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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-11-17 Daily Xml
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Resolutions

PIKE RIVER CONSERVATION PARK

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for Early Childhood Development, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business and Public Sector Management) (20:11): I move:

That this house requests His Excellency the Governor to make a proclamation under section 30(2) of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 excluding allotment 10 of Deposited Plan 72034, Hundred of Paringa, County of Alfred from the Pike River Conservation Park.

This is a simple matter which requires a resolution of both houses of parliament under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972. Pike River Conservation Park is 226 hectares in size and is located four kilometres south-east of Renmark adjacent to the township of Paringa. The park was constituted in 1979 to protect flood plain environments. The motion before the house seeks to remove a small allotment of land from the Pike River Conservation Park as it contains a privately tenanted residence which is considered inconsistent with the core operations of the park.

Following parliament's consideration of the excision of the small allotment of land, the government will be adding 62.52 hectares of land to the Pike River Conservation Park. The land that is to be added to the park represents the features of known significant wetland ecosystem. Including it in the Pike River Conservation Park will enable remnant vegetation to be protected by controlling weed invasion, introduced animals and unrestricted recreational use. The proposed addition contains river gum forest, black box woodland, chenopod shrubland and native grassland.

The additional land is scheduled to occur by the end of 2009, following parliament's consideration of the excision of land from the park. This addition will contribute to the 225,000 hectares of land that we will already have added to our park system since 2002. We have also added 24 new parks, reserves and wilderness protection areas to the state's protected areas system, which includes 950,000 hectares of land given a high level of protection under the Wilderness Protection Act. This is 13 times the area covered by the wilderness protection areas in 2002 when the Rann government came to office, when only 70,000 hectares were afforded such high protection. These are all important additions and play an integral role in our park system in strengthening habitat for our state's fauna and flora. I commend this motion to the house.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (20:13): An interesting contribution by the minister in commending the legislation. I thought it was a motion, to be quite honest, but that is not a problem. The opposition will be supporting the motion, but I will take the opportunity to make a couple of comments. I was interested in the minister's contribution because his contribution did not explain the reason for the motion at all. It was about a completely different matter which was the addition of a small area to the Pike River Conservation Park, which has nothing to do with the motion before the house. It is interesting that these two matters come together because I think it gives us an insight into the culture of the department, and I want to talk a little about that because it has given me an opportunity to speak on a matter which has annoyed a couple of my constituents and me for many years. It goes to the culture of this department, now DWLBC. It has had a number of iterations since I have been in this place.

The Hon. J.W. Weatherill interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: Well, DEH. As I said, it has had a number of iterations and, by and large, it has been the same people making the same mistakes and giving the same excuses.

In this particular instance it seems that when the park was constituted—and the minister has just told the house it was constituted in 1979—inadvertently a residence was included within the constituted area of the park. Tonight in this place and, hopefully, this week in the other place the government will take appropriate action to remedy the mistake that was made 30 years ago. That seems to be the culture of this department: it makes mistakes and does not bother to remedy them.

The Hon. J.W. Weatherill interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: Well, they are all the same people. I have a little bit of experience and let me say the culture exists in both departments. Let me explain.

The Hon. J.W. Weatherill interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: No, it is not just your government. Listen to my explanation, minister. I am trying to encourage you to change the culture of the departments you administer. This has been going on since 1979. From memory there have been at least two Liberal governments between 1979 and today, and they did not remedy the situation either, possibly because the same people in whatever iteration of this department and its culture did not think it was important.

It is very important to the people concerned. Let me bring to the attention of the house a situation that occurred in my electorate. We have a Border Groundwater Sharing Agreement between Victoria and South Australia, which sets up specific conditions and obligations on an area of land extending 20 kilometres each side of the Victorian border, all the way from the coast, south of Mount Gambier to the River Murray. There are a number of zones and special management regimes occur throughout that area.

One of my constituents who lives north of Bordertown approached me some years ago and said, 'Mitch, when the department declared the Border Groundwater Sharing Agreement it lodged rack plans with the Surveyor-General and delineated this area of land that comes under the Border Groundwater Sharing Agreement and they got it wrong with respect to my farm.'

The upshot of it is that he was applying for a water licence and his application fell foul because of this mistake with the delineation of the 20 kilometre zone because it put his farm on the wrong side. It put him into a different water management area than that in which he should have been placed and, as a consequence, he fell foul of the authorities to get a water licence which he believed, I believed and, ultimately, the Supreme Court believed he should have got.

What happened in the first instance is that I approached my then colleague who happened to be the minister in a Liberal government and explained the situation to him. I think it was former minister Brindal. I said to him, 'All you have to do is come to the house, bring forward a motion, sort out the delineation of the Border Groundwater Sharing Agreement boundary in this area and the problem will be solved.' He came back to me some weeks later (it might even have been months), and said, 'No. The advice from the department is that that is far too difficult. This is an isolated case and it is really of no import to the state. We are not going to do anything about it.'

