be a good idea if we called a meeting at the Parawa Agricultural Bureau. Some of these government officers came down and had a night meeting with the farmers and talked about the swamps and what they would like to do to perhaps get them on side. But the minister's officers said, 'No, we are not going to do that. We are going to ring them one by one.' Divide and conquer: that is their attitude.

Ben Fee rang one of the well-known dairy farmers at Delamere the other day and started to crack the big whip, and he was hung up on. So I get another call this morning. While I am in the house another farmer rings up because he has been corresponded with. Madam Deputy Speaker, what is wrong with this government's officers and the way they are dealing with decent, honest, hard-working farmers and landowners on Fleurieu Peninsula, in this case, regarding these issues? It is lunacy.

I say to the government and the Minister for the Environment: for heaven's sake, get a handle on these people. Grab hold of this Mr Ben Fee by the scruff of the neck and give him a good kick up the backside if necessary. Tell them how to talk to people, and tell them how to look after people and communicate with them. Just give them some understanding of what they do. Perhaps they can help one another. But, if you are going to give people a hard time, you are going to get no response whatsoever from the farming community—or any other member of the community, for that matter. It is a stupid activity. I myself am interested to know what it is all about, but I am not going to stand here and allow my constituents to have this sort of treatment dealt out to them by government officers in such a stupid, off-hand and ridiculous manner.

Time expired.

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