FLEURIEU PENINSULA WATER SUPPLY

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:45): Probably the most pressing issue in Australia today, and more particularly in South Australia, is the issue of water for the future. I wish to talk about water for the future on the Fleurieu Peninsula (that rapidly developing area) and ascertain how the government in its infinite wisdom plans to accommodate the enormous growth in that area; how it plans to accommodate the provision of business and enterprise; and what are its plans for the future in that area. Much of the Fleurieu Peninsula is in the high rainfall area of the state. Generally speaking, it has an assured rainfall; and, except for the odd year, in the state's worst years the Fleurieu still gets a reasonable rainfall.

It is an area where more people are choosing to live. The area includes Victor Harbor, Goolwa, Middleton, Port Elliot and, on the other side of the Fleurieu, Yankalilla and Normanville, where the population is increasing rapidly. Indeed, around the Wirrina area they are now talking about trying to accommodate a population of 5,000 to 6,000 people. However, none of it will happen without water. The Myponga dam is currently catering for sections of the Fleurieu Peninsula, but it will not cater for a population which it has been suggested will be around 50,000 in a decade or two. It just will not happen.

The communities of Cape Jervis, Rapid Bay and Second Valley and along that western Fleurieu coast do have the capacity to absorb many more people but currently they cannot do it. The Yankalilla council is at its wit's end trying to work out how to make provision for water down there. The new owners of Wirrina, which has had a very chequered history to say the least, are keen to make sure that Wirrina is a success story, and the biggest issue for them at the moment is the provision of water. The whole future of the Fleurieu Peninsula and its prospects for increased population, farming enterprises, business activities and whatever else all revolve around the adequate provision of water which we do not have at the moment.

I would like the parliament to take my comments on board. More to the point, I would like the government of the day to commission a strategic plan to tell us how it intends to accommodate the future of the Fleurieu Peninsula, how it does hope to achieve more growth down there and how it can assist local government and those regional communities for the future of the area. The situation is critical. Climate change would appear to be with us. There are no two ways about that in some quarters, although some of us who have been around the traps for a long time are pretty used to runs of dry years and runs of wet years. I for one look forward in the very near future to an end to the dry years. I would like to be walking around in water for several months every year, and the sooner that happens the better. It is absolutely imperative for the future of the whole Fleurieu and those growing areas that some heavy, substantial planning is done for the provision of water.

We see all this money disappearing into Treasury from taxes to SA Water—$300 million—none of which is going into the provision of infrastructure for water for the rest of South Australia, quite apart from the desalination plant. We cannot keep on saying that we cannot afford it. We have to accommodate for the future. We need to get on with it. It is simply not good enough to put it all on the backburner and do nothing. Look at the enormous projects that were undertaken in the Playford era such as pipelines, dams, electricity and everything else that was put in place. I implore the government to put in place a long-term plan and a strategy position for water to assist the residents and businesses of the Fleurieu Peninsula in its capacity to grow. I look forward to an announcement from the government along that line. I seriously encourage it to do so: it is too important. As I said, you cannot continue to put everything on the backburner.