Meanwhile, my constituent was suffering. He went before the ERD Court, represented himself and won the case. The government took exception to that and took the matter to a higher court. Again, my constituent, who left school at the age of 14, represented himself and won the case. There had been a change of government in the meantime. I went to the then minister (Hon. John Hill) and pointed out the ridiculousness of the situation and said, 'Why don't you come to the house, amend the delineation of the border groundwater sharing area and fix this problem? Problem solved. My constituent will get his water licence and you won't have any further grief.' The answer came back again some months later, 'Sorry, the department is not interested. It does not want to do anything about it.' My constituent, as I mentioned a moment ago, subsequently won the case.

Officers from the department (and these are departmental officers, government officers) then approached my constituent and said, 'We are going to appeal this to the Supreme Court. We expect to win the case and we will seek costs and it will cost you.' They mentioned a substantial amount of money, which was over $100,000. This was a simple farmer. It is my belief that the department tried to intimidate my constituent so that he would not contest the case.

At the end of the day he did contest the case and he won. In the meantime, I had been to the then minister (Hon. Gail Gago) and asked, 'What the hell is the government doing? Why are you doing this?' The answer came back, obviously from the department, 'There is an important principle at stake here and we want to establish the principle.' I have never been able to work out what the principle was that they tried to establish but, at the end of the day, after probably six or seven years, my constituent won the case in the Supreme Court. He got his water licence, which is what he had been fighting for all along.

To my knowledge, the department has never recommended to a minister that the fundamental error in the first instance be fixed up; that is, that it had got the delineation of the boundary wrong. It has blithely gone on through this whole process with this individual, at great expense to the taxpayer and to my constituent in this instance, and has caused a great amount of anguish. It has blithely said, 'It's not that important that we fix up the boundary.' My constituent was only interested in his water licence. It is really of no import to him, now that he has got that, where the boundary goes. However, it is an absolute nonsense that this department, the department that the minister administers, blithely goes ahead without any concern about mistakes once they have been pointed out and does not bother to remedy them. Tonight, we are about to remedy a mistake that occurred some 30 years ago.

I have not had the opportunity to speak to the person who resides on the small parcel of land that will be excised from the Pike River Conservation Park as a result of this motion, and I do not know what sort of anguish that resident has endured over that 30 year period. I hope it has not been great. However, the problem is that here we have a government department that just does not care. We have ministers (and I have cited at least three ministers in the example in my electorate) who have not had the gumption to walk up to the department and say, 'I want this fixed, and I want it fixed now.' All it would take is a minister to say, 'What is this nonsense about? Fix it.'

This is one of the problems we get with a bureaucracy that is not answerable to the parliament, when a minister of the government is willing to protect the mistakes of the bureaucracy. It is not what the members of the community, the citizens that we represent in this place, expect. It brings me no joy to stand in this place and speak of these matters. It is not my wish to denigrate the officers of the department. It is not my wont to do that.

Indeed, I do not blame the officers of the department, because the culture that has developed is as a result of governments which do not care. As I said, minister, this is not just your government. I was frustrated on this matter by one of the ministers when we were in government. As I pointed out, we were in government for at least two terms while this mistake was not addressed, and it just frustrates me and my constituents when we come up against this sort of bureaucratic bungling and intransigence and we cannot get these things resolved. That is what we are here for; that is why we are representing constituents: to make sure these matters are fixed up.

I do not know whether ministers from 1979 have been made aware of this matter but, if any of them have been aware of it, they should stand condemned for not doing something about it. I do not know how this matter came to his attention, but I congratulate this minister for bringing this matter before the house with this motion to sort it out. It ill behoves the minister to suggest that this is about adding further country to a park. This motion is not about that at all: it is about resolving a mistake of 30 years.

The opposition supports the motion to resolve that matter, but I am pleased that I have had the opportunity to bring to the attention of the house that this is not an isolated case and that there is a bureaucracy out there that does not seem to think it is important to resolve these matters. I want the message to go from this debate back to the department, whether it is the DWLBC or the environment department. It was some iteration of those two departments, because I do not think it was two departments at the time the mistake was made that affected my constituent.

I hope the message goes back to those departments to say that this is not good enough. When these anomalies come to light, the parliament expects that the minister of the day be appraised of them and advised to fix them up. I commend the motion to the house and hope that the other place also passes it so that we can fix this anomaly.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for Early Childhood Development, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business and Public Sector Management) (20:28): I thank the honourable member for his support, not necessarily the churlish way in which he provided it, but nevertheless we will settle for the support. I must defend the officers of my agency. The honourable member could not work out which public servants he was cranky with, but generally I think he must have been bitten by a public servant when he was a small boy, because he does have a set against them which can only be described as something very deep in his psyche.

An honourable member: Historic.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Historic; it is indeed. I defend my officers; they always provide me with the best of service, including very timely advice on questions I ask them. I think it is probably wrong to assume that this is somewhat of an error. What is happening is that this park is now extending in its size, and what has worked apparently satisfactorily for a period of time will be less than satisfactory when the larger park is created and the management arrangements for the flood plain environment are put in place. I commend the motion to the house.

Motion carried.

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