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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-11-09 Daily Xml
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NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: ADELAIDE AND MOUNT LOFTY RANGES NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT REGION FACT FINDING VISIT

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (16:20): I move:

That the report of the committee, on Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Region Fact Finding Visit, be noted.

This report of the committee's fact-finding visit to the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management region was conducted on 13 July 2011. This was the committee's second NRM region visit for 2010-11, following the arid lands visit in November 2010. The committee's aim is to visit at least two regions each year in order to ensure that it can visit all eight regions at least once within a four-year parliamentary term.

Compared to the arid lands, the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM region is relatively small; however, the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges region is still the size of a small European nation, and importantly, includes the majority of the state's population. This year, at the suggestion of our hosts, committee members visited several locations in the northern NRM region.

The Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges northern NRM group area extends from the costal mangroves and samphire flats of Gulf St Vincent to the Western Mount Lofty Ranges in the east. The Western Mount Lofty Ranges is currently in the final stages of a prescription of its surface and groundwater resources, a process that has been ongoing for nearly a decade.

The prescription process involved many challenges for the Adelaide Mount Lofty Ranges board, including the prescription and licensing of farm dams, watercourses and bores, which has met with opposition from a number of landholders. As well as water resources management, the board also expends its significant financial resources on coastal and land management, as well as stormwater recycling.

Committee members heard that many rural hobby farmers purchase their properties without fully appreciating the time and financial commitment required to properly manage their blocks. This reportedly leads to Hills blocks changing hands on an average of seven years as people tire of the workload. The board's local district officers work with landholders to try and assist them with their land management practices and farm yields.

The board also provides training programs where participants learn about land rehabilitation, stocking rates, pest management, bushland conservation, etc. Members heard that, in a recent board survey, 95 per cent of respondents reported that the support they received allowed them to make significant improvements to their property's natural resources management.

However, the most important take-home message of the visit related to the samphire flats—a large costal strip of land lying between Port Adelaide and Port Wakefield, representing the largest area of remnant native vegetation in the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges region. This land is the final destination for a number of migratory birds, including the black-tailed godwit, red-necked stint and the wood sandpiper, which travel annually all the way from Siberia to escape the northern winter.

It was distressing, although perhaps unsurprising, to hear that vital stopping points of these birds in South-East Asia were gradually being lost. However, more surprising to many of the committee was the fact that their destination habitat here in South Australia was also under threat from encroaching housing and industry, uncontrolled access by off-road vehicles, and vandalism. To make matters worse, sea level rise due to climate change could lead to the construction of seawalls along the coast, resulting in the destruction and extinction of local mangroves.

To counter these threats, the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board is working closely with national parks and wildlife rangers and local councils to repair fences and revegetate the area. Police are also involved. As long as fences are maintained, then police have the power to stop vehicles entering and causing damage.

There is an existing conservation park at Port Gawler. This committee has recommended that the park be expanded to include more of the samphire flats and that a campaign be developed to promote the importance of critical coastal habitat. It is not too late to protect the samphire flats and preserve their important role in the final destination of migratory seabirds. In doing so, we could be addressing our obligation under the China-Australia and Japan-Australia migratory bird agreements.

I wish to thank all those who gave their time to assist the committee with this tour and report. I commend the presiding member, the Hon. Steph Key, and the members of the committee, Mr Geoff Brock, the Hon. Robert Brokenshire, the Hon. John Dawkins, Mrs Robyn Geraghty MP, Mr Lee Odenwalder MP, Mr Don Pegler MP and Mr Dan van Holst Pellekaan MP, as well as the former committee members, the Hons Russell Wortley and Paul Holloway, for their contributions. All members have worked cooperatively on this report. Finally, I should thank the secretariat, who did such a good job.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (16:27): I rise to briefly support the remarks of the Hon. Mr Kandelaars and, in doing so, I say, like the Hon. Mr Holloway before him, that it is difficult to stand up and move these reports when you have not participated in them. I thank him for his remarks as a third person.

