Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Tuesday 10 November 2009

MANAGEMENT OF TAMAR AND ESK RIVERS SELECT COMMITTEE

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Madam President, our chairman has covered it quite well but there are one or two issues that I will refer to. I am not quite sure whether our chairman mentioned the very valuable and professional support that we received from our secretary, Mr Tom Wise. It was absolutely exceptional. He went out of his way to ensure that we were looked after in the best way possible throughout the entire inquiry and we owe a lot to him.

Mr Finch - I was going to mention it in closing but I am sure he will appreciate it being mentioned often and over and over again.

Mr DEAN - It was exceptional the way he went about it and assisted us in putting all of this together, the way he spoke with our witnesses and arranged everything. It was indeed a great occasion to work with Mr Wise.

The comment made by the member for Apsley, that it is probably a Launceston City Council -

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - Through you, Madam President - when the member talked about one overarching body I said some would argue that would be the council. It was purely an observation.

Mr DEAN - I do not think there would be too many that would argue that that should be the case. I think people away from that area might argue that but I think all of those within that area who have a great knowledge of what the situation is, I doubt that they would see it that way. In fact, I would be very surprised if many saw it that way.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - I will direct them to this particular report.

Mr DEAN - Sure.

As the chairman has mentioned, this was a good committee. It was a small committee but because of our locations we were able to meet at short notice and were able to move this matter ahead very quickly. I realise there needs to be the right mix on committees and all areas probably need to be represented on a lot of the committees, but I think where a matter is probably more localised, to have a local committee is advantageous in all the circumstances and it is proven in this committee that we have just finished.

The management of the river, as the chairman has mentioned, has been ad hoc. It has been ad hoc management over a long period of time, ever since the settlement of Launceston you could argue, which is about 203 years now. There has never been one body that has a responsibility for the overall management of the Tamar River, its estuaries, the catchment and its flood plain areas. As the chairman mentioned again, you have many organisations and groups with some responsibility. That has been a concern -

Mr Parkinson - The Derwent doesn't have one.

Mr DEAN - I am not quite sure of the operations of the Derwent but I know that they have gone through -

Mr Parkinson - Mind you, it's very capable of looking after itself.

Mr DEAN - Its situation is a little bit different from that of the Tamar River. Certainly there were some siltation problems -

Mr Parkinson - It is the only river in the world you can walk across without divine intervention.

Mr DEAN - Right. But in Launceston the Tamar and its estuaries has a lot of other problems that the Derwent does not have, unfortunately.

Mr Finch - Through you, Madam President - there is a program now that covers the Derwent Estuary under the chairmanship of Scott Gadd.

Mr DEAN - Yes, that is TEER.

Mr Finch - Yes, TEER is modelled on the Derwent Estuary Program.

Mr DEAN - So there is some support for what is now happening there.

It has been fragmented for a time and with all of those bodies that are currently involved there has always been that situation of the blame game on problems related to the river - who is really responsible for them, who should have attended to them and who should have fixed them. That has gone on for a long, long time. If you want better information on that then all you need to do is sit in on a Launceston City Council meeting when this issue is being discussed - and it is discussed, unfortunately, on a fairly regular basis. There are some issues in relation to the flood plain, the levees and all the silt getting washed up and the question always arises of who is responsible. 'It is not my responsibility, that is the responsibility of somebody else' and it goes on and on to such an extent that good management of the river has not been moving forward. If we had had a single statutory authority in place a number of years ago, not only would we have seen vast improvements, but we would have also seen better management and better handling of the money that is currently made available to the council for cleaning up the silt from the river.

In fact many people argue, Madam President, that the siltation is currently occurring at a greater rate than we are taking silt out of the river. I think that the honourable member for Rosevears mentioned this at the opening of his address on this matter - that siltation in the river is now probably worse than it has ever been. If you ask Mr Errol Stewart, whose name has been mentioned a few times here today, he will say that is certainly the case. He lives and works on the Tamar River. He has a number of developments right on the Tamar River and he does a lot of his own dredging of the Tamar River to try to protect these developments and to provide some reasonable access to the marina and other parts of his developments. So he knows what is going on and that is what he and a number of others have told us. So we cannot afford to sit back and just let this go on into the future as it is now. We need to do something about it now.

