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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-02-05 Daily Xml
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Bushfire Recovery Support

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (17:09): My question is to the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Can the minister inform the house on how the Marshall Liberal government is assisting those affected by the bushfires with registration and licence replacement?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (17:10): I thank the member for Newland for his question and certainly acknowledge that he and I, not in this bushfire season but in previous bushfire seasons, have country that used to be in my electorate that is now in his electorate that was severely affected. In fact, can I tell you that this summer this bushfire season brings back memories, very awful memories, of 2015 with the Sampson Flat and Pinery bushfires, and indeed the Eden Valley bushfire back before that in 2013.

Can I say first and foremost that my department's role in this first, as the bushfire is happening, is around making sure that roads are okay to traverse. We know that when the Sampson Flat fire happened road closures were a real issue for the community, and in fact then when the Pinery fire happened that there was a lot better work that was done to be able to open roads more quickly and that process improved.

Certainly with the Cudlee Creek fire, when a huge number of roads were closed, our department did work as hard as it could in conjunction with the council to do that work, to get those roads open so that people first and foremost who live there can get back to their houses and to their farms and properties, but then also so that the broader community can, where it is safe, start to get back in, which is a message that needs to be put out there, especially as we seek as a government to help affected communities have visitors, tourists, come back and spend money in those regions.

In terms of Kangaroo Island, the state government only has one road, the Playford Highway, on Kangaroo Island. That road, thank goodness, is largely unaffected, but there is a whole heap of other work in relation to Department for Environment and Water assets and in tourism destinations to be able to do that work. After the bushfires were contained, very quickly our minds turned to what are the simple things, what are the simple ways that we can make people's lives easier dealing with the tragedy of the loss that they are experiencing.

It is amazing how pervasive and all encompassing the effects of a bushfire are. There were hundreds and hundreds of vehicles across multiple fires across South Australia, and it is important for us also to remember the fire on Yorke Peninsula, as well as in the South-East, in the member for MacKillop's electorate, down at Keilira, and the impacts that are being felt there, and this response also includes them.

What happens is that people are actually paying rego for a car that no longer exists. As a department, for those owners of those registered vehicles that are destroyed during the bushfire we can apply for a refund for unexpired registration as well as the other components of registration, including CTP, Lifetime Support Scheme levy and the emergency services levy, making sure that people are not being punished for having been affected by the bushfire.

We are also, through Service SA, waiving the administration fee for replacement driver's licences for people whose licences were lost or destroyed as a result of the bushfires—again, a simple thing, that if somebody had their licence at home or in the car and that was burnt out it does not exist as, again, the simple act of having to go and get a replacement should not cost affected people money, and the Registrar of Motor Vehicles also has the ability to waive the administration fee on the registration of replacement vehicles, as again people needing to purchase new cars to replace the ones that were lost—and fees associated with purchasing replacement copies of birth, death and marriage certificates for those who have had these lost or destroyed in the bushfires.

We know that these documents are important. They are important for recovery, they are important for people to be able to put their lives back together, and as a government we need to undertake these simple measures to make it that bit easier for those people who have lost so much.

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