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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-05-18 Daily Xml
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ARKAROOLA WILDERNESS SANCTUARY

The Hon. M. PARNELL (17:07): I move:

That this council—

1. Notes that it has been almost 40 months since the initial discovery of illegal waste disposal and vandalism by Marathon Resources in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary; and

2. Calls for the state government to urgently guarantee permanent protection for the iconic and majestic mountains of Arkaroola.

The future of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary still hangs in the balance. Members will recall the process that the government went through some time ago entitled Seeking a Balance. That process was roundly criticised as being flawed, based on a flawed premise and it came up with a flawed result. Ultimately, the government, quite rightly, abandoned that process.

The 'Seeking a Balance' document was roundly condemned, not least of which by the vast majority of submissions that were made against the document, including some of the very high quality submissions made by scientists, including those from the South Australian Museum.

As part of that process, the Greens, and others, conservation groups in particular, pressured the government to publish the submissions that were made to that inquiry. Those submissions were mostly published, with one significant exception, and that exception was the submission of Marathon Resources. It refused to allow its submission to be published.

So, I sought that document under the Freedom of Information Act. It was not a fishing expedition. I asked for the document by name. It took no time for the department to find it, but they denied access. Eventually, the question of whether the document should be provided went to the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman ordered that the document be released.

My argument to the Ombudsman as to why the Marathon submission to Seeking a Balance should be released was quite simple, and the Ombudsman accepted it. My submission was that this was a submission from a publicly listed company to a public consultation process conducted by public agencies to help determine public policy over access to public land, and that makes it in the public interest. The Ombudsman had no difficulty agreeing with that.

However, after finally receiving a copy of the Marathon submission, I wonder why I bothered, because it is a remarkably underwhelming document. I am not just referring to the items that were blacked out, as we expect with freedom of information applications, so we will never know whether the numbers that were blacked out in that document show any inconsistency in financial advice given to the stock exchange and to the state government. We simply cannot do that analysis; yet the document was underwhelming.

The general thrust of the Marathon Resources submission is that it was being treated unfairly and that its unfair treatment would somehow impact negatively on the rest of the mining industry. It claimed that other states would benefit from the situation in South Australia. Of course, it had no answer to the question of how that would happen given that South Australia's resources are in South Australia. It somehow reminds one of the Charles Dickens coal barons who were going to cast their pits into the sea. Nevertheless, Marathon saw itself as the victim in this whole process.

The first thing to note about Marathon's submission is that the dumping scandal—the waste in the wilderness and the fluorite theft—is not mentioned, except as a reference in passing when it complains that the landscape survey, which was part of the Seeking a Balance process, was conducted during a period of negative publicity surrounding Marathon's rectification works. Mind you, it does not go into any detail as to why rectification works were required in the first place. The company also conveniently ignores the fact that the government amendments to the Mining Act were triggered by its own behaviour, but it was prepared to criticise the document for not referring to the latest amendments to the Mining Act.

Marathon also missed the very obvious point that the entire Seeking a Balance exercise was first and foremost a response—albeit a half-baked response—to community outrage over its own disgraceful practices. But what the company does instead is trot out the social licence to operate argument. It shows no hint of shame and it does not acknowledge that the arguments it uses now are exactly the same as the ones it used before and during the illegal waste dumping and the fluorite theft. The company seems to have forgotten the inadequate mea culpa that it issued in its 'Learning from waste in the wilderness' document.

The other point to note about the Marathon submission is that the company has come clean—I guess perhaps for the first time—in relation to its desire to see the class A environment protection measures removed from our planning laws. In fact, I think it was working on the assumption that those rules would go. Marathon has effectively admitted in its submission that it could not hope to meet the provisions of the class A zone. To remind members, the class A zone are those provisions in the relevant planning scheme that effectively say that mining should only occur in that zone in the most extraordinary of circumstances, none of which are likely to be met. Marathon says in its submission:

The current planning arrangements for environmental zone class A are clearly heavily weighted in favour of poorly defined high-value environmental criteria.

So, that is complaint number one—the environment gets more of a guernsey than it would like. They go on to say:

Because of Arkaroola's environmental zone class A status, a potentially very large and valuable resource may never be developed because of a potential failure to meet the multiple criteria test.

