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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-07-15 Daily Xml
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CLAYTON BAY

The Hon. M. PARNELL (17:12): I move:

That this council—

1. Notes the establishment of the Fresh Water Embassy at Clayton Bay on 28 June 2009 and congratulates the River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group Inc. on this important initiative;

2. Notes that the Fresh Water Embassy was established to represent all the fresh water species, all the Ngarrindjeri totems and all the places and communities that will suffer as regulators, weirs, bunds and embankments divide up an interconnected ecosystem;

3. Calls on the Premier of South Australia and the Minister for Water Security to establish diplomatic relations between the Government of South Australia and the Fresh Water Embassy with a view to ensuring a fresh water solution to the crisis facing the River Murray, the Lower Lakes and the Coorong; and

4. Urges the state government to prioritise fresh water flows and bioremediation over engineering solutions such as the regulators currently being constructed at Clayton Bay and proposed for the Finniss River and Currency Creek.

This motion is in four parts, and I will go through each of them separately. First of all, the motion calls on this council to note the establishment of the freshwater embassy at Clayton Bay on 28 June 2009 and congratulates the River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group Incorporated on this important initiative. It is unusual to see embassies created in South Australia. We know we have consulates here, and later on we will be debating a very important consulate and trying to make sure it stays in South Australia, but this is an embassy. It falls into that category of embassies similar to the one that was established outside the Old Parliament House in Canberra back in the 1970s, the original Aboriginal Land Rights Embassy.

The embassy, for those who have not seen it at the Goolwa, consists of not terribly substantial infrastructure. There are three flags flying from the headland, and the local council picnic shelter has been cleaned up and modified to become an embassy headquarters. An ambassador by the name of Ngori, who happens to be a pelican, has been appointed and I am told regularly surveys the Lower Lakes and Coorong region.

The embassy is an important symbolic initiative, and it has also received recognition by some of this state's most important conservation groups, including the peak umbrella body for conservation groups in this state, the Conservation Council. At its awards ceremony recently, attended by the Hon. Jay Weatherill, the Minister for Environment and Conservation, who actually presented the awards, the Jill Hudson award for environmental conservation was presented, and one of the joint winners was the River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group.

The minister pointed out at the time that it is not a group that he necessarily always agrees with, but he was happy to present what is in effect South Australia's only peer awarded conservation award. There is no shortage of conservation awards out there where people self-nominate and panels of bureaucrats make decisions. The Conservation Council awards are awards where conservationists themselves decide who the deserving recipients are. So, we should be congratulating the River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group on the initiative.

The second part of the motion basically calls on us to note that the Fresh Water Embassy was established to represent all the fresh water species, all the Ngarrindjeri totems and all the places and communities that will suffer as regulators, weirs, bunds and embankments divide up an interconnected ecosystem. It is no news to members that the voiceless creatures with which we share our state do need their champions to represent them. Anyone who has been down to the Lower Lakes cannot have failed to be moved by the work that some of the schoolchildren have done there with the turtles.

They capture turtles in the lakes. The turtles are usually close to death because they are covered with tube worms, which need to be carefully removed. The turtles are not released back into the Lower Lakes where they would just be infested again but are released into other locations. There are a lot of people doing a lot of work to try to save the environment of the Lower Lakes. The Ngarrindjeri people have a long and continuing association with this area, and in their media release of 18 June their representative bodies, the Ngarrindjeri Tendi Incorporated, the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee Incorporated and the Ngarrindjeri Native Title Management Committee collectively stated:

...the construction of the regulators at Clayton Bay and across the Finniss River and Currency Creek will result in the damage, disturbance and interference with their lands, waters and sky.

The quote from Mr Tom Trevorrow, Chair of the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee Incorporated, is as follows:

We will suffer pain and loss as a result of the actions of the state in proceeding with the construction of these regulators. In January 2009, we said that we did not support a weir at Clayton and that we supported an holistic approach to the problems occurring in the river, Lower Lakes and Coorong due to over-allocation of water. That is still our position, but now there are three regulators that will cut up our country and our waters...As traditional owners, we have an inherited sacred responsibility to care for the country. Our teaching is that all things are connected. The objective in undertaking activities upon Ngarrindjeri country should be to not cause violence to Ngarrindjeri culture.

I am very pleased that in the Fresh Water Embassy the Ngarrindjeri flag flies alongside the Australian flag. The third part of the motion calls on the Premier of South Australia and the Minister for Water Security to establish diplomatic relations between the government of South Australia and the Fresh Water Embassy with a view to ensuring a fresh water solution to the crisis facing the River Murray, the Lower Lakes and the Coorong.

It has not escaped me that pedants out there lacking in imagination would say, 'Well, it's impossible for a state of the commonwealth to form diplomatic relations with any entity, let alone a manufactured one such as the Fresh Water Embassy.' But I think that to take such an unimaginative approach would be missing the point. The point is that here we have local communities who are desperate to do the right thing by their local environment and to do the right thing by the traditional owners and custodians of the area. They want to see what the government says it wants to see, that is, a fresh water solution to the crisis which is facing the Lower Lakes and the river.

I do not think it is too much to ask that the government formalise that arrangement with these people, at least by key ministers, including the Premier and the water security minister, by visiting the embassy at Clayton Bay.

The final part of the motion urges the state government to prioritise freshwater flows and bioremediation over engineering solutions such as the regulators currently being constructed at Clayton Bay and proposed for the Finniss River and Currency Creek. It cannot have been lost on members that we have had the very great good fortune in the past week or so to have had considerable rain. That rain, as I understand it, is now starting to have an impact on the Lower Lakes. In addition, we have programs supported by the state government, programs that the Greens managed to secure funding for through the budget negotiations at the commonwealth level, in relation to bioremediation.

