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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-12-01 Daily Xml
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Pinery Bushfires

Ms VLAHOS (Taylor) (15:05): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries and the Minister for Tourism. Minister, can you update the house on how farmers in the region are faring and the impact on tourism following the devastating Pinery fire?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (15:05): I acknowledge the member for Taylor's close association with so many people in the agricultural fields in her part of the world. Obviously, we have heard already today of the devastation and heartbreak that was caused by last week's fire—two deaths and so much property loss. There were massive losses of livestock as well and crops, although we are not sure yet how much has been lost; the assessors are still out looking at the crop damage.

We are pretty sure, though, that there were 296 property identification codes in the fire area that were registered to have livestock. Our people at the primary industries team have been in touch with 100 per cent of those property owners. So they did a tremendous job. They had their office emergency response set up on the afternoon of the fire. We have had at least 50 people in our biosecurity and other parts of PIRSA working on it.

Of course, when you have a fire of this magnitude in an area such as the area hit, there are also PIRSA staff who have lost homes, and it has had a huge impact on their friends and relatives in the area as well. I want to give a really heartfelt thankyou to all of those people who have done so much to help so many in the past few weeks. It's not over yet; there is plenty more to be done.

The level of professionalism has been outstanding, and it was terrific to go out to the response centre on Friday and actually meet up with the people who were running the coordination process. They were in constant contact with farm owners and, of course, those people who had the terrible job of going out and helping to destroy livestock. No-one wants to do that; it's a terrible job, and we give thanks that there are people who put their hand up within our Public Service to do those sorts of jobs.

On the tourism front, we saw some pretty disturbing stuff in the paper this morning about rubberneckers, as they were called, people who were going up there to have a look at what has happened with the fire. That's the last thing we want. What we do want is for people to go where the fires haven't had any effect—places like the Barossa Valley.

The government, through the Tourism Commission, is upping the marketing of the Barossa Valley over the next few weeks because we want to get the message out there that these businesses in a time like this actually need to have people coming through their doors, spending money and making sure that people are not scared off because the Barossa, by some miracle, was largely left untouched.

The fire did not jump the highway there, although it went through Greenock. It didn't get across into Nuriootpa, but there are plenty of people in Nuriootpa who have lost a lot. They have lost homes, and in many cases their parents have lost homes as well, so you have two generations of people without their homes. It is really important that people support the Barossa Valley, support the Mid North, and do as much as they possibly can.

I also want to pay tribute to the people in hospitality who opened up their hotels and who provided food to people. We had CFS volunteers coming from other parts of South Australia and we had them coming from Victoria. With the Adelaide Test on, it was actually hard to get accommodation in Adelaide, and we had hoteliers ringing us direct offering up rooms for free for these people. I guess that's a great sign of country hospitality, but it's also the way our publicans shine brightest sometimes during a community's darkest hour.

I want to commend everyone who made a contribution. I know at the Vine Inn, Chris Linde has started a raffle. He wants to raise $50,000 for the people in his community, and I think we can all probably help him out and buy a few tickets.

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