What is remarkable is that this claim is from a company that has consistently argued that the existing regulatory structures are entirely adequate and do not need to be improved, so that is a remarkable argument for them to mount.

The submission also quite arrogantly, and I think insultingly, makes the assertion that the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary is dependent on their patronage in order to survive. Marathon says that Arkaroola must be either 'underwritten by government handouts' or have the mining industry 'supplement tourist activities'. My irony meter starts to squeal very loudly when I hear the mining industry complain about government handouts, and you need look no further than the diesel rebate subsidy which, at a million litres a day, will provide a great deal of wealth in relation to the Olympic Dam expansion. They have a nerve talking about public subsidies, even when they are wrong.

The next thing to note is that the company complains about the flawed science in 'Seeking a Balance', and that is the one area on which we agree. The science was flawed, but it was flawed in every respect and was criticised by conservation interests and science interests as much as by anyone else, and I think the government did the right thing by abandoning that process. In fact, when you look at the submissions that were freely published, the South Australian Museum submission absolutely wipes the floor with the Marathon submission and, in fact, the 'Seeking a Balance' document itself.

The Marathon submission then goes on to argue that Reg Sprigg would have been in favour of their mining project, and it does this by cherry picking some quotes they found from 1973. They then found some more quotes from Reg Sprigg from 1984 on the vagaries of the tourism business. We all know that all industries have vagaries, but it is fairly desperate to have to go back that far. They did not attempt to procure any more recent occupancy or viability figures in relation to the Arkaroola tourism venture.

There is a chart on page 33 of the Marathon submission which, as much as I would like it to be, is not in a form suitable for incorporation into Hansard simply because of the way it is structured and it is not purely statistical. However, this chart is a remarkable document that seeks to describe the potential consequences of Seeking a Balance; in other words, what would happen if the Seeking a Balance recommendations were implemented, which include declaring some small areas off limits to mining but allowing mining in other areas. Here are some of the things they say will result from that.

The first one is that they say there will be a confidence boost to anti-mining groups, who will be energised, somehow suggesting that, if the environment ever manages to win over an exploitation argument, that somehow is bad for society because the people who have advocated environment protection will be energised. They also say that there is a risk of this plan being replicated in other regions, in other words, that planning will be undertaken for the protection of the environment elsewhere in the state. What a dreadful outcome that would be!

They also claim that, if the environment were to be taken too seriously, this would represent concessions to minority voices. I do not know whether they read the same opinion polls that I do, or whether they have looked at the vast bulk of the submissions that were made, but it seems fairly clear to me—and I think to most members—that conserving the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary is a far more popular outcome than exploiting the relatively small mineral deposits that may be there.

The Marathon submission suggests that the whole exercise of increasing environmental protection in the Arkaroola area is some sort of concession to special pleading. Interestingly, they try to argue that there is nothing particularly special about the North Flinders Ranges that warrants any form of special intervention. They say, 'Marathon considers that the frequent description of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary'—and they say in brackets 'legally a pastoral lease'—'as iconic is wrong or misleading'.

Well, clearly Marathon Resources differs from a great number of people in South Australia, including those who hand out awards for tourism, because this is a special part of South Australia. You only have to look at the range of champions lined up to protect Arkaroola: it is, indeed, a special place; it is iconic, and images of Arkaroola feature prominently in tourist literature right through the state—not for no reason, but because it is a majestic and iconic place.

In conclusion, it has now been some 40 months since the initial discovery of the illegal waste disposal and vandalism by Marathon Resources in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. It is now time for the government to decide how it is going to permanently protect this area. Delay in making this decision is not fair on anyone. It is not fair on the community, it is not fair on the Sprigg family who manage the wilderness sanctuary, and it is not fair on Marathon's shareholders, as well.

The permanent protection of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary will be applauded by an overwhelming majority of South Australians. Finally, I will say now that we have had this debate over Arkaroola in this chamber many times; all members are very familiar with the arguments, so I state now that it is my intention to bring this motion to a vote on Wednesday 8 June.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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