SAFE DRINKING WATER BILL

Committee Stage

In committee.

(Continued from 22 March 2011.)

Clause 1.

Ms CHAPMAN: Minister, in your second reading contribution, you indicated that, after the discussion paper was identified back in 2009, I think, there had been consultation, etc. You say in your second reading, and I am reading from page 4:

Comments received have been addressed and the resultant revisions have strengthened and improved the bill. The outcome is a bill that is both effective and practical.

I cannot identify from your second reading speech what those changes were from the Safe Drinking Water Bill that you provided us with. The copy I have is June 2010, which was a draft. In any event, from the time the original bill went out and you did your consultation, I am really just asking: what were the changes in summary?

The CHAIR: I would just draw the entire house's attention to the fact that clause 1 is just about the title.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: But it says so much.

The CHAIR: It does say so much but I would just like to make that very clear to all of us, myself included. Thank you, minister.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I thank the member for her question. Essentially, the question was: what did we change between the first draft and the final draft? I think the majority of the change was in the area of burden that would be placed on small business, particularly B&Bs that ran services that required rainwater tanks. I think, in the original provisions they would have been captured in the same way as bigger suppliers that would have been captured.

They pointed out the difficulties with this. We agreed with them and we created a framework which, I guess, is a light burden on them, as long as they let people know that it is rainwater they are likely to be drinking and they go through proper standards for maintaining a tank. As long as they let people know it is rainwater they are going to be drinking, then people can take their own advice. Of course, if they have a shonky water supply, they would be liable, as they would be under any other set of circumstances. If they are providing it to people, I guess, there would be civil action that individuals could take. That would be my understanding of it. Parliamentary Counsel agrees with me.

Ms CHAPMAN: The next question I have is on definition, so I am happy to either do it in the short title or do it in the definitions clause. Which would you prefer?

The CHAIR: Do it now.

Ms CHAPMAN: Thank you. You also indicate that all drinking water providers will need to register with the Department of Health, and there is a process with all that. Under the definition of drinking water providers, I just want to be clear about a private provider. For example, in Uraidla and the Piccadilly Valley, there is a private water provider, a private family company, that has its own water. They provide water to the township, for free actually, which is very generous of them; but, in any event, that water is provided. Largely, the town has its own rainwater tanks. There is a hotel and shops and various people there who obviously serve the public. The water provider, as I say, provides this water. It is excess to requirements, as such, but it serves a community purpose.

In fact, because SA Water does not provide any water to the local community and no-one is asking it to, if somebody does not use their own rainwater supply they can tap in and use this water. I suppose he is in this unique situation where the generosity of making that provision is one which would evaporate, pardon the pun, if he were to be required to do a whole lot of extra things, whether it is testing or giving notice to everyone who lives in Uraidla that they should not drink this water or, if they do it is at their own risk, or whatever the adequate notice would be. Can you clarify that?

I particularly alert the minister to this issue, because in the event of a bushfire I understand that the CFS is still going to be recommending that people go to the Uraidla oval. The Uraidla oval does not have its own independent water supply. It will be relying on water from this particular family, and it is not just for putting out fires—that is easy—but the Uraidla oval is to be a meeting point for people from around the district, and what if they drink the water, because they are not going to have access to anything else? If no money changes hands in these situations, how is that going to be covered and, if it is not covered, are they going to be relieved of these obligations?

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I have two points to make. The first point is that this is about drinking water supplies, not about domestic, non-drinking water supplies. My advice is that the majority of suppliers in the Adelaide Hills have registered themselves as domestic non-drinking suppliers, so suppliers for bushfires and other purposes. Individuals have their own rainwater tanks as their source of drinking water.

The second point is, whether or not you charge or how much you charge for the water is not the trigger, it is the fact that you are a supplier of water. So, if you supply water under the circumstances that the bill discusses—there are exemptions for B&Bs and the like—then you are caught by the provision if it is for drinking purposes. I am not sure of the particular organisation to which you are referring, but if they say it is for domestic, non-drinking supply, then that is perfectly fine. They are not captured.

Ms CHAPMAN: I think we are at cross-purposes. I will clarify this. In a circumstance where there is a bushfire and people congregate at the oval because it is a meeting place and use this water for drinking, not just to put out the bushfire—that is easy—because there is no other water supply, is that covered? Is there some emergency provision which allows that to happen without them having to give notice and so on?

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I will seek advice as to whether I can get a response before the bill goes to the other house. However, just discussing it here, I am sure there is a common law notion of necessity under certain emergency situations. If somebody's house is on fire and you want to get them out, you break a window. It is illegal to break windows, but if you have to do it in certain circumstances, you do it, and the law allows you to do it.

I am sure that would be the case if there was no other drinking supply and people were told, 'This is rainwater.' If I have a rainwater tank and somebody comes to my house and wants a drink of water, and they drink some of my water, I do not have to be a registered provider in order for them to drink that water, but it is probably wise for me to tell them it is drinking water. That is the provision in relation to B&Bs.

I will get a more formal response for you, but I understand you are testing the extremities of the legislation. I would have thought common sense would suggest that in the circumstances you describe there would not be any sin committed, but we will get some advice and if it does require further clarification I am happy to do it between the houses.

