Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Anglesea River water quality

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:17): (6522) My adjournment debate this evening is directed to the minister for environment, natural resources and climate change. My request to her follows a very well attended meeting in Anglesea last week. Over 100 local people assembled at the fantastic Anglesea pub, and the sole topic of conversation was to bring to the government’s attention, to the community’s attention and to the shire’s attention the lack of action on the state of the Anglesea River. I am calling on the minister to immediately, posthaste, without delay, properly resource the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority and Southern Rural Water to follow up on the research that that community has undertaken. That research has not just been done by citizen scientists but by Professor Ralf Haese from Melbourne University.

The concerns are quite simple. The concerns of the Anglesea community are that the 50 years worth of aquifer pumping by the coalmine near Anglesea has led to some long-term damage, and that long-term damage has manifested itself in a high acid rate of water quality—very, very poor water quality. It has had detrimental effects on the fish, on the wildlife and on the estuary, and it no longer resembles the healthy waterway that the community has grown to love and use. It is vital for regional tourism; it is vital for Great Ocean Road tourism. There are simple solutions. There are solutions that the community is prepared to look at and work with the government to come to, but the community has been waiting two years now. It is seeing annual decline in the quality and the health of that waterway.

I shout out to the chairman of the Friends of Anglesea River, Keith Shipton, and his merry band of supporters, who have worked diligently and rationally with the local authorities and the community to raise this awareness. It is now at the point where they have done the hard yards. What the government needs to do is to back that local community, to do the research and the follow-up work that they have asked for and to come to a conclusion on how best the Anglesea community can go forward with a river that is healthy, with a river that will add value to that community and, most importantly, with a river that will be sustainable into the future for both the environment and the people that live and work around it. We cannot have a situation where we allow ongoing effects to go untreated and unremediated. This is a simple request; it is not a big ask. It is what the people of Anglesea expect the government to do for them.