STORMWATER HARVESTING

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:14): Can I first of all assure the minister that I had already picked up that error and we had it corrected for the next newsletter. My question is again to the Minister for Water Security. How much of the government's water security expenditure announced in the 2009-10 budget relates to stormwater research? Yesterday on radio the minister was asked whether the government is putting money into stormwater research, such as the work at Flinders University. The minister's response was, 'There's good work being done everywhere and the South Australian government certainly supports research in this area.' Yet it appears that not one cent of state government money is being invested in the research.

The Hon. K.A. MAYWALD (Chaffey—Minister for the River Murray, Minister for Water Security) (14:15): I will obtain details for the leader on what we have invested in the past—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.A. MAYWALD: —and what projects are being undertaken in relation to water quality research. I do not have those figures to hand. However, I can assure the leader that it was the South Australian government, in partnership with Salisbury council, that undertook the recent study that looked at drinking water/re-use of stormwater. The state government, again in partnership with Salisbury council, worked on a project where we got particular scientists together to look at the issue of using treated stormwater in the drinking water supply. What that research came up with was that it is possible on a small scale, but when asked whether they would say now that you can just immediately transfer that to a large scale they said no.

The problem is that the opposition does not understand that we do not want to put public health at risk by putting treated stormwater off a metropolitan environment directly into the drinking water supplies. I do not want to drink it. Most of the people I speak to do not want to drink water that cannot be guaranteed to be good for our health. We do not want to put at risk the health of South Australians, because we know that the technology is not quite there yet. The technology may very well be there in the future and, if it is, then it changes the scenario.

However, at this stage our Water for Good plan says that the technology is not good enough for us to have confidence that putting treated stormwater off a metropolitan environment directly into the drinking water supply is good for our health. We do not believe that the technology is good enough yet, and it is not good enough yet according to the scientists. We are, therefore, very different from the opposition. We do not want to drink it: they do.