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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-11-26 Daily Xml
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Parliamentary Committees

NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: DEEP CREEK

Mr RAU (Enfield) (11:01): I move:

That the 23rd report of the committee, entitled Deep Creek Revisited: A Search for Straight Answers, be noted.

This is the second report of the Natural Resources Committee on the subject of Deep Creek. As chairman of the committee, and I think I can probably say this comfortably on behalf of other members of the committee that it is a regret to all members of the committee that it was necessary for us to have to prepare this report at all.

We were driven to the point of having to prepare this report because of frustrations and difficulties the committee encountered in relation to both the preparation of the first committee report and subsequent inquiries which arose as a result of recommendations from the department arising from that original report.

From the perspective of the committee, there was sufficient evidence in the response provided by the department to suggest that the department had chosen to misunderstand recommendations of the report and to discredit and/or reject serious environmental issues raised by the committee. This, of course, was a matter of grave concern to all members of the committee. To this day, we do not understand how it is that DWLBC, which was the main department charged with responsibility for conserving the state's biodiversity, chose to take the path that it ultimately did.

In order to assure ourselves that our Deep Creek report (the original report) was factually sound, the committee carefully reviewed the responses of the department, checking them against our recommendations in light of the available evidence, and a number of inconsistencies came to light. In an attempt to resolve these the committee invited the officers from the departments who had contributed to the initial report and, indeed, the departmental response, to come before the committee and explain themselves. I have to say that we were not particularly happy with the outcomes.

I think it is important for members to understand that I do not believe that a single member of the committee—and this is a diverse committee with members from both major parties and the Hon. Sandra Kanck; it has members of the upper house and of the lower house—is against forestry per se. That is not, was not and never has been the issue. We are not even of a view that forestry in the region around Deep Creek is evil or should not occur per se. That was never the issue.

The issue, and the recommendations of the original report, dealt with a very particular subcatchment of the Deep Creek area, and a particular stream. If I could just explain very simply what we were talking about: it was that the plantation forestry in that area had converged to such an extent on the stream and the swamp, which was the headwaters of the stream, that it was seriously interfering with the perennial stream.

In other words, water was not getting into that stream, which meant that that stream went from being a perennial stream supplying the Deep Creek Conservation Park to being something that ran only in the winter and spring. That had implications for the biodiversity in the region of the stream. It had implications for the aquatic life in the stream, none of which managed to survive the months from basically November through until April because there was no aquatic environment, and that was the matter of concern for the committee.

The other thing that is important to make clear is that as chair of the committee, and again I am sure that I speak on behalf of all members of the committee, the committee does not assert, and never has asserted, that it is our responsibility, or indeed our entitlement, to tell executive government what to do: that is entirely a matter for them.

In making a recommendation to the parliament, and through the parliament under the Parliamentary Committees Act requiring the relevant department to respond to the committee, the committee does expect that department to take seriously the recommendations made by the committee, to treat them fairly and to respond in a way which is actually responsive to the recommendations.

That response might well be: 'We have read the recommendations, we understand the recommendations, but we don't agree with them, and here is why we don't agree with them,' and that is fine, they are entitled to do that. But to deliberately misconstrue the recommendations as meaning or representing something that they never did, and then having set up a straw man to go around belting the straw man up until he is torn to shreds, which is basically what happened to this committee report, is not acceptable. It is completely unacceptable.

Not only that but the committee, in the process of further investigating this matter, confronted delays in the provision of advice to the committee. I need to say again that some of those delays occurred in a context of committee meetings having been called in May of this year, the then chief executive of the department coming before the committee and giving on the record undertakings to provide material, information and legal opinions to the committee forthwith. Sadly, I have to report—and this is part of the reason for this further report being before the parliament—much of that was not done.

It would be one thing for a lay person to appear before a parliamentary committee and say, 'Yes, I'll get back to you about that' and that person not understand the significance of the undertaking which they had given. It might be a matter about which the committee would take a dim view, but one might forgive a lay person for not understanding that an undertaking given at a public hearing, to a parliamentary committee, is one that needs to be taken seriously. But, for a head of a government department to come in to a parliamentary committee and give an undertaking—and more than one undertaking—and for those undertakings not to be followed through is a completely different matter.

In my view—and I think I can again say this without any fear that other members of the committee will contradict me—it was the opinion of all members of the committee that that was completely unsatisfactory. That particular experience was what provoked this report. As I said in my initial remarks, none of us took any pleasure in having to write this report, having to go through the forensic exercise of comparing statements made by departmental officers on one day against statements they made on another, and having to chase up undertakings given to the parliamentary committee.

