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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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Parliamentary Committees

NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: LEVY PROPOSALS 2013-14

Debate resumed.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (11:12): I rise today to comment on this report, which relates to levies for seven different boards. I am a member of this committee, and four of these seven NRM regions actually share an overlap with the electorate of Stuart, which I represent, so I have a very keen interest in this issue.

Let me start by saying that I support the comments made a moment ago by the chair of the committee, the member for Ashford. I would also like to thank all of the NRM staff and board members who came and presented to our committee and put their views and thoughts forward and explained the work that they are doing and the levy increases that they have sought. I would also like to put on record my thanks to the NRM staff and the volunteers who contribute to their work throughout our state and particularly in the electorate of Stuart that I represent.

With regard to the levies, my view is that the work that the NRM boards do essentially is endless. There is a community expectation that all weeds everywhere, all feral animals everywhere, all water courses that are not in pristine condition, etc., should be fixed up by NRM boards and the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources. The reality is, of course, that it would take an infinite budget to achieve this infinite amount of work.

I understand very well that the people who do this work—and in this instance we are talking about the NRM boards, their staff and their volunteers—want to do as much as they possibly can, so it is quite natural to seek as much of a levy increase as they think they might be able to get. But the reality is that if the NRM boards—any NRM board—had twice has much levy funding, or three times as much levy funding, or four or five or 10 times as much levy funding, there would still be very good projects they would like to do that would be beneficial to our state that they would still not be able to fund because the work is potentially endless. So I do have the strong view that you have to stop somewhere.

As the member for Stuart, working on this committee—with one vote out of nine—I have taken a personal decision to not support levy increase requests which are in excess of CPI. That is because I think that you do need to stop somewhere and I think CPI is the fair place to stop.

I respect the fact that the work that could be done with levy increases in excess of CPI would be very good and very valuable work, but it would never stop, regardless of the levy increase that was granted. There would still be work that could not be funded. So that is my position on these levies, but I do take very seriously the work that the boards do and I thank their staff and volunteers again for what they have done.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the staff of the committee, Mr Patrick Dupont, our executive officer, and Mr David Trebilcock, our research officer, who both do very good work for our committee. I would also like to thank my parliamentary colleagues on the committee whose contribution I also value and enjoy working with.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (11:16): I would like to make some general points about NRM boards. Sometimes we hear, I think, ill-informed criticism of these boards. On the whole, I think they do an excellent job. Some of the matters that they focus on include soil conservation, pest plant eradication, pest animal eradication, general conservation, and an educative role amongst young people, in particular. I have not had one person in my electorate complain about paying the levy—whether that be people in the rural part or the urban part. The community is very supportive, I believe, of what the NRM boards do.

We have heard, in recent times, some criticism about the Mount Lofty board trying to control the use of water in the Mount Lofty Ranges, and the significance of that issue was highlighted only this week when one of the officers from the City of Onkaparinga pointed out that one of the creeks (sometimes we call them rivers) by the time the water that was meant to flow down the creek got towards the latter part of the river (or creek) there was no water at all because people upstream had taken it all.

So some of the issues that need to be managed are very important, and if you do not have some management arrangement and it is overseen by the NRM board, then the landholders further down the stream will get nothing. If anyone can argue to me or show me that that is fair and reasonable, I would welcome their input.

A couple of people, I think in another place in particular, and a few people who get on radio, are continually bashing the NRM boards, I think quite unfairly—inappropriately. They do a great job; they will never be perfect in what they do, but I commend all the people associated with them. I read the material they produce, the various publications, and I am often heartened by what I see, the constructive work being done by farmers, in association with farmers, as well as water conservation projects in the urban environment.

There is still a lot of work to be done, in particular the restoration of some of our creeks, particularly in the Mount Lofty Ranges which have become degraded, and need significant restoration. That is one of the challenges, I think, for the NRM boards to adopt.

In essence, I think it is an excellent initiative; it came out of the original water boards and I think I am correct in saying it was a Liberal government initiative some years ago, so it has now evolved into the NRM boards. I think having those boards and a natural resources management committee in the parliament itself is another very good initiative, and I commend all of those people for the good work they do.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:20): I rise to speak to this motion in regard to the levy proposals for the natural resources management boards for this state, but I would just like to concentrate my remarks around the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Natural Resources Management Board levy proposal. I commend the thoughts and the commitment of the member for Stuart on this committee in making sure that levy proposals do not exceed CPI (consumer price index). We have seen here, as recently as 12 months ago, that the Natural Resources Committee rejected some of the proposals for the rate rises, and they succeeded, so I commend the whole committee for that.

I would just like to say that I think there is some good work done through natural resources management, although it has bothered me over time that it does seem to have developed a huge bureaucracy. My wife, Sally, was part of the integrated natural resources management setting this up in the early 2000s. It has grown to a bit of a bureaucratic beast since then, and that is what concerns a lot of people, a lot of farmers on the ground.

Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people do not seem to have any feeling as to what is going on. They see these offices spring up around the state and they are concerned that there is not more of an interaction with farmers and land managers so that they know exactly what is going on on the ground in regard to pest plant management, feral animals, soil management, and the like. I think the one thing that does concern me is that now that all natural resources management boards have come under the control of the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources it seems that it has become just part of another government department. I think quite a few community members feel that they are more distanced by what has happened with that governance arrangement.

However, I do think that there are some positives. Some of the senior people in natural resources management are suddenly realising that they do need to better connect with landholders. It is going to take time. It is going to take time because they have been distanced for various reasons. There is a right to know where the many millions of dollars go in these arrangements so that people can see real outcomes, and real outcomes on the ground instead of plans which are endlessly being reviewed. I know there are discussions about sorting that out, with better time frames so that people do not complete one annual review and their whole role in life at the NRM board is to start on the next one. So, a whole lot of bureaucracy, at the end of the day, is starving some of the funding that could be hitting the ground.

