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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-10-26 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

St Kilda Mangroves

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:25): Unsurprisingly, I rise to talk about not only what has happened to the mangroves around St Kilda but of course the almost bizarre attack launched by the minister on a local scientist. The one who told us there was a problem is the one who has become the problem in the minister's eyes.

Just to familiarise people with what occurred, the Minister for Energy and Mining, who I otherwise have a huge amount of respect for, did try to suggest that the problem that has occurred was something he was briefed about when he came into government that was a legacy. That is a little difficult when the leak occurred in around February 2020 as a result of actions in late 2019. But he is not the subject of the grievance and I will not be dwelling on that.

In February 2020, there was a leak of highly salty water that started to kill off mangroves. The council told the environment department in July 2020 and, in September 2020, the environment department went and had a look and realised that there was a massive die-off occurring. Why did this happen? We do not have the official investigation and we have no idea when we are going to get the official investigation as a result of the previous answer.

But pending that, what appears to have happened, having FOI'd the documents that have been briefing the government, is that SA Water informed the company that discharges saline water into the Bolivar outflow pipe that is then diluted by the water coming from SA Water, and therefore is able to go out into the gulf legally, it was reducing the amount of fresh water that was going out and therefore the company needed to do something else with the saline water. What they did was they put it into a pond that had dried up and the surface of it had cracked, which meant that once the saline water went in it leaked and caused the problems.

Interestingly, the Minister for Environment and Water, who is also the minister for SA Water, said this was not his problem and not his fault. When I asked him in February 2020 about this chain of events, he said:

SA Water has not changed its supply of water to the owners of the Dry Creek salt fields…

That was said in this parliament, whereas a briefing to the government says:

In October 2019, it was noted the SA Water Bolivar flow rate was about half of the rate at the same time the previous year. In order to maintain compliance with maximum discharge salinity levels, [the company] reduced the discharge volumes…

As a consequence, in February 2020, that section was refilled with seawater and, as we now know, that is what leaked and that is what caused the death. But the minister knows nothing and sees nothing.

What has occurred all along, though, is that we have been absolutely lucky in South Australia to have a woman called Peri Coleman with a scientific qualification with an enormous amount of expertise in estuarine and coastal environments who was saying, 'There is a problem, there is a problem, there is a problem.' She was being ignored and ignored and ignored. The environment department seems to think that she is worth listening to. Here is a briefing from the environment department:

Council engaged independent consultant Peri Coleman to investigate and provide a report…Ms Coleman is a recognised expert and her report…will inform the response from council and state government.

So she is useful, she is important, she is worth listening to. But of course the minister, as always, wants to minimise, and in this extraordinary interview on 19 October you could hear that David Bevan was surprised and kept trying to give him some opportunity to climb down from his allegations, but he was not having any of it. He did say:

…the die-off isn't as bad as we would…while it might play to particular political interests—

I think he means me—

and that of conservation activists…Listening to it in the media you would think they were all dead, it's 0.2%. It's not ideal, but we’re working towards a recovery plan and we're getting on with it.

He does not want to accept that there is a problem, so what does he do about that? He has to make Peri the problem because Peri is the one who has been honest all along. You will have heard the quotes I gave earlier, and I am hesitant, because I will probably put this on Facebook, to repeat the things that the minister said about Peri Coleman and the way in which he said them, but what he was trying to do was say that she does not have the expertise: she is not worth listening to. I want to conclude this by reading the Ministerial Code of Conduct, which states:

In the discharge of his or her public duties, a Minister shall not dishonestly or wantonly or recklessly attack the reputation of any other person.

I submit that is exactly what has happened to Ms Coleman and it has happened because her truth was inconvenient.

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