In one instance, an undertaking to provide information to the committee was given in March 2007, and the material was not provided to the committee until June or July 2008. It was made clear to the officers who were requested to provide that material that, if they did not provide the material within a short space of time—which was the window between March 2007 and the tabling of the committee report in June 2007—the report would not be able to take into account anything they thought because, if we did not have it, we could not consider it.

Subsequently, the committee's findings were the subject of criticism by the department, in part at least because they did not include reference to the material which we had, as yet, still not received from the department. How good is that? As a parliamentary committee, you are criticised for not including material by the people who have refused to provide it to you. That is really quite extraordinary.

I will not burden members of the chamber today with a chapter and verse account of each and every matter that came to our attention and each and every matter that concerned us, but I will just give you a couple of examples. The department claimed that it misunderstood the area under review, yet conflicting statements in its own responses and internal documents—which we subsequently obtained because we requested that the department give us those documents; eventually they turned up—showed that it knew exactly what area we were talking about.

Another example is that the departmental officers claimed that the minister had no power to remove a plantation in the subject area, in spite of the fact that this subject area was controlled by the state government; it was a state forest. As it turned out, we asked where they got the opinion that the minister had no power, and a departmental officer told the committee—after being told that he had to answer the question—that he got it from a chap he worked with. The chap he worked with was not even a lawyer. Subsequently, crown law opinion was sought and—surprise, surprise—the result was that the opinion of the non-lawyer about whether the minister had power was wrong, but it was good enough to give to the committee, not only in a response from the department, but in evidence as recently as May this year.

The department claimed that rainfall, not forestry, was the main contributing factor to the decline in the stream flows, yet data from the Bureau of Meteorology and the department's own internal technical documents contradicted this position. I could go on and on about the details of this, but I really do not want to burden members with this, because other people have business that they want to attend to here today. However, I just want to finalise my remarks on two points.

The first one is this: it is, in my opinion, unsatisfactory for a departmental officer—and, in particular, a head of the department—to make responses to a parliamentary committee which they either know or should have known are false or misleading and then slip that under the hand of the minister so as to procure some sort of immunity from criticism on the basis that it is all the minister's fault, not theirs. That is rubbish. That is absolute rubbish, because we all know that no minister, no matter how competent, can know every single detail of every single thing going on in their department all the time. That is not possible; that is why they have the department. Ministers must reasonably be able to rely on their officers to tell them the truth and to be honest and forthright in their conduct. To blame a minister who is reliant on their department is, in my opinion, scurrilous, yet that appeared in Hansard several times.

The last thing I want to say is that these comments are confined to a period which is now historic. The then chief executive officer is no longer the chief executive officer, and I report to the parliament that there has been a very cordial meeting between the new minister and the new chief executive officer and the committee has noticed an improvement already in the communications and the attitude of the departmental officers in their dealings with the committee and, for that, we are very appreciative. We look forward to that being a continuing trend because we are keen to work in a cooperative fashion with the department and none of us wish to have to go through the experience of preparing, writing or tabling a report anything like this ever again.

The Hon. G.M. GUNN (Stuart) (11:16): I support the comments made by the member for Enfield, the presiding member of the committee. This report should serve as a clear warning to other bureaucrats who think that parliamentary committees are there to be taken for a ride, to provide them when or if they determine any information. What has taken place on this occasion would have to rank as one of the most arrogant attempts to deny a parliamentary committee the information which this parliament has deemed it should have. If the committees are to do their job properly and they are to report to this parliament in an accurate fashion, they have to have accurate information provided to them in a speedy manner.

This inquiry, which was set up to investigate a number of complaints in relation to the forestry department—and let me say from the outset that I strongly support the forestry industry in South Australia. I think it is very important and I think that we need to continue to have a well-managed, well-organised forestry department providing the resources that the people of this state want. However, like any other section of industry, from time to time their operations will come under scrutiny. The committee did not set out on a witch-hunt, and the criticisms which have been levelled at the department are all of their own making.

For some reason these people thought that this parliamentary committee was a jolly nuisance and got in their way. Of course, they have since learnt that the parliamentary committee had a fox terrier attitude—it was not going to let go—that it was going to pursue the issues to ensure that this house was properly informed. It was a tedious exercise but I believe that it was a most worthwhile exercise. As I said earlier, it should be a clear warning to other sections of the bureaucracy that there are parliamentary committees that are going to demand accurate information because that is their role and function, and I think it is a very good thing that this group of people has been brought to account by this committee as a warning to others because, if democracy is going to work efficiently, this parliament has to have true and accurate information before it.