Once again, as the chairman mentioned, the witnesses coming forward were very open and very strong in their views, in the main, that we need one authority that is properly funded to ensure the integrity of this area into the long-term future.

Mr Gaffney - Through you, Madam President - I thank the honourable member for mentioning the matter. Did the committee look at what funds have been made available, say over the last 15 years, and from what sources, so that we could see where this funding has gone to in the past? Did the committee look at the funding that had come into the area and whose responsibility it was and what has actually happened with that?

Mr DEAN - Throughout the hearings we certainly discussed funding sources, the funding that is provided to the Launceston City Council and the annual funding that they receive from the State Government in relation to the siltation problem, the funding of the other bodies, including NRM, of the TEER program and of all of the other organisations that are involved.

Mr Wing - Including UTRIA?

Mr DEAN - Yes, UTRIA, which is the Upper Tamar group that was set up to address the siltation and the management of the river. That is a council group but it also includes independent persons from outside of the council. I do not know whether we specifically -

Mr Finch - It's not detailed in the report.

Mr DEAN - No - put an amount on the funding that is coming in all over.

Mr Gaffney - So that means that all the money that was going to the council or to the NRM will now come into this one body.

Mr DEAN - That is what we are saying - that the funding that is currently being made to all of the different groups would go to this single statutory authority that would be responsible. The NRM funding should be subsumed into this new organisation, the NRM should become part of it and all of the other organisations that have some part to play should be subsumed into this body.

Mr Gaffney - My last question is, would therefore any funding that has been allocated for that purpose go to that new organisation after it has been set up and be looked after by that body?

Mr DEAN - That is our position and I think that we have made some comment on that in the recommendations about the funding. We have also identified there that there are other funding sources that this committee could tap into or at least consider. There is some Federal Government funding that they would probably have opportunity to move into as well. I might add - and it is an interesting point, I am pleased that you have raised it and the Chairman and the member for Launceston might want to discuss this further - we struggled with this one for a long time over how this body should be funded. For it to be attractive to the Government, we realised that we as a committee needed to look at options other than total State Government funding year in, year out. There should be other avenues and other opportunities of funding for the operation of this body.

Lots of ideas have been raised on how to provide funding for this body, for instance, the council putting a certain percentage on rates. I think that this idea would be fraught with danger and that that would not get off the ground. There would be a lot of people opposed to that. Lots of other statements have been made in relation to how it should be funded. In fact it was suggested that anybody with some attachment to, or benefit from, this area should probably make a contribution as well. Other members might go into that further, and correct me if I am slightly off track, but it really was a difficult issue for us to come to terms with and to come up with what we thought was a good and reasonable funding model in the circumstances.

We realise that the funding has to be both ongoing and of a reasonable amount. The current amounts that are being provided for simply getting rid of the silt have proven to be inadequate and not entirely effective. But I would suspect that if the Government can get right behind this committee - and I would hope that they do - the committee would be looking at another area that has never really been considered ever since I have been in the Council and probably never, and that is the real cause of the siltation and trying to stop the silt getting into the river in the first place.

Currently they are dredging the silt out but it is building up quicker than they can take it out. Very clearly, there is evidence that silt is coming in upstream in both the North and South Esk rivers. There is some silt coming into the river from those sources, apart from the silt that is flowing backwards and forwards in the river. That has apparently been happening over decades, as I understand, from information that we have.

A new authority would really look at their money and how they need to spend it. I think they would do what the CMA in Bairnsdale has done with the Snowy River, where they have also had siltation problems. It is a large river and the first point that that authority made was that they need to look at where the silt was coming from into that river in the first place before they looked at what else they should do. They identified that rabbits and other animals as well as some forestry operations were causing a lot of soil erosion upstream of the Snowy River. There were many other things occurring in the catchment of the Snowy River that they had to address in the first instance.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - Through you, Madam President - what about farming practices?