I know that in the Murray-Darling Basin Natural Resources Management Board funding proposals the division 1 levy proposal will go from $2,073,240 to $2,108,485, and that is the link to a consumer price index increase of 1.7 per cent. The division 2 proposal rises from $6,775,999 to $6,891,190, and that is a 1.7 per cent consumer price index increase as well. I note that overall, through the federal funding, the division 1 levy and the division 2 levy and approximately $2 million of other funds, the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Natural Resources Management Board will have just over $15 million to complete their programs.

I think it is absolutely appropriate that the levy not be increased by more than 1.7 per cent. What I wish for in the future is that we have better collaboration between the bureaucracy of natural resources management and the farmers so that we do not get this antagonism, as the member for Fisher indicated, on the airwaves and people can see real outcomes. We do need to manage our natural resources; we need to get it right. As we have seen with the recent drought and the River Murray, we do need to manage our waterways, but we need to take everyone with us on the ride, otherwise it becomes a very antagonistic situation.

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (11:25): This subject cannot go through the house without me having something to say about it. If you read through my 23 years here, I would like $1 for each time I have mentioned this subject, and I have not always been a positive critic in relation to the activities of the NRM boards.

The SPEAKER: No, that's true.

Mr VENNING: But one does mellow with age, I think. I appreciate very much those boards that have used restraint in lifting their levies. I noted the words used by the member for Ashford and I am quite encouraged by them. I pay tribute also to the Hon. Caroline Schaefer and that her board is freezing their levy for two years. I think that is a very commendable thing to do and certainly will silence a lot of the critics. I do live in her board area, so I suppose you could say I have a conflict of interest, but I do not believe that is so. I do put on the record my appreciation of her.

No board should ever raise its levy above CPI, I believe, and I commend the committee's support of that, yet some of these boards tend to become empire builders. I have witnessed it myself. Even though the member for Ashford did comment that there be some areas where their rate revenues increase, they think it is their due then to be able to increase the employment level within the board.

The Hon. R.B. Such: Your local council is putting up the CEO's pay by 4.5 per cent.

Mr VENNING: I did not know that. I better check that one out. That is on the record and I will get that off the record. Thank you, member for Fisher. Just because the rate base has increased, it should not be an automatic panacea for them to increase employment on the board. I support the committee and the Chair when they note the wonderful efforts of the volunteer members, and they should never be subject to abuse from irate ratepayers, landowners, etc. I have certainly been a witness of that sort of activity and people have to understand that a volunteer is not there to be abused.

NRM boards have many roles, which include the control of weeds, feral animals, soils and land care in general. I had experience in this area before I came here, which was funded by direct state and federal funding, and the landowners, as ratepayers through their local councils, contributed as well. So, it was a rather complicated area. The local board, with the member councils, watched carefully the costs and expenditures, and levy increases were very rare indeed. When you did increase levies, the council certainly copped it through the ratepayers in general, so it has totally changed.

The difference today is that there is a flat levy, which is easy, but of course it is also easy just to keep hiking it up. I am very pleased that this committee is sitting there as a watchdog and reining it in, because otherwise the NRM boards would keep hiking up the levies. The big criticism of the NRM boards that we have been discussing this morning is the amount of bureaucracy that is now in there. As a previous chairman of an animal and plant control board, I did combine the weed board with the feral animals, and we were the first board in South Australia to do so, which we called the Animal and Plant Control Board.

Again, I was involved in bringing in soils into the same area. Funding was complicated, because soils was funded by the federal government and animals and plants were funded by the state government. We were going through this process when it became an issue in this parliament about combining them. Rather than just bringing the soils in, they brought the whole lot in, and this was when we saw the huge build-up of bureaucracy, and this was when I think we lost control of it. We had bureaucrats running everywhere and the cost went through the roof, and that was the saddest part, and many said at the time that service diminished.

I have come through that and the NRM today is very important. It is also important that we always work with and encourage our landowners. Most landowners—not all, but a huge majority of them—know the responsibility for the land that they have, particularly the younger generation, my son included. They are very conscious of the soil and the land because it is a resource that, once destroyed, is almost impossible to regain, and much more so now than when I was a lad.

We just got out there—in hindsight, we could have been called miners—and poured fertiliser on it and took the crop off and, if there was a tree in the road, it just did not thrive. We now have rules on our property: every tree we remove, we replace 10 back, and when you drive around you can see that. It is marvellous to see the difference that the continual work of these people has made over the years.

I also note that the current chairman of the NRM Council, Mr Andrew Inglis, is a personal friend of mine; in fact, he is a lifelong friend. He would agree with much of what the chair has said this morning, and I am sure he is pleased that the committee is there as well. I have been an outspoken critic of the new bureaucratic beast, as the member for Hammond just called it, but I have moved on, and people like Andrew Inglis and Caroline Schaefer give me much confidence.

I believe that landowners really want to see more activity and more contact with them so that they get back to being part of the process. I think we are going that way, and I think we have made progress in the last 18 months to two years. I was involved in these matters before and, when I retire in nine months, if given the chance, I would probably like to serve again. I commend the committee on the seven reports tabled here this morning and congratulate them on their work.

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:31): I would like to thank members for their contribution. I know that there are a number of people who watch very closely what happens with their local NRM board and, as members of parliament, a number of us are very keen to make sure that we watch those committees, but also do that in a positive way. I commend the report to parliament.

Motion carried.

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