Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Friday last week in my electorate, I was pleased to make some announcements of Community Action Grant recipients, which came from a commitment that was made initially in the 2010 election and then again in the 2013 election for $1 million towards the Swan-Canning River Recovery Program. The announcement of these Community Action Grant recipients is another milestone in the progress of that recovery program.

I was able to announce the successful recipients of the Community Action Grants for projects that will improve the water quality of the Swan and Canning rivers. The Swan-Canning River Recovery Program has three components: $500,000 to eliminate the aquatic weed hydrocotyle in the Canning River; $100,000 for education and $400,000 for direct action by community groups on the ground. The $400,000 is a significant part of that program, and it is great to see that it is going to be put to such good use by a real diversity of local community groups. One of the conditions I insisted on early in the design of the project was that zero dollars were to be used for administration of the program, that 100 per cent of the $1 million was allocated and that it must be used for cleaning up the river in the three ways outlined.

I thank the Perth NRM and particularly the steering group for volunteering their time and services to help administer this program. They are ensuring maximum bang for buck for the taxpayer and doing a good thing for the environment.    Geographically, this program is highly targeted to make sure that we make a real and lasting difference to this part of the river and get the maximum environmental result.

The nine successful projects that we announced on Friday covered the targeted region—the middle Swan and middle Canning rivers—and the total effort of this part of the program will be focused across nine suburbs. The announcement was at one of the sites which is going to benefit from the funding—the Aquinas College foreshore restoration project. It was fantastic that there were students and teachers there who are going to get involved in this program. I think this demonstrates that this really is a program that will be driven by the local community. This will be a grass roots action involving local groups, local schools and local students working to improve the environment on their doorstep. This is a program I started working on back in 2009, and I thank the minister and the coalition government for supporting it, with an input from local groups as well, particularly Russell Gorton and Jo Stone. We took it to two consecutive elections, and it is a proud moment to be able to declare that the work can now commence in the Swan-Canning River Recovery Program.

One of the successful recipients was the Canning River Regional Park Volunteers group, which is a fantastic group, who received a $15,000 grant out of that $400,000.