Members would have seen the photograph in The Advertiser this week with the CEO of the environment department squatting down against some growth coming up through what was the barren lake bed, showing that bioremediation works. That is the type of remedy that the local residents down there (the River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group) have been advocating and which they are, in fact, trying to implement themselves with far less resources than those available to the state government.

Bioremediation and freshwater flows are the alternative to engineering solutions. Engineering has its place but it always needs to be a last resort. We have not yet reached that stage in the Lower Lakes. The government should abandon these proposals to artificially regulate the flows and should focus instead on what many of us here have been calling for (for over a year now) which is securing freshwater flows and looking at less invasive means, such as bioremediation, to prevent the build-up of acid sulphate soils.

With those words, I congratulate the Fresh Water Embassy on its establishment. I am happy to say that the Greens have formed diplomatic relations with the embassy, and we now call on the state government to do likewise.

The Hon. DAVID WINDERLICH (17:22): I am delighted to support the motion. I was also present at the launch of the Fresh Water Embassy and, together with the Hon. Mark Parnell, undertook to bring back a motion to this council to establish relations with that embassy. I think it is a creative and imaginative approach to publicising the plight of the Lower Lakes and also showing the determination of the community that they are not going to give in.

It is a very innovative embassy in that it not only represents local people, non-indigenous people and indigenous people and, indeed, all species in the terms of the embassy. I think that probably distinguishes it from any other embassy that has been launched in the past. The embassy continues to thrive. On the weekend apparently 350 people turned up to a freshwater fish barbecue. If the state government does decide to establish diplomatic relations, there may be some culinary benefits associated with its opening of a relationship with the embassy.

Over the past few months I have organised and hosted two 'acid trips' to the Lower Lakes. They are bus trips taking people from Adelaide to look at the processes of acidification going on in the Lower Lakes, and the evidence and efforts to advance bioremediation by people in the Lower Lakes. Those two busloads of people from Adelaide have come away with two firm conclusions: one is that they have seen nature begin to heal itself and have seen the sort of green growth coming through that the Hon. Mark Parnell has described; and they have come away with questions about how accurate the science is that is being used to justify the decision for the weirs.

There are questions to be asked about the transmission of acid sulphate soils. It may be that there is a high level of acidity in a particular stretch of water but, a few metres away, vegetation can be flourishing. So, people come away wondering whether it would be best to take a more low-intervention approach rather than attempt to solve things with a one size fits all weir solution.

But the problem on the Lower Lakes—the problem that is being highlighted by the Fresh Water Embassy—is not just about the natural environment; it is also about the pain. The Hon. Mark Parnell spoke about the pain felt by indigenous people. I have been struck by the pain expressed by the non-indigenous community of the Lower Lakes—people who are losing farms or who are simply saying that the calls of the frogs and birds are declining; that the lakes are falling silent and that they can hear things in the night they did not hear before, like the sound of a fox taking a lamb when once that would have been drowned out by a cacophony of nature.

So, a social loss as well as an ecological loss is going on in this community that this community is valiantly resisting and fighting in all sorts of ways, including mainstream lobbying, writing submissions and through innovative approaches like the Fresh Water Embassy.

I detect a change of emphasis by the state government of a leaning more towards bioremediation, and that is positive. But the weir still has not been ruled out. I think it is time for us to ask questions about whether that is the solution to our water problems, because it appears to me now that even the head of the Department for Environment and Heritage is acknowledging that bioremediation is a much better solution for the Lower Lakes environment. That leaves only one justification for the weir: to safeguard Adelaide's drinking water.

However, there is reason to believe that the cure may be worse than the disease. Recently, in The Advertiser, Associate Professor Keith Walker was quoted on the danger of algal blooms in the water trapped behind the weir, because we are slowing the flow even more and, come the warm summer months, these will become ideal conditions. A slow flowing warm river—or a stagnant river because it has been cut off—are ideal conditions for algal blooms. We may be building a weir pool that is going to be choked with algal bloom, and that will be the source of Adelaide's drinking water.

That matter has not even been looked at in the draft environmental impact statement, which seems to be a striking oversight. I think we need an independent study into whether the water we are trapping behind the weir (if it goes ahead) is even going to be drinkable. The draft environmental impact statement contained a statement about the risks created by the weir to Adelaide's drinking water. Appendix 15, page 47 states:

The increase in acid production, exposure of fresh sulfidic material and mobilisation of acid that are highly likely to occur during the construction phase of the weir are in turn highly likely to accelerate the rate of exhaustion of that alkalising power and thus rapidly tip the Lakes water body into an extremely acidic state.

The key point here is that it is likely to occur 'during the construction phase of the weir'. The view of the scientist who wrote that, Dr Kerry Muller, is that the actual building of the weir can trigger acidification because, not surprisingly, if you are dealing with acid soils and then you dig them all up you are going to accelerate a process of acidification. I think there is clear doubt as to whether the weir is going to be a poison or a panacea, as The Advertiser described it.

We have a community that is suffering but fighting valiantly and succeeding with amazing effort and initiative to impose this issue on the national agenda. It is only a very small community of 2,000 people. We have an environment at risk and a solution that is of unproved worth about which some very serious and sensible questions can be asked and should be asked. In that context, I think our duty is twofold: one, to support that community in their fight—and part of what they are asking for at the moment is recognition of their embassy, and I believe we should do that and encourage our parties to do that if they have not done so already—and two, to ask some of those hard questions about whether this is an intelligent response, even for the people of Adelaide, let alone the people of the Lower Lakes. Will this solve our water problems or make the situation worse?

By establishing this Fresh Water Embassy, the people of the Lower Lakes highlight and raise these questions again. I think they have shown determination and imagination. I think it is time for us to listen, to act and to ask some of those hard questions.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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