Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 24 February 2016.)

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN ( Stuart ) ( 16:47 :40 ): Let me say very clearly that I support this bill, as I gather do all members of this house. Wild dogs are a terribly big and I believe still underestimated problem for South Australia. I am heartened to have just listened to the speech by the member for Ashford, who I know has done tremendous work with the Natural Resources Committee that she chairs, and I thank her for that. I have to say, though, that I do believe from a government and industry perspective there is still much more to do.

Wild dogs are a very emotive issue. They are a beautiful, wonderful, natural, native Australian animal, and they have a very important place in our nation—outside the Dog Fence. Inside the Dog Fence they are a declared pest and it is every landholder’s responsibility to eradicate wild dogs inside the fence, and they need the government’s help to do that, and they need industry help to do that as well.

Those two things can cause a bit of conflict because, as I said, they are beautiful, wonderful native animals. Some people do not like the idea that they should be killed anywhere in the nation. That is not my view; my view is that it is important to differentiate and we have chosen historically to make the Dog Fence the demarcation border, if you like. They cause extraordinary, vicious damage to stock. It is quite a natural thing for a dog to do; do not blame the dogs. It is their natural thing to come, when they have the opportunity, particularly when times are tougher, particularly when there has been less rain and we are in drought and native food sources start to get thinner and thinner on the ground, then stock become much more attractive.

It is primarily sheep but it is also cattle. It is important that this house understands that there is a significant percentage of deaths to cattle on cattle properties from wild dogs, and it has been proven all over Australia. It is not only sheep, but sheep are far more vulnerable. They kill and maim ferociously. It is the natural thing to do for them, it is not their fault, it is just what they do.

The big problem we have in South Australia is that over the last 15 to 20 years they have been breeding up inside the Dog Fence. The fence cannot be a perfect barrier. We need to always make it as good as it can possibly be but it cannot be a perfect barrier. There will be times when camels will knock it over or when flooding rains will knock it over and, when that happens, it is typically not possible for somebody to get in to do maintenance and upgrading work sometimes for many weeks after the damage has occurred.

Dogs come through, they typically head south. It is a natural thing to do, it is not a random thing. They do not just come through the fence and head back to where they were. In South Australia, in general, the further south you go the more rain there is, the more vegetation there is, the more flora and fauna there is and, of course, for the dogs, there is more food. So, they come south and they stay south and they have no reason to go back north.

The fence gets fixed and stops the next lot of dogs from coming through until there is more damage, but the dogs that are below the fence breed up. For many years now they have been breeding up relatively unchecked. I thank the government and the sheep industry, very importantly, for the money that has been put into the Biteback program over the last few years. It has started to make a big difference.

Of course, this is an ongoing job. It is not as if you go out and trap or shoot or poison a particular number of wild dogs and say, ‘That is good. We had 20, we have just got rid of 15, so we only have five left,’ because as soon as you take your eye off the ball that five becomes 10, 20, then 15 and 20 again very quickly. It is a forever job. It is very important that the government and the industry provide graziers with ongoing support. It has been good but the reality is that the funding that exists at the moment is about to run out at the end of June this year. I am hopeful that funding will be extended but I am not aware of any commitment that has been made yet towards that.

I think it is very important that that comes so that people know what they are doing, very importantly so that the people who have been trained as dog trackers and dog trappers can stay doing the work they are doing because, if that is what you need for your livelihood and you do not have any assurance that that is going to continue, and you get another opportunity to go and earn your money some other way, you will go and do that. Not only will we have lost the people doing the work but we will have lost those skills as well. I know people in exactly that situation who say, ‘What do I do? I need to feed my family. I have to take another job if I do not know that this one is going to continue.’

I say again, I appreciate the resources that have gone into this but it is very important that they continue. It should be just like funding for roads, schools or hospitals—it should be something that goes on forever—because the problem, unfortunately, is not going to go away until the fence is a perfect, impenetrable barrier, and of course it can never be that.

I do not know whether one of the previous speakers might have mentioned this but I read yesterday that a dog was shot near Port Neill on Eyre Peninsula, by my estimate 300 kilometres away from the closest part of the Dog Fence. I read this report yesterday, so it has only happened very recently. That is just one example in the electorate of the member for Flinders. In my electorate that sort of thing is happening all the time around Wilmington, where I live, and around Orroroo, which is south of Wilmington. People are seeing wild dogs and shooting them when they have the opportunity. It is a very serious issue.