The difference between the public servants and the members of the committee is that we are elected and they are appointed, and they should clearly understand that. If we get it wrong, the electors will deal with it; unfortunately, if they get it wrong, we all have to wear it. On this occasion they are wearing significant criticism which was all of their own making. Mr Speaker, you, as the custodian of rights of members of this house, know full well that this committee has acted diligently, thoroughly and in a reasonable manner. I think that anyone who looks through this report and at the evidence would have to say that the reasonable approach we took surely tested our patience.

I sincerely hope that in the remaining period of time that I have on this committee we do not have to go through another one of these exercises because we have other important matters which we should be focusing our attention on and the committee plays a very important role. It is a cooperative committee which goes about its business in a professional manner, and we expect to be treated in a professional manner. When we deal with senior members of the Public Service, we expect them to give us accurate information and if they make an undertaking that they carry it out. Otherwise, other departmental officers can expect the same sort of treatment.

I endorse the comments made by the member for Enfield and I think he did an excellent job in chairing the committee. He was far more tolerant than I would have been with these people but they did not appreciate his wise counsel to them. They did not appreciate that they were being given a fair go and, as a result of not appreciating that, they now have this report which they deserve. I say this is fair warning to others. I commend the report to the house.

The Hon. L. STEVENS (Little Para) (11:21): I, too, endorse the comments of the presiding member and the member for Stuart. The presiding member has already very clearly articulated the events that led to the writing of this report and its content. The committee could have gone on and on with this because it was a forensic exercise to try to get to the truth of the matter. In the end, we had to draw a line and say, 'Let's make the point and move on to other important business that we are dealing with,' but the point has been very well made. I know that every member of the committee concurred precisely with the contents of that report.

Like the member for Stuart, I think that it is worth all members reading this report because it has a general application to the conduct of parliamentary standing committees. These committees are very important in terms of being able to cast a critical eye over very important issues affecting the state. We have on all committees, I believe, very much a bipartisan approach to solving issues and to making a positive contribution to complex issues that our state is dealing with. It is extremely important that the information that is provided to a parliamentary committee is correct and evidence-based and that people are fully accountable for what they say. It is also really important that that information is timely. The presiding member eloquently described the sort of frustrations that we were faced with.

During that process, it was very much the feeling that, from the perspective of those providing the information to the committee, their modus operandi was, 'Near enough is good enough, and we'll eventually get around to providing this information.' We were in the position of wondering whether, in fact, they hoped or thought that we might even forget about it and that it would become all too hard for us to do the forensic examination that is required.

We decided that we would take on this matter and that it was not good enough for us and not good enough for any other committee of this parliament. I encourage all members to have a look at the report. You do not need to read the whole thing to get a very clear understanding of what happened. I encourage all members on their committees to make sure that people understand that these are standing committees of the parliament of this state; they must have accurate information; it needs to be evidence-based; they need to be able to stand by that evidence; and they need to take it seriously.

As the Presiding Member said, the personnel at the top of the department have changed. There was a very productive meeting with the new minister and CEO. The committee looks forward to a better working relationship. I am pleased that we did this report and that we followed through with it, and I look forward to having more constructive relations in the future with that particular department. I hope the members in other committees will be able to take on board some of the learning from our report in their work.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:25): Although not a member of the committee I rise to support the report. I wholeheartedly endorse the comments made in the chamber this morning by the member for Enfield, as Presiding Member, and also other members who have spoken. As the house is more than aware, it just so happens that this particular issue—the Foggy Farm and Deep Creek inquiry—is in my electorate. I remind members that, still, nothing has happened. This is the environmental damage that is taking place while this thing goes on and on.

It should have been entirely unnecessary for a committee of this parliament to go back and revisit this case. These former—and perhaps some are still there—departmental officers of DWLBC have treated this parliament and, more to the point, have treated this committee with absolute contempt. I sat in on the hearings as an interested local member, and I was disgusted. I thought that the way the committee was treated and the fact that it had to go back to this was quite disgraceful.

I also take on board the comments of the Presiding Member, the member for Enfield, that substantial changes have taken place at the head of that department and that things have improved. I hope they have improved, because I will raise an issue this afternoon about the same mob of cowboys who were running the thing, and hopefully the new mob can deal with another issue concerning water in my electorate. It may well be that the new minister has exercised a bit more control over this department and made the changes necessary to get it back on track. What took place, as far as the committee was concerned, was blatant bastardry. It should never have occurred, and the committee should never have had to waste time.

