Grievance Debate

MURRAY RIVER

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:20): Today I want to talk about water. We have just heard the minister announce that at last the government is to take the first step in the procurement of water: it will call for expressions of interest. After allocating $96 million in this year's budget in the first step towards building a desalination plant, it is going to call for expressions of interest from the experts. After spending tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money mucking around with something it knows little about, it is going to get the experts in.

In my firm opinion, this is at least 12 months too late and it is one of the reasons why this government has had to take over 200 gigalitres of water, which would otherwise have been environmental flows coming down the river in the last water year and which would have flowed beyond the pumps at Mannum, Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend and into the Lower Lakes: 200 gigalitres of water has been taken.

In answer to a question in the house today, the minister suggested that that was because of some decision taken by a group of officials, with the involvement of the Prime Minister. Some 200 gigalitres of water that was assigned to South Australia last year, under very difficult circumstances, had to be held back to provide for critical human needs, principally for the city of Adelaide, in the next water year (which started a couple of days ago), because this government refused to accept the need to build a desalination plant. It was in denial for almost 12 months, and that was time lost.

Now, even after the government has accepted that, it has taken almost another 12 months to start to get expressions of interest from the experts, the very people who are doing this every day of the week all around the world. Back in March, I spoke to some of those people in Spain. They are building desalination plants in the Mediterranean Sea, where the water is a lot saltier than it is in our gulf. It is also much more restricted than our gulf. Why have we not been talking to some of those Spanish companies? They are experts. SA Water has mucked around for months and months and has spent tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars before going out and talking to the experts. As I said, the delay in building a desalination plant for South Australia is one of the reasons why we have such a diabolical situation in the Lower Lakes, the Riverland and the Murraylands.

Billions of dollars worth of produce comes out of that food basket—the Murraylands and the Riverland—each year. It is all on the cusp of being lost, because the Premier and the government have spent over 18 months playing politics. John Howard came out and said, 'I've got $10 billion. We want to fix this up. We want to do something that has not been done since the 1890s. We want to get a common agreement. We want to get proper management and we will put a large amount of money in to do the things we need to do; to buy back overallocation and to buy decent infrastructure.'

But what has South Australia done? It has played politics. Premier Rann, the National President of the ALP, did not want John Howard getting one run on the board for that scheme, so he played politics with John Brumby to ensure that the scheme did not get off the ground at least until after the federal election. And, lo and behold, what has happened since the federal election? John Brumby has said, 'I don't mind this game. In fact, I'm not bad at it. I don't mind poking South Australia in the eye every now and again. I will do some more of it.' And that is what is happening today.

The Premier yesterday issued a press release about infrastructure spending in South Australia. John Howard put away the $10 billion. He put the money aside, and it is available and will be spent on infrastructure. Why has the Premier been talking about that? Because he already did the deal. He knew he was going to get the money, but he lost everything else. Now, all his talk will be about the infrastructure, the $500 million to $600 million, because he cannot face up to talking about the real problem: overallocation and a truly independent management authority. He cannot talk about that because he was dudded, and he has sold South Australia down the river again.

Time expired.