My adjournment matter this evening is short and sweet, although the content of it is certainly not short and sweet — in fact it is a saga.
It is about fish kills in the Anglesea River. Nearly 12 months ago fish kills became evident in Anglesea, and there was a lot of reportage of them at the time. In April this year Minister Mulder, the Minister for Public Transport and Assembly member for Polwarth, launched a review into the health of the river. In fact at the time of the announcement of the review the Minister for Environment and Climate Change said the review would be complete and open for public scrutiny at the end of June.
Obviously now we are in mid-October, there has been a substantial delay and the problem continues to exist. When the Geelong Advertiser this week made inquiries of the Minister for Environment and Climate Change in relation to this issue, he could not answer the question and delegated the issue to a spokeswoman. She is quoted in the Geelong Advertiser as saying she could not confirm whether the report was complete and that there was no definite date set for its release.
I believe this is totally unacceptable. It has been six months since the government launched its review and we are now leading into the peak tourist season, so it is absolutely critical that we identify the issues and work out a way of dealing with the matter. I ask the Minister for Environment and Climate Change to inform me as well as the people of Anglesea why this review is taking so long and to provide us with an exact date when it will be made available to the public.
