Grievance Debate

WATER BILLING

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:33): Well, sir, the old political adage has been shown to be alive and well today: always deny and never resign. That is what everybody in this government has been doing here today throughout question time and over the last few days. The government has been caught out, and every minister from the Premier and Deputy Premier down is in denial about what they have done. The government has been caught by its own incompetence and by the fact that it is more a government about ripping off the public of South Australia—ripping off every dollar it can get from the hard-working citizens of the state and putting their money into the Treasury coffers—than it is about governing properly or sensibly. In a ministerial statement to the house today, amongst other things the Treasurer said:

The government made it clear that additional net revenue from increased water prices will be hypothecated specifically to fund new water security capital works.

I suggest to the house that, if the Treasurer really meant that, he would have had some understanding of how much money was going to be raised. If he had any understanding of how much money was going to be raised, he might have had some understanding of when he would be raising it and when it would be appearing in his coffers before he knew how much to set the fee at. Late last year, as demonstrated today to the house, the government made decisions. It went through cabinet, and every cabinet minister was aware that the government was increasing water prices.

A few weeks ago the Minister for Water Security, in answer to questions in the estimates committees, first made out that she did not have the numbers to hand regarding how much money would be raised through these new charges. Then she admitted to the committee that, supposedly, the government worked out how much money it needed to raise and worked backwards from there. That is what she said, in answer to a question from the member for Mitchell, in fact: 'We work out how much money we need to raise and we work backwards from there.' Well, they are very good calculations, because how could you do that and not know when you would start to raise the money? If that was the case, it appears that the $25 million that is being inadvertently—according to the government (the ministers, the Treasurer, the Premier)—ripped off of the hard-working South Australians who pay accounts to SA Water had to be accounted for somewhere.

Obviously, SA Water understood its own billing system; it knew about it, but it is beyond belief that no-one in the government understood or knew about it. It seems a coincidence that the extra amount of money that will be raised over the next year—$47 million—is the same amount of money that SA Water is spending to fit out its new building down in Victoria Square.

Ever since those new water price increases were announced back in December I have called on the government to establish a hypothecated fund for that money to be put into, so that there could be some accountability. Over the last few days we have seen that there is no accountability; no-one is willing to take responsibility. In the good old days ministers who made an absolute stuff-up, as we have seen here, would resign; they would take responsibility and resign. However, what do we have today? We have minister after minister after minister stand up and say, 'Oh, we've made an honest mistake', 'Oh, I apologise', 'Oh, it's all better, it's all fixed.' That is not the way the Westminster system has worked previously, and it is not the way it should work. Ministers should take responsibility.

Something else revealed today was that the Minister for Water Security told the house that she was quite happy to mislead the public of South Australia when she is on radio; she was quite happy to make a statement on radio knowing that it was wrong because, in her words, 'The decision had not yet been gazetted.' I believe it is against the ministerial code of conduct—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. I apologise to the member for Bright; we are being very unusual here and I am going to the member for Unley.