Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I recently attended the Lobethal worksite of Treecovery Ltd, which has been undertaking works in the northern part of the Adelaide Hills to aid the recovery after the bushfire disaster of the summer of 2019-20. The fires destroyed properties, leaving many with damaged plantations and wood lots that couldn't be cleared due to a lack of capacity, funding and of course equipment. The only option for many landowners was to bulldoze their trees and to burn them onsite. This was a costly and traumatic exercise for so many of our residents.

Treecovery successfully applied for a grant under the Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants Program in 2022, and I was very pleased to support the application. The grant of $800,000 that they received enabled Treecovery to utilise skilled local contractors, who transformed what was considered a liability into a wonderful resource. More than 6,000 trees were removed and various markets were found for the processed materials, one of which was approximately 3,000 cubic metres of woodchips intended for conversion to biochar.

I wish to thank the Treecovery board—Cass Selwood, David Checker, Jillian Dunn, Hazel Grigg, Greg Sproule and Peter McEntyre—for their tireless work on this very important project.

I'd also like to thank Monique Haynes, who's an intern with me from the University of South Australia and is studying a unit at the ANU. Thank you, Monique, for this great speech.