I will be brief, but I thank the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board, their CEO, Mr Kym Good, and other staff for the time that they spent showing the committee a number of the sites and projects within the northern part of their area, as the Hon. Mr Kandelaars said, on 13 July this year. The committee did start its day at the Botanic Gardens wetlands and then at the First Creek gauging station. I did not join the party until the visit at Port Gawler.

As the Hon. Mr Kandelaars said, that visit did focus on that part of what is the unique samphire coast on the eastern edge of Gulf St Vincent. It was interesting to me, someone who once had to plod up and down the sand at Port Gawler for football practice. It was actually nice to see that the area has been cared for by some fencing in the right places and some vigilance on some of the off-road vehicle activities that have occurred there over many years. It is good to see some of the recovery of that samphire coast.

One of the great problems with degradation in Port Gawler from off-road vehicles was the fact that the business that is run there for bikes and other off-road vehicles was closed down for a number of years because of litigation issues. I am well aware of the problems that those people had because they did and, I think, now do provide an alternative for people undertaking those activities in places where we would prefer them not to.

I commend the board for their work in that coastal area. Certainly, they have a range of different areas within their region and the Port Gawler and Middle Beach areas are vastly different to the coastal areas in the metropolitan area and on the Fleurieu Peninsula, which is also in the same board area.

From Port Gawler, we travelled to a property at Penfield Road in Virginia to meet a number of growers involved with a sustainable agriculture program. I acknowledge the efforts of the NRM board with the Virginia Horticulture Centre and with other officers who are looking to make very sustainable horticultural industries on very small areas of land in that vicinity. We saw some very improvised methods of growing a wide variety of crops in that area. Of course, the area is well known for its improvisation over many years. I know a large range of people from that region who have done extraordinarily well, and this short visit we had was another example of that enterprise in the Virginia region.

We then moved to Gawler where we had lunch with a number of representatives of the local NRM group for the northern area and heard about land management programs and other work that is being done with community groups in that part of the NRM board's district. From there, we travelled to Humbug Scrub. That is one of my favourite place names in South Australia, and I have raised that area in this place in the past. For some time, there was a delay by this government in handing over some crown land at Humbug Scrub into the adjacent Para Wirra national park, but I am glad to say that that did eventually happen.

We spent some time with the members of what is known as the Glenburnie Cluster of volunteers within the northern NRM group in that area. We inspected some of the work that has been undertaken to remove pest plants in that area and to improve overall the natural grasses and other features of that area.

We were very grateful to Mr Mike and Mrs Patsy Johnson for the time that they gave us in allowing us to be on their property, which is bounded by the South Para River in some very severe country. Mr and Mrs Johnson are well known as stalwarts of the Friends of Para Wirra national park, and it is most appropriate that they have such a close involvement with the NRM board in that area.

We also then went to a property near Kersbrook, up over the other side of the range, owned by the Bygott family. Here, as I think the Hon. Mr Kandelaars mentioned, we saw an instance where a family had gone into a small farm enterprise and probably saw the effects of degradation that had impacted on the property as a result of previous management. It was good to see the way in which the Bygott family had improved the property. Despite the fact that they had, in my view, relatively intensive numbers of sheep on that property, they seemed to have it in good heart. I was pleased to see that when we had strong evidence of the fact that, when they had taken the property over (only a relatively short time earlier), it had been in a much poorer state.

That was a good example of how the NRM board and other agencies, including PIRSA, can assist people who either retire to a small farm or who are running a small farming enterprise as well as working off the property. As we know, in the greater Adelaide area and also in the outer rim of some of our larger country centres, there is a greater prevalence of those small farms. Certainly, in my farming days, there were a large number of those enterprises in the Lewiston area that were near me. I think a lot of people go on to a small farm like that with the best of intentions but they do not always understand the issues.

We were pleased to hear from the Bygott family that they had been given quite a good deal of assistance and that they were working towards having their property in good heart, as I said, which was far better in comparison to what it had been.

Once again, I would like to thank the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board for the time that they took to spend with us that day. As the Hon. Mr Kandelaars said, it is important for the committee to get out and visit the various NRM boards—that contrasts with being at William Creek and places like that to going and seeing something at the Botanic Gardens. With those few words, I support the motion.

Motion carried.

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