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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-10-27 Daily Xml
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Reservoir Recreational Fishing

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY (14:46): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation questions with regard to offline reservoirs.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY: Prior to the 2014 state election, the government announced plans to open offline reservoirs to recreational fishers at Warren, Bundaleer, Baroota, Tod and Hindmarsh Valley. My questions are:

1. Can the minister advise the progress for each of these sites and when they will be open for recreational fishers?

2. Can the minister provide details of other offline reservoirs that have been opened for recreational purposes?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:47): Thank you, Mr President. I was just writing down the names of those five reservoirs from memory. I just got to three, but I will work on the rest in a moment.

I thank the honourable member for his most important question. The offline reservoirs have been a matter of some discussion between government and members of the community for some time. Particularly, I seem to recall the former member for Schubert, Mr Ivan Venning, had a view about this which he prosecuted with a previous minister—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: And our former president.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Sorry?

The Hon. K.J. Maher: Bob Sneath.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Really? Our former president, I think, has thrown in his lot as well. We know that a number of people in South Australia enjoy fishing as a pastime. The government has therefore committed over $3 million over three years from 2014-15 to help increase opportunities for recreational fishing in South Australia.

Part of that funding package includes $750,000 over three years for recreational fishing grants programs, $600,000 for an artificial reef trial and $200,000 per year for two years to provide fishing access at up to five offline reservoirs across the state.

The first call for recreational fishing grants was made in April 2015. Following the eight-week call, over 80 applications were received which was pretty healthy indeed. The first round of grants has been underway and has recently been issued, I think, on 8 October. Round 2 of the grants, for anybody who is interested, will be opening in January of next year and I expect it will be a very competitive field.

In terms of SA Water reservoirs that are not currently used for the direct supply of drinking water and are being investigated for recreational fishing, the Warren, Bundaleer, Baroota, Tod and Hindmarsh Valley reservoirs were the five on the list. The state government has established the Reservoir Recreational Fishing Taskforce to oversee the project, allocating $400,000 for minor infrastructure, including toilets, picnic benches, fencing, etc. We are working very closely with local government, of course, which has control of the access areas to those reservoirs—car parks and minor roads, for example. The taskforce is working with RecFish SA and councils to prioritise opportunities to identify infrastructure needs at each reservoir.

On 23 June the government awarded two grants of $20,000 each to support this initiative, I understand. The first was to The Barossa Council to support the provision of minor infrastructure and develop a master plan to support recreational fishing in the Warren Reservoir, which is south of Williamstown. The second was to the Port Lincoln High School to study the environmental condition of the Tod Reservoir, located approximately 27 kilometres north of Port Lincoln, to determine the most appropriate species of fish that might be used to stock this reservoir for recreational fishing.

By way of an aside, SA Water has advised me that there needs to be some remedial works on the reservoir wall to bring it up to standard and, of course, that may delay any access to recreational fishing at the Tod. We are continuing to work with all stakeholders on these important projects. There is a lot of community excitement about this. I understand, Hon. Mr Darley, if you are very interested, you can go and drop a line at the Warren Reservoir right now and try your luck.

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