At the risk of repeating myself, I am going back to revisit this issue. I again make the point that the best interests of South Australia were not being served and the best interests of my electorate were not being served: it was the best interests of those government officers, who chose to lead a parliamentary committee up the garden path, not supply answers and not do things that they should have done. What happened is quite outrageous.

Along with the member for Stuart and, I am sure, others, I am a great supporter of the forestry industry in South Australia. It is a critical industry which needs to be supported and looked after and which provides great benefits to the future economy of South Australia. However, we have not always got it right, and I do not know that we are getting it right now. Last Thursday I spent the whole day, with the member for Heysen and Robert Brokenshire from another place, on a farm forestry field day tour of the Fleurieu Peninsula looking at forestry woodlots, plantation forestry and, indeed, the issue of blue gums.

This particular issue is about radiata pine plantations. There is concern about the impact on the hydrology of the Fleurieu Peninsula, and it is only right and proper. I went along with open eyes and ears. In relation to one of the issues we looked at—Adelaide Blue Gum—they said they were looking at 10,000 hectares of blue gums and so far have been able to acquire only 1,600 hectares, so that is another story.

A major outcome that I need from this inquiry is a successful conclusion to the problem at Deep Creek, to get some of those trees removed and to get some environmental flows going back down that creek. That is the issue. That is why the committee went down there. I was with them at a site inspection. We met with locals and came back, and I listened in on the hearings up here. Now, here we are once again discussing another report in the parliament from what is basically a second inquiry, but what has happened? Nothing has happened. The trees are still there.

We have had pretty good rainfall down on the Southern Fleurieu and, as the member for Enfield indicated, the bureaucrats totally ignored the evidence on rainfall down there. They did not want to know about that. They were running their own philosophy on it and the facts of the matter could go to blazes. My concern is to get some action down there and indeed, referring to the member for Enfield's comments again, he stated that it is a government forest and that government agents could have done something about it: reduced the trees and got some flows going back down there. I think that is the imperative that we need to come out of it.

I still have landholders down there speaking to me regularly about it. Indeed, one of the landholders, Mr Kevin Bartolo, spoke to me again yesterday about the matter, and he is passionate about Foggy Farm. They just want to see some action. One of the major hiccups in getting anything to happen in the state is that bureaucracy takes over and we get no action. What we want is to have the trees removed.

I may sound painful, but we want the trees removed so that we can get something happening again. It is no reflection on those people who put the forestry plantations in decades ago. They thought they were doing the right thing and, indeed in many respects, they did do the right thing. They are well-managed but, in this particular case, I hope that the first report and this report leave no-one in any doubt that we need action down on the Fleurieu. We need those trees removed, and environmental flows need to recover.

I totally and unreservedly support the report that has come before the parliament today. The title of the report 'A Search for Straight Answers' is no mean title. Quite frankly, the member for Enfield needs to come down two rows, to the front there, and pick up a substantial ministerial position and be able to do something constructive, even more constructive than what he is doing at the moment.

So, it is a good report. It was very much bipartisan, and what came through to me time and time again from the members of various political parties who were on that committee was that they were quite single-minded about the outcome that they needed and that they want.

I urge the committee, through the presiding member, not to take its foot off the throttle on this one, and that, if we have new people at the head of the Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation, they are encouraged to actually fix this thing up once and for all so that we can get that area back into some sort of reasonable semblance of flow. I support the report.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (11:33): I do not need to canvass all the details of this. I think it is a most unfortunate saga. The issues seem quite clear to me. I was not on the committee, but you do not need to be Einstein to realise that if you have pinus radiata close to the creek, they are going to suck water out of the creek. That is what trees do; that is how they survive. I find it quite amazing that someone should argue that the minister does not have the power to have some trees removed in a government forest.

The key point is that parliament is meant to be the supreme body. The committees derive their power from the parliament itself and it is important not only in that it devalues committees, but also it generally devalues the parliament, in this state and other states, where parliament has come to be regarded as simply a place where people talk. It is time that parliament was reinstated as the supreme body that represents the views of the public. I would now like to move an amendment to the motion, which I have had circulated and tabled, as follows:

After 'be noted' insert 'and this House condemns those public officials who knowingly misled the Minister for the Environment, the Natural Resources Committee and the Parliament in respect of the Deep Creek Inquiry'.

I think the amendment is fairly self-explanatory, and I ask members to support it.

Mr HANNA (Mitchell) (11:35): I feel compelled to contribute to the debate on this report from the Natural Resources Committee. This is a report entitled 'Deep Creek Revisited: A Search for Straight Answers'. I have followed the work of the Natural Resources Committee with great interest. The committee itself had its genesis in recommendations of a select committee into the River Murray. I was pleased to serve for about 18 months on that select committee. One of its recommendations was that there should be a permanent committee of the parliament to examine issues of water resources in this state and, when that was eventually considered by the parliament, it was deemed appropriate to have a Natural Resources Committee.