Clause passed.

Clause 2 passed.

Clause 3.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I have a few questions. The minister used the phrase 'testing the extremities' before. I am not trying to test the extremities but I would be grateful for some clarification. My questions really are about drinking water providers and I would like some clarification on the record that can allay some of my concerns.

There are situations that occur in the outback, for all the right reasons, in small communities that are very important. I would like to be sure that some of these situations will not be detrimentally affected by this legislation. I will give a couple of real world examples, and my questions are not limited to those examples but they help with the sort of thing I am talking about.

Drinking water is supplied to the town of Copley from the Aroona dam through the Leigh Creek system which is currently run by Alinta Energy. There is a pipeline to the township of Copley and it is sold to the township of Copley and then the township sells the water to its residents. By the way, there is some possibility that the Outback Communities Authority might take on that responsibility but that certainly has not yet happened. Would the Copley progress association be caught under this bill? Would they be obliged to go through all the things that any other drinking water provider would have to do, or would the fact that Alinta was taking care of that for the Leigh Creek township and they have just piped it another six kilometres be good enough?

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Before I get on to answering that question, I would say to the member for Bragg that I think the matter she was raising is covered by paragraph (b) of the drinking water provider definition where it provides:

(b) any other person, or person of a class, brought within the ambit of this definition by the regulations,

but does not include a person, or person of a class, excluded from the ambit of this definition by the regulations.

So, if there are any issues, we could cover any of those extreme situations. If that provider that you are referring to sought an exemption, I assume they could gain one reasonably straightforwardly. In relation to the member for Stuart's questions, I draw his attention to subclause (2) of the clause, which says:

For the purposes of this act...a person will be taken not to be a drinking water provider if—

(a) the person supplies drinking water that has been directly obtained from another drinking water provider.

I think that is generally the case. It goes on:

(b) the other drinking water provider is registered under this act.

So, I assume that is also the case. And, further:

(c) the person has not altered the water, or has not altered the water to any material degree, from the water supplied by the other drinking water provider.

I assume that is also the case. It continues:

(d) the person satisfies the requirements (if any) prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of this subsection.

That is a general catch-all and one would always have to check the facts against that provision, but it would seem to me that if the initial supplier of water, say, SA Water, has gone through all the processes and connects the water to a hotel and then the hotel supplies that water to the guests at the hotel, as long as SA Water is covered, then the hotel is also covered. However, if the hotel provides the water from a bore, a rainwater tank or some other source, they are the initial provider of the water and they have to be captured.

I do not know the exact links but from what you have described I would assume that the initial provider is the initial company, which would be a registered provider, and the quality of their water would then flow through. Unless the township of Copley's progress association did something to the water, which is hard to imagine it would, then it would be fined.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Just so that the minister is aware of the circumstances, it is approximately six-kilometres from Leigh Creek to Copley. I guess that it would be commonsense that there must be some bounds. If it was a 200-kilometre pipeline, you might say, 'Well, gee, that's not still the same supply.' It comes from Aroona Dam through the township supply of Leigh Creek, then through a five or six kilometre pipeline onto the next town (which is a very small town) of Copley and then a local network of reticulated supply to the residents and businesses.

If the minister is telling me that the Copley Progress Association, which sells the water to the residents and businesses (it buys the water in bulk from Alinta, then it sells it) and that the progress association would not have to undertake any more operational or statutory obligations than it currently does without this legislation, then I would certainly be satisfied.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: There are two ways we could manage it: first, we would check. There would be a matter of fact: is the water materially affected by this process of transmission of six kilometres? Interesting questions might be: who owns the pipeline? Are they maintained in good order? Is it Copley that owns that pipeline or is it the supplier of the pipeline? When does the water become Copley's? Is it the point at the end of the pipeline or at the beginning of the pipeline? That would be a material element which would need to be considered.

Let us assume that it is at the end of the pipeline, so it would not matter if it is 1,000 miles long as long as the supplier is covered from the point at which they put the water in the pipeline to the point at which it is taken out. They would be covered. It would have to be investigated, but it could be managed quite well.

The other way of doing it would be through the provision I referred to in relation to the member for Bragg's question, where there could be an exemption given to a particular supplier because of the circumstances they are in. There would be an assessment. I guess that this process is about trying to make sure that safe water is provided. We are not trying to make life difficult for people who are doing things in a safe way.

We work through the particular circumstances, so it is a bit hard to be absolutely 100 per cent definitive in judgement without having basic answers to questions such as, 'Who runs the pipeline?' Along those lines. If the honourable member wanted, we could have a look at that particular issue for him to see what the issue might be in a more detailed way.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I would be grateful for that because it is a real-world example. This is where my concern is, and, if I could paraphrase him, what the minister is saying is, 'Look, there won't be a problem so long as we could show that the water at the other end was all okay,' which is likely to mean fulfilling all these obligations which is likely to mean a change in operation for the Copley Progress Association.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I am just getting it explained to me. It is not quite perhaps as the honourable member thought I have suggested. The department, the agency, would make a risk assessment. There would be a risk management