Mr DEAN - There were some problems with farming practices in the Snowy River catchment as well, and that is where they work closely with the farmers to ensure that they are on-side and strong partners in whatever they do in that area. With the exception of one farmer - and I think I am right in saying this - they have had a good response.

MANAGEMENT OF TAMAR AND ESK RIVERS SELECT COMMITTEE

Resumed from page 70

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - At the suspension, Madam President, I had just touched on the CMA and what it was doing in the Bairnsdale area with regard to the Snowy River. I started to touch on the partnerships that they have with the other groups they are involved with. That is a big part of this whole thing, moving forward, if the Government gives support to our recommendations here, with a single statutory authority. A focal point or an important part of that whole process is working in close partnership with all of the other bodies, local government, the farmers and forestry operations, moving forward. In that regard, the CMA gave us information that the farmers were very much on side with them in this partnership. Of all the people that they had worked with and were involved with, I think they indicated to us that they had a problem or some difficulty with one farmer only in the time that they had been operating and that they were working through those problems to get that sorted out. They said that they felt there was some light at the end of the tunnel in fixing that problem as well.

The other thing I wanted to say is that NRM, in particular, would be a vital part of this moving forward. They would come into the new statutory authority and would form a very focal part of it, probably the nucleus of the new authority and the new body. So they would be vital to this program or project, and I do not want to underestimate that in any way whatsoever.

A couple of other issues I want to refer to. There has been report, after report, after report done on what should happen with the Tamar River and the estuaries. In fact, it is probably fairly difficult to estimate the number of reports that have been done and at huge cost, I might add. People really are getting sick and tired of that happening.

When this select committee was first set up, the comment being made to me, 'Not another report, not another inquiry', was clearly the attitude of a lot of people. It took convincing of some of those people that this was a report on the authority as to how it should be managed, how it should be controlled in moving forward - not on siltation, not on how that should be removed - but an authority moving forward and getting it under one umbrella, as it were. So people are sick and tired of reports. There is time now to move forward, there is a time to get things in place and get things operating effectively and efficiently, and this is one way of doing it with this new body.

Interestingly, our chairman, the member for Rosevears, referred to the Launceston City Council and their position on this - the general manager and the mayor of the time and our new re-elected mayor at Launceston - that they are very much on side of a single statutory authority moving forward. They understand the system, they know the system very well, they know what is happening and yet they were saying to us, 'Yes, get it going. We want this. This is the way we see as probably getting control of this whole situation regarding the river and everything else about it'. So that was the view of the Launceston City Council and I think that the Government would be looking at that and giving that some noting in all of the circumstances.

Mr Finch - Through you, Madam President - I think they are both members of the flood authority, aren't they?

Mr DEAN - Yes, that is now the Launceston Flood Authority where both the mayor and the general manager sit on that authority. The chair of the authority is a civilian, not connected with local government, and there are a number of other civilian members on that authority as well. So they are a part of that and they would like to see this become one entity under the control of one statutory authority.

The member for Rosevears has referred to the recommendations and I am not going to go into them in any detail other than to say that there is one interesting recommendation, recommendation 12. The member for Mersey may well have picked it up, where this authority, should it be supported, should have the final say or at least be required to give approval to any development of any nature that occurs within the Tamar Estuary, within the flood plain area, or within the catchment area. So any development in those areas, this statutory authority should have the final say with approval. That is, over and above that, there would be the appeal mechanism to currently apply in any development moving forward.

Mr Hall - Any development at all?

Mr DEAN - Any development that has to go through a council that needs council approval, we are saying that this authority should have a say, and that is exactly the situation with the CMA in Victoria. The CMA there have a final say but, once again, they work in partnership with the council. It is not as though they wield the heavy hammers, as it were, they simply work in close partnership with the local government moving forward with developments et cetera, but they have a say. And they should do too, because if they have a responsibility for the management of a flood plain area, if they have responsibility of a catchment area, then surely it follows that they must have some say in what is happening in that area as well.

Mr Hall - Through you, Madam President - anywhere is a catchment - any piece of ground is a catchment - so are you talking about the whole of northern Tasmania?

Mr DEAN - We are talking about those areas that feed into the rivers, that fall into the catchment areas.

