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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-02-24 Daily Xml
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Little Corellas

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:32): I have a few words to say regarding the subject in The Advertiser and in the media this morning of little corellas. Mr Simon Rothwell, the chair of the governing council of Willunga High School, was on this morning. Mr Rothwell is also a councillor on the Yankalilla council, and I will turn to that in a minute. Quite frankly, over many years communities have suffered, and continue to suffer, from the impact of little corellas. They are not protected. They are in their tens, if not hundreds, of thousands—probably more—and the issue goes on and nothing is done about it.

I point out that we sterilise koalas to stop them breeding, although I am not sure how you would sterilise a corella, I might say. We allow a reduction in numbers of kangaroos and wallabies simply by a permit. We poison rabbits, dingoes and termites—all animals, insects or whatever—yet the very mention of anyone doing anything about destroying corella numbers brings howls of protest from around the community. We have the wrong end of the stick as far as I am concerned.

Quite simply, we have to do something about these birds. They are doing approximately $200,000 worth of damage just at Willunga High School alone. In the Yankalilla area, the bowling club is being decimated by thousands of little corellas on a nightly basis and each morning. I was there the other day to check out for myself just what is going on and you can almost reach out and touch the corellas in the trees around the edge of the oval during the daytime, and they screech all night. They screech at night in the Willunga area. We have a unit near Glenelg North by Camden Park oval and they screech there at night. We have to do something about this issue.

They are only thriving because we provide the food for them—that is the reason they are thriving. Our way of life and our agriculture and everything that goes with it means that they are particularly well fed. They are increasing in droves, and there is little or nothing that anyone wants to do to reduce their numbers. The NRM boards are the next best thing to useless. The Yankalilla council was told by the NRM board, 'Yes, we realise there is a problem, but we will not allow you to reduce the numbers.' Well, hello, they are not protected.

Willunga is not in my electorate, and I have talked about Yankalilla, but further out from my electorate Strathalbyn has had huge problems for years and they are also on Kangaroo Island around Kingscote. The Native Vegetation Act puts draconian measures on some clearance of native vegetation, yet the corellas are absolutely decimating the eucalyptus cneorifolia—the narrow-leaf—just outside Kingscote. They are just wiping out the trees. They are wiping out the Norfolk Island pines along the foreshore in Kingscote. In fact, they have just about completely stripped some of those trees over the years, and still nothing happens.

My view is that it is time we got serious about doing something about these birds. They have tried everything. I think Mr Rothwell said this morning that they have even tried bringing in a bird psychologist. I am not quite sure how that works. They have hung artificial hawks around the place. They have tried starting pistols. You can go out with a dozen shotguns, and I would suggest you would not even put a dent in them because they will fly off and come back, and it is just a—

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: The member for Newland has some experience in shooting, as I am well aware. We might invite him down to Yankalilla, and we might get the Hon. John Quirke to assist him down there. This is an important matter and it is critical to these communities. I am aware that people connected with Yankalilla Bowling Club have been in tears over what these things are doing to the bowling green, and I have no doubt that the people at Willunga are highly emotional about what they are doing to the kids' facilities at the school. It is not good enough. It is time we stood up and started to put a few things like that right in this country, so I urge the house to give it some thought.

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