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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-11-06 Daily Xml
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Climate Leaders Awards

Mrs POWER (Elder) (13:33): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister please update the house on the successful projects recently recognised at the Premier's climate change leaders awards and how these organisations are delivering practical outcomes to address the changing climate?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (13:34): I thank the member for Elder for her question and note her passionate advocacy for practical environmental projects in the electorate that she represents. It was good to be able to head over to the Premier's climate change awards hosted at the SA Museum last week and hear about a range of real champions in climate change policy, climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, and see groups from the community at the individual level, government and business recognised for their pursuit of technologies, of business approaches—

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order: this information is publicly available on the minister's website, environment.sa.gov.au. It lists all the winners and a precis of why they—

The SPEAKER: Thank you. I ask the member for West Torrens—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Kaurna is called to order. The Minister for Transport will not interject. I ask the member for West Torrens to please send that information to me and I will be listening very carefully to ensure that the minister also adds to what may be publicly available.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Members, please do not interject. The minister has the call.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I haven't even got to mentioning what's on the website yet, so I don't know how the member for West Torrens can predict what I am about to say. I am very keen to share with the house the particular winners of these awards and why they were chosen because we can learn so much about how practical approaches to climate mitigation and adaptation policy, particularly in the business community, can not only grow our economy and create jobs but obviously have a significant environmental and climate change impact as well.

Those are things that this side of the house wants to celebrate. We celebrate it through the work of SA Water and their Project Zero strategy to reduce energy costs to zero through investment in renewable energy options; we see it in our across-government approach to government power; we see it in the work being led by the Minister for Energy and Mining through the household storage solution and so on. This is a government that is absolutely committed to practical approaches to climate policy and also approaches that will reduce cost of living.

The overall winner of the Premier's climate change award for 2018 was the Wattle Range Council, in the member for MacKillop's seat. The member for MacKillop would be very aware of the Wattle Range Council's particularly good work around coastal protection and coastal climate adaptation, which has been undertaken by the Wattle Range Council at Southend beach in the member's electorate. It is a beach that has been particularly affected by storm events, erosion problems and sand drift, which obviously leads to a whole range of other problems, with productive farmland being impacted, potentially properties and households being impacted and economic investment being at risk as well.

The Wattle Range Council has put together a very thorough climate adaptation plan that has the potential to be a role model template for other coastal councils around the state. That fits very well with this government's additional investment of $5.2 million over the next few years in coastal protection to really ramp up our approach to climate adaptation on our coastline, because we know that our 5,067 kilometres of coastline in South Australia forms the front line in the defence against climate change—more vulnerable as a result of increased storm events, rising sea levels and erosion. That is an area that this government wants to focus on very specifically.

I provide very significant congratulations to the Wattle Range Council for their work in coastal protection. I really look forward to seeing their work rolled out across South Australia because there is much that we can learn from that small but very hardworking council in our state's South-East.

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