SA WATER

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (15:23): My question is to the Treasurer. How much additional money will be raised between now and 2011 from the increased SA Water charges announced in December 2006 and December 2007?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Industry and Trade, Minister for Federal/State Relations) (15:23): The government has announced a price increase for water which is designed to cover the cost of the implementation of a desalination plant and further water storage in the Adelaide Hills, and that price path is designed to enable us to cover the costs of the infrastructure, to my understanding, as we are required under the National Water Initiative and the corporatised model of SA Water. The development of those two projects will not be a burden on the general government budget sector but it will be borne by the community in general through water charges. As we said at the time, that increased revenue will be used to pay for that infrastructure and not for dividends back to government.

I will take the question on notice and have a closer look at it as to whether or not we can estimate prudently the numbers because one of the things you have to recall is that we currently have severe water restrictions. One would hope that those restrictions can be lifted at some point, if we have a break in the drought, and that will be a significant variable in how much water is consumed. It would be very difficult to estimate beyond a 12-month period as to what we would expect the revenue to be. Having said that, we have estimates in the forward estimates of our budgets, but the water is the most unpredictable of all our revenue sources, I would think, given the climatic conditions we face.