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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-02 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

River Murray Flood

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (15:10): I rise to reflect on the 2022-23 River Murray flood and its obvious effect on river communities from the Victorian border down to the mouth of the river. Certainly, there were many different reactions and many different management styles in regard to managing different places along the river, and I certainly want to reflect on as part of that the Lower Murray Reclaimed Irrigation Area (LMRIA) and the women of the LMRIA, who held an event recently rising up from the floods. It was a great portrait show of photographs from during the floods to show how people managed situations, whether their houses were cut off, whether they were part of the thousands of hectares that were flooded or other activities they had to do to manage their properties.

Obviously, Mannum to Wellington is where the Lower River Murray levees are. It is 107 kilometres. Some are government levees and some are private levees. There are 27 levees, and 20 of these levees were overtopped or breached. Certainly, in regard to the different management structures up and down the river, depending on who was in charge and how bureaucratic it got, they were managed in quite different ways.

I remember talking to the chief executive officer of the Renmark council, and it was interesting that during the floods you really saw how Renmark is an island—literally an island—and the only way they protected that was getting right into it. I said to him, 'How many tonnes of clay did you move?' He said, '150,000 tonnes.' I said, 'Where did you get it?' He said, 'Wherever we could.' They did all they could to protect their community. I saw that repeated at Berri Barmera, where they had to do work and put a levee bank at Lake Bonney as well. At Waikerie, work was done on levees there as well. You then get down to Mannum where the government put in DefenCell to protect the town along the riverbank.

We get to Mypolonga, and on a Friday afternoon I was notified by a constituent I needed to talk to: Ash Martin. There was a real issue about to hit Mypolonga. Anyway, I went down, sorted it out and contacted John Schutz directly. He was the head of the department of environment at the time. He said, 'I will contact the council.' He contacted the Rural City of Murray Bridge, and they said there was not a problem. Well, there was a problem. I connected Ash Martin to John Schutz. I also sent a text to Minister Szakacs at the time and the Premier. I had contact with someone over the weekend and even talked to the mining and energy minister on the Sunday. So between the Friday and the Monday we managed to get things cleared off so that we could dig that clay and get that 700 metres of levee bank built at Mypolonga, and I thank the government for their support in getting that done.

We get to Murray Bridge, where the rowing club was co-funded by state, federal and local government. Initially, the local government were only going to get DefenCell in front of the rowing club and I said, 'What about the community club right next door?' Next thing that was supplied, thankfully, so that the community club could be saved as well. But I think where bureaucracy really got in the way was there were some pumps under the Swanport Bridge for the local Murray Bridge Racing Club and a local irrigator, and I rang Chris Beattie from the SES and I said, 'We need some DefenCell.' He said, 'Yes, I will get it.' We had that supplied. All we needed was for the Rural City of Murray Bridge council to fill them up. Well, they would not do it—too much risk. So guess what happened? There were 70-year-old volunteers down there filling 36 tonne of sandbags so that they could protect those pumps from flooding. This just exemplifies the different way things were managed along the river.

The Mid Murray also did some amazing work, working all weekends and into the night protecting assets, especially when their rowing club got flooded. We must get bureaucracy out of the way when the reality is things are happening and we must protect people and people's assets. I must say during the emergency management time I could work directly with heads of government agencies to make sure things happened.

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