That brings me to the substance of this bill which is about increasing the capacity for the Dog Fence Board to charge more from graziers for the maintenance of the Dog Fence, and it is very important that the house understands the connection but the difference between the funding that the member for Ashford was talking about and that I have been talking about until now which is about wild dog eradication below the Dog Fence. It includes baiting, trapping and shooting on the margins just outside the Dog Fence and in some cases much further away. That is funding for eradicating dogs from places that they should not be, as distinct from what this bill seeks to do, which is to provide the capacity to charge more for the maintenance of the fence itself.

They are two different things, and both of them are important. And, please, nobody in this place think that by raising rates the Dog Fence Board can charge for the maintenance of the fence, but then the other money does not have to be spent, because they are two different things. They are connected, they try to do similar work for the same purpose, but they are different buckets of money for different purposes within the same broader job of trying to keep livestock safe inside the Dog Fence.

I certainly do support giving the board the capacity to increase the fees that it charges, both the per kilometre fee for the maintenance of the fence itself but also the per square kilometre charge for landholders below the fence. I know that there is always some consternation for people who are well south of the fence who think, ‘Well, why should we pay this money? The fence is several hundred kilometres away from us.’ I can understand that, particularly in light of what the member for MacKillop said about charges forever growing.

The government, for many years now over many industries, has gone to this user pays system, which makes some sense when you look at it. Why should people who do not benefit pay? However, it is getting to the stage where the government is asking industries to pay for just about everything to do with their industry but they have not reduced the tax take in any other way. They have not reduced the overall burden on those people, so the people or companies, whoever they happen to be, in industries pay more now for industry-specific levies, but they also still pay the same tax as they have always paid in every other way.

It is important to understand, as the member for MacKillop tried to say and others may have said as well, that the burden just cannot keep growing and growing. The government cannot just keep saying to everybody, ‘You’re just paying a bit more for this, and you’re connected to that, so you pay another levy here and another levy there.’ It is important to understand that it is not a bottomless pit. It cannot just keep going, given that we know there is no reduction in the pre-existing taxes; it is only ever an addition in levies, taxes and charges.

Having said that, in the Port Neill example that I just mentioned there are many examples of dogs being shot in the Riverland, well below the Dog Fence particularly around the Waikerie area, which has been a real hot spot in the last few years for people with wild dogs, and also around Port Augusta, the area that I am familiar with. The reality is that we need this buffer, we need this barrier, we need all the things that we are doing—trapping, shooting, baiting, fencing—otherwise we would have dogs everywhere. We have got way too many as it is at the moment, but otherwise it would just continue and continue.

While I can understand that if a person was a grazier near Port Lincoln, Mount Gambier or Port Vincent it might seem a little bit tough to have to pay for the maintenance of the Dog Fence, but I think the reality is that those people and those grazing companies—whether it be a small family operation or a large organisation—do benefit enormously by virtue of the fact that the Dog Fence is there.

Those levies across the entire state at the moment raise, I believe, $508,000 per year. The government matches that, and I think that is a good system too. The industry has said through Livestock SA and many other organisations that they support this bill and they are prepared to say on behalf of the graziers they represent that the industry should pay more; but what is good about that is that when it is dollar for dollar the government will pay more as well.

What I would ask the minister to confirm in her opportunity to speak after this is that the government will continue to match dollar for dollar, so that when the rates that the Dog Fence Board can charge increase, if that is what the Dog Fence Board chooses to do and more money is raised directly from landholders, the government will continue to match that funding dollar for dollar as it always has.

I would not support the bill nearly as keenly if that was not the case. I do think it is very important so that the industry is contributing 50 per cent and it is asked to pay more but then the government contributes 50 per cent and by default it will pay more as well towards the same body of work. So, if the minister is able to confirm that will be the case I would be very grateful for that.

I think that I will leave it at that with a few final comments about the importance of agriculture in general. We are talking about grazing at the moment, but agriculture is our most important industry in South Australia. It is not our largest growth opportunity, and everybody in this place knows that I want to support all industries across the board, but while often the focus is on the growth industries it is important to understand that agriculture remains the largest wealth contributor to our state’s economy, and that will continue for a very long time.

As the member for Flinders once said to me about six years ago, shortly after we came into this place together: we can talk, we can argue, we can agree, we can do anything we like in here in parliament to try to improve our state’s economic prosperity, we can do anything we like in here but nothing will do it as much as whether it rains or not. If it rains and we get good rains across our entire state that dwarfs anything that the government or the opposition can do with regard to contributing to our state’s economy. If it does not rain our whole state is in trouble.

So, we should still continue to do the positive and constructive work that we do here to improve our state, whether it be social things, housing things, all the way through to business and the harder core economic things. We still need to work on all of those things, but, please, let us never forget how important agriculture is to our state, and the Dog Fence is incredibly important to agriculture in our state.

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