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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-02 Daily Xml
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GREAT SOUTHERN

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:36): Members in this place will no doubt be aware of what has transpired over the last few weeks with the collapse of Timbercorp and (a couple of weeks ago) Great Southern, both managed investment schemes with interests in South Australia. Indeed, Great Southern has a substantial interest in olives and, more particularly, grapes through the Barossa and up into the Riverland and also Clare. It has I think about 50,000 hectares of blue gum plantations in the South-East and several thousand hectares on Kangaroo Island. I would like to spend just a couple of minutes talking about what the collapse of Great Southern means to that area of my electorate.

The forestry industry on Kangaroo Island employs 30 to 40 people seasonally. This year, the administrators will probably not seek to plant land that was bought last year. The whole issue of blue gums on Kangaroo Island has been charged with a fair bit of emotion over a number of years. In a previous life, I had to adjudicate on planning applications. The problem that the council had, and still has, is that, under the general farming zone, blue gum forestry plantations are permissible and there is no way to stop them. So they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't, and they wore a considerable amount of flak—and still are—over the approval process for, in the main, blue gum plantations.

What we need out of these forestry plantations is a long-term sustainable future. The worry is that we do not know where we are going to go with these blue gum plantations. Some of them are not far away from maturity. Great Southern did have a plan in place to put in a mill, chip them and then move them offshore with a barge, and so on. That never came to fruition, and there are those in the community who say that it was never going to come to fruition and that it was always a nightmare waiting to happen.

It has taken up some of the most productive, high rainfall agricultural country in South Australia. My desire is either to have those blue gum plantations harvested and chipped or we may have to look at some scheme whereby that land is returned to agriculture to produce food and fibre for a hungry world. I absolutely totally and categorically reject any thought that anyone may have—if they do—of these blue gum plantations being sold to overseas interests, ultimately becoming carbon credits and absolutely useless. That will do no-one any good. The greenies in the community, whether they be on the island or the mainland, need to look at this as well because those blue gum plantations will spread seeds into national parks and amongst the native vegetation. That is an inherent danger.

The fire potential from blue gum plantations when they are near maturity is significant; in the early stages, it is not because they do not burn. I have seen that with my own eyes. More to the point, the island needs an economic way of transporting both these radiata pines and also the blue gum woodchips to the mainland. Until the government of the day comes to grips with the fact that we need an extension of the national highway to Kangaroo Island across that sea lane, it will not be economic to produce those forestry products.

The house has heard me on this before and will hear me again: it is absolutely ludicrous that last week we found $5 million to outfit a government office for the Department of Trade and Industry, yet we cannot find money to subsidise a transport system to and from Kangaroo Island.

When you get on the punt across the Murray, it does not cost you a cracker. You go over free of charge. People in the metropolitan area enjoy a highly subsidised transport system, as members know. We have to have good public transport; I am all for it. However, the people of Kangaroo Island are being held to ransom. It is damaging the primary production sector, the tourism sector and local residents. Even more people could move through the Fleurieu Peninsula and advance the Fleurieu's economy and that of Kangaroo Island if only the governments of the day come to their senses and do something about this transport corridor. It is totally unrealistic.

Time expired.

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