Mr Hall - But they all do that.

Mr DEAN - Not all, but there are a number of them. The catchment areas are pretty well defined and the flood plain area is also well defined. These areas are mapped - there are maps identifying those areas - so it is fairly clearly articulated in documentation.

Mr Hall - So if you had a development application for a house, for example, a residence in Deloraine should have to go through this authority before -

Mr DEAN - If it impacts or affects in some way the flood plain and/or the catchment area, that is what our recommendation says.

As I said, it is the CMA's position but I should imagine there is a little bit of flexibility in there. It may well be that in this situation where a development is seen, where it will have a real impact or could have a real impact on the catchment or the flood plain, that is the one that would come into this authority. Perhaps there are other smaller developments that it would never need to occur for. The CMA were fairly strong. It works well in Victoria, they have no problems with it and it is supported and accepted by local government.

The other issue that came up, Madam President, is the position with the TFGA, and the member for Rosevears briefly touched on that as well. I think it is fair to say that during the initial discussions on this authority and whether there ought to be a single statutory authority, their president at the time was a little bit hesitant, I think, and indicated to us that the TFGA would not give support to any new authority that was being set up that was likely to create more legislation, more rules and more control over their operations and so on. They found that that would be difficult to work with. They say they are over-regulated now and that a lot of those regulations and other things that are happening and changing for them impact on their profitability and create real problems for them albeit, as they said, they want to work with the authorities, they want to work on ensuring the environment is clean and maintained and all of those things so it was not as though they were saying that they did not care, they very much care.

They were not satisfied at that stage that they could accept this moving forward because of the new regulations. When it was identified to them that it did not necessarily follow that there would be any more regulations at all, that the authority would work with the regulations and rules and controls that are currently there, and that is probably the way they would operate, then they saw it differently. In fact a comment I think was made, and it would be in the documentation, that they could work with that. It changed from a position of struggling with problems to accepting when they were told that it did not necessarily mean more regulations and controls. I think that was a good position at the end in relation to them because they are a big part of this whole thing - they and forestry and agriculture -

Mr Gaffney - Through you, Madam President - I am just wondering about the response from the local councils - the West Tamar Council, the George Town Council and the Launceston Council - to the setting up of this authority with all these powers. How has that been or have they not seen the complete report? I am interested to see how that would work, having this other authority coming in, and how that fits together. I am just wondering what responses you had from those council areas.

Mr DEAN - We have not had any response at all, to my knowledge, unless the member for Rosevears or the member for Launceston has. Because this was only brought into this Chamber about two weeks ago there has not been a council meeting in Launceston since and there have been the elections as well. I would think that that has probably put them under some pressure. I would suspect that probably not any of those councils at this stage have had an opportunity to sit down and go through this report, so that is not a good position for us to have here today of course. It would have been good to have had their view and their position on it. To my knowledge, that has not happened.

With the Launceston City Council it will be raised I think at Monday's council meeting but what sort of discussion would occur I am not too sure. That is the position there, Madam President, and I think that I can probably leave it there. As I said, it is about partnerships, which is a very strong part of this whole thing moving forward.

There are two points I would finish on, Madam President. I do not know whether the committee is concerned about this but I am. With the State elections occurring next year and perhaps the proroguing of Parliament probably later this year -

Ms Thorp - Are they on, are they? You can never tell.

Mr DEAN - I do not know - this report could be lost somewhat and that is my concern. It would be a shame because I believe it is a good report and it identifies some real issues and problems. If we can start this off and get it up and running, if the State Government takes it on I think there is a lot of kudos in it for them. The public out there are really waiting for something to happen and I would not like to see it simply left on somebody's table with nothing occurring between now and probably March, April, May, June, or whatever next year.

I urge the Government to take a serious look at this and to really start to put something in place in relation to it. I think there is a huge amount of mileage in this for the State Government moving forward. Once again, I just want to thank our Chairman, Madam President, who was very strong in getting this report to the stage it now is at and the other member for Launceston and also, again, Mr Tom Wise who was exceptional in what he did for us as a committee.

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