Today, we should commend the members of the Natural Resources Committee: the Hons Russell Wortley, Caroline Schaefer and Sandra Kanck from another place, and also the Hons Lea Stevens, Steph Key and Graham Gunn, and the chair of the committee, Mr John Rau, member for Enfield. These members have considered it so important to uphold the integrity of the administrative and parliamentary process that they have pursued the truth in this matter despite a lack of integrity and deliberate obfuscation on the part of public servants.

The subject matter of the report is not something that I intend to go into today. It concerned forestry in the Deep Creek region and the question of whether and how that forestry had an impact on a particular stream in the Deep Creek region.

The important facts in this debate are contained, of course, in the report. The list of misdemeanours goes on beyond lengthy delays from public servants after the committee had requested information, beyond the refusal to supply documents (which, it was said, were prepared for cabinet), beyond key information being omitted to the committee and it goes, in fact, beyond disingenuous responses and incorrect advice given to the committee.

It goes right to the point of public servants having lied to the committee. One can only conclude from reading the transcript of the committee proceedings that there was a deliberate misleading of the committee. I am not afraid to name some of the personnel concerned. The person deserving of most censure, in my opinion, is Mr Darryl Harvey of the department. He is referred to in the proceedings as a principal policy officer of the department. There were a number of occasions when he deliberately withheld the truth to the point where it must be concluded that he was deliberately deceiving the members of the committee. This is a gross offence in terms of the administration of public affairs in this state.

I note also that Mr Michael Deering, an officer of the department, was present during investigations of the committee, and, when it was open to him to provide positive and truthful contributions in response to committee questioning, he said nothing. In his case it may be a matter of errors by omission, but that is nonetheless an extremely serious matter. I also note that the then chief executive of the department, Mr Rob Freeman, gave assurances that documents and information would be provided and, in fact, those assurances were not met. That is an extremely serious matter when one considers that members of the committee then make recommendations to the parliament and, as a result of that, the minister herself, or the cabinet itself, may make decisions affecting the economic and environmental welfare of South Australia.

There is an answer to those who might say, 'Well, what does it matter if a parliamentary committee was misled?' What happened was that, on the basis of evidence reported to the committee, the committee reported on the substantive issue concerning this water resource in the Deep Creek region. As is required, the minister then provided a formal response to those recommendations. The response undoubtedly was prepared by public servants—in some part the same public servants to whom I have referred. The minister adopted that information without adequately questioning the source of her information.

The minister's response—and, after all, it was in her name and it is her responsibility—condemned the committee for making errors; and, beyond that, her response stated that the recommendations of the committee should not be carried out. We have here not only the misleading of a parliamentary committee but also further misleading information being provided to the then minister for the environment to formulate her response to the committee's recommendations. I say, again, that this is a gross offence in terms of the public administration of this state. What then should be the consequences?

I certainly support the amendment moved to the neutral motion moved by the chair of the committee. I support the amending motion moved by the Hon. Bob Such, which brings a note of censure into this debate. But I see it this way: the officers concerned—or at least in respect of Mr Darryl Harvey—there needs to be some disciplinary action. The house—and, as far as I am aware, the committee—has not been advised that any such disciplinary action has occurred as a result of the transgressions which have been outlined by me and other speakers. Either Mr Harvey needs to be disciplined, or, if the minister is not prepared to ensure that that happens, the minister needs to face the consequences.

In my view (and I am not sure whether this is shared by other members of the house), the misleading of a parliamentary committee, to the extent done and with the purpose that is evident on the transcript, is something that warrants dismissal of a public servant. It is that serious. If that is not going to happen, or if some appropriate disciplinary action is not going to be taken, the minister needs to cop it. The minister should resign if that disciplinary action is not going to be taken (if it has not been taken already) or, if the minister is not going to resign, the Premier should ask the minister to resign.

If the minister does not resign in that circumstance, the cabinet should resolve that she should resign and the Premier should go to the Governor and ask for the withdrawal of her commission. It is that serious. As I say, those consequences are predicated on Mr Harvey not being the subject of disciplinary action. If he is allowed to go scot-free, the minister must, according to the traditions of the parliament, accept the responsibility for her response to the committee, which itself contained false information. It is only with such action, either the strongest disciplinary action in relation to the public servant concerned or the resignation of the minister, that the traditions of our parliamentary system will be upheld.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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