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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-03 Daily Xml
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River Murray Flood

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (14:30): My question is to the Minister for Climate, Environment and Water. Can the minister update the house on the progress of the government-led River Murray flood clean-up?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:30): I am very pleased to give an update to the house on how the clean-up is making progress. As members will doubtless be aware, Green Industries SA (GISA) has been activated as the functional lead agency to be responsible for managing the clean-up and has been working assiduously ever since.

Early in January, on the 3rd, an arrangement was made with the commonwealth to fund some $60 million to assist with the clean-up for people living in that area whose properties had been affected, which is part of course of around $120 million of joint funding that is being expended to assist in the community recovery, which is in fact probably the largest amount spent on a disaster in South Australia.

What Green Industries SA has done is appoint a central lead contractor who is responsible for engaging with property owners to determine whether their properties are in fact sound or require demolition and, if they do not, what work needs to be done. That agency is the Johns Lyng Group, which is the organisation that has also been doing the same job interstate on the same challenge. What we have done, though, although it is an interstate company, is ensure that local contractors are used by that company to undertake as much of the work as possible. As of 1 May, a couple of days ago, we had 22 South Australian contractors registering their interest to be able to part of that clean-up program.

We have been encouraging people who have been affected by the flood to be in touch with the government through the recovery hotline. We have had more than 4,000 phone calls and we have had registered about 1,700 properties for assistance. As of 28 April, it was 1,740 properties. Anyone in a primary residence, a shack or a holiday home, a small business or a not-for-profit organisation that has been affected by the floodwaters is eligible for free assistance through this program.

As members may be aware, there has been a voucher program that has been going for some time. Some 12,000 vouchers have been distributed and around 500 redeemed. What that means is people have up to five free vouchers to go to a waste transfer station with the rubbish they have removed from their properties to have that dealt with for free. We have also been working on taking waste from the kerbside.

As people have been able to get up to their shacks and empty out the damaged parts of the building as well as the goods they had in it, we have been going along and cleaning that up. I was there recently looking at the Bowhill and Mannum clean-up that was occurring. It seems that it has been going every couple of weeks in some of these communities that have been very badly affected. When they go back again, it's as if no-one had ever been there to clean up because a whole lot of new rubbish has been put out, which just illustrates how much damage was done by that flood.

At the moment, we are at about 38.8 per cent of waste being diverted from landfill, although that is substantially affected by the amount of sand from the sandbags that is able to be recycled into soil. There is so much damage, in fact, to property that it is hard to see that there will be as much recycling as there would be if there were a normal demolition occurring.

So what is happening now with this organisation that has been contracted is that people with properties who had registered are being phoned individually, and appointments are being scheduled to determine the quality of the housing, whether it is secure. Those structural assessments will occur over the next few months, but each day, more and more are occurring. I will just remind people of the number: it is 1800 302 787 for people to ring if they have any concerns about their properties.

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