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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-26 Daily Xml
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Marion Bay Boat Ramp

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:11): I rise today to make a contribution about an unfortunate incident unfolding down at the bottom of Yorke Peninsula, and that is the state of the Marion Bay boat ramp. It can be a difficult thing for a government or council to admit that an infrastructure program, which has been the benefit of some significant investment, has not necessarily gone to plan and the outcome has not achieved the goal it set out to, but unfortunately that is the case at Marion Bay. I think now, as a council and as a member of this state parliament, we need to admit that it has not worked and that we might need to go back to the drawing board to come up with an alternate solution to serve the people who use that boat ramp.

It is quite unfortunate. That boat ramp was the subject of calls over many years for an upgrade. It has long been considered faulty down there, and it must be said that the YP Council does deserve credit for undertaking that work. As I said, it has been the subject of some longstanding calls for improvement, and the YP Council acted on it with investment from the better boating facilities fund and endeavoured to try to fix that ramp. Unfortunately, the product that we have now provided the boaties of southern Yorke Peninsula is not fit for purpose and the condemnation is widespread. Almost everyone I talk to finds it unusable and unsafe, and we now need to look at what we can do to make it better and more usable.

Over the past few weeks, I have had significant consultation with different people to see what they think. I headlined that by visiting Marion Bay the other day and had a chat to the community about what the popular view is amongst them, and it was quite clear that some changes needed to be made. The chief concern amongst the people who use the ramp is that the rows of pylons that populate both sides of the ramp, each side of the ramp—so four rows of pylons—can create a reasonably unsafe environment from which to try to launch a boat. It is a relatively unprotected ramp, with swells rising quite often and boaties finding themselves battered up against those poles in between their boats, leaving them in quite a dangerous situation.

It is not just about their personal safety but also about the danger to their boats. They might get dented, scratched or worse as a result of that swell buffeting the boats against the poles, so people would like to see those poles removed. They also object to the pedestrian ramp that is down the middle of the boat ramp as they feel it is holding up seaweed and creating a massive deposit of wrack on the ramp, making it all the more difficult to use. It has resulted in a person having to go daily to clear wrack off the ramp so it can be used but, by the time those boats get back in after their day at sea, they often find that the seaweed has returned and the ramp is unusable again.

I mention that I have consulted with the community. I know Ryan from Reef Encounters Fishing Charters has been leading the charge against this ramp. Being a charter boat operator, he has a relatively big boat that he tries to launch from there and he is finding it extremely difficult to launch it. Such is the narrowness of the ramp between those rows of piles he is finding it very dangerous and very difficult to launch and would like to see those poles removed almost immediately. It is causing his business great distress and it is making it very difficult for him to take people out and show them the wonderful waters off Marion Bay.

I also spoke to Asher from RecFish SA and he is experiencing the same feedback that I am experiencing from his membership, that being that it is tremendously unusable and unsafe. He also would join the chorus, I think, in saying that it needs to change and there needs to be reinvestment to try to realign the ramp with what the people who live down there and use that ramp expect, and I know that his membership have encouraged change as well, and he is working behind the scenes with the government and with the council to try to make that happen.

Importantly, and just as a final mention for the people I have spoken to, I talked to the flotilla leader of the Edithburgh Sea Rescue. This is a flotilla that has responsibility for the southern part of the peninsula and has launched their boat from that ramp previously, but they have discovered and they have determined that they will no longer be doing it. In their estimation it is unsafe for their membership to do it and they will not take their boat down to Marion Bay to launch from that new ramp.

That leaves us in a tremendously dangerous spot. That means from Edithburgh all the way around to Port Vic on the other side will not have sea rescue coverage if someone were to get in trouble in their boat off the coastline. So that is a really pressing concern. I commend the Edithburgh flotilla for having the courage to make a stand and say that they are not going to put their membership in harm's way, but it leaves us in a very short spot.

I would like some accountability for how we have managed to find ourselves in this position. Council deserve credit for undertaking this work and answering the community's call, but they are not experts in marine design. The engineers that supply these design options to council that they can choose from to construct this ramp need to be held accountable for the designs that they submitted. How on earth they were able to submit this plan, which was so obviously deficient and which the community suspected would be as such right from the get-go, is a real travesty, and I hope there is some accountability and some adjustment moving forward so that we are not left in this spot going forward and that the designs presented to future councils are fit for purpose for the area that they intend to serve.

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