HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-09-26 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Yorke Peninsula Ecotourism

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:16): Footy season has finished—it certainly will be on Saturday when the grand final will be played. Spring is in the air and summer is on its way which means, of course, that it is time for tourism season in the wonderful electorate of Narungga. We are heavily reliant on tourism in our part of the world. It is one of the only other dominant industries that we have, aside from agriculture, and so we are desperately hoping for a successful tourism season, considering the dry winter that we have had for broadacre farmers.

Yorke Peninsula is, I think, an underdeveloped tourism asset. I do not think it necessarily receives the attention from the advertisers in Adelaide that it should and, as a result, we would like to think that we could attract more intrastate visitors than we ordinarily do. Notwithstanding that, we know that it has a tremendous brand salience in South Australia itself. I met with the YP tourism officer only last week, who informed me that it is a 98 per cent brand salience in the state of South Australia. I think that would accord with the wonderful views of everyone in this room about how positive it is, and it shows the wonderful asset that we have on our hands there.

As I said, it has been a dry winter and we do need strong tourism visits to ensure that our local economy can continue to thrive. Hopefully we get that this year and hopefully plenty of people come up and visit.

There are a couple of things that need addressing in the meantime, or hopefully can be addressed as soon as possible. The first one is that since COVID we have seen this incredible rise in the popularity of beach camping. It is an absolute sight to behold nowadays. When you fly over Wauraltee Beach on a long weekend, or you visit Flaherty Beach on a public holiday, it is a really extraordinary thing to see the number of caravans and visitors we have there camping, and basically unfettered. There is not a great deal of regulation or policing about those who camp there and the habits they keep. It really is basically a free-for-all, and I can imagine what the attraction is for the people who do visit. I can see how that would be a thing that would attract a large number of people to it.

We need to be aware, and I know this parliament has been advised about it before, of the side-effects of that increase in popularity. There are extraordinary numbers of people there who all have to ensure their waste gets disposed of properly and they all have to make sure they look after the native environment and care for the dune system that we have there. Unfortunately, with the pure number of people who are there that does not always happen and the lack of policing makes that problem all the worse. We need to see a bit of action from the government. I do not necessarily have the perfect answer, but we need to see some action or some trials to address that problem; bring it into order and make sure that damage is not being done to the environment.

I know Perlubie Beach on the EP has a wonderful set-up there with the facilities required. It is a really attractive camp destination, so perhaps that is a precedent that can be followed at other beaches around the state. We need to see some action. There have been plenty of people living along those beaches who have been pushing for quite some time, and it is time to act.

YP Council, to their credit, have done a coastal management strategy and one of the ideas they have put forward is to have a one-month or two-month shutdown of Flaherty Beach to ensure that it can recover and recuperate and not too much damage is done. Credit to them for trying something, but if that does happen it will place even more stress on other beaches around the electorate, and that will result in even more caravans and more people camping on them and greater damage being done. We need to try something. This is another call to action. I know it is on the minister's agenda; we have talked about it. Here's hoping we can get something done sooner rather than later.

The other thing I have been pushing for, which is more of a proactive measure and has not quite come to fruition yet, is that I would love to see a ferry between Adelaide and Yorke Peninsula. It has been trialled in the past with limited success, but I think that a ferry from Adelaide to the southern part of the peninsula, perhaps Port Vincent, would open it up to even more tourism and provide more opportunity for people to get straight down to the bottom and provide opportunity for the local economy down there.

We have met with SeaLink, who did not think it was a financial and commercial investment at this stage, but I would like to keep pushing that idea. Perhaps it might take government investment or subsidy in the initial years to get it going, get it up and running and provide a commercial case study for someone who might well take it over thereafter, but I think the benefits of that would be tremendous and I really hope that we can one day reach a position where it is possible.

It is a big tourism season coming up in Narungga. There are a couple of things that I would like to see government do or assist with in the short term to try to drive tourism because, as I said, we are heavily reliant on agriculture in our electorate and the more that we can diversify our local economy, the more it is safeguarded from seasonal dangers like we are seeing this year and the difficulties we have seen this year. It will make Narungga just that bit stronger economically and just that bit more affluent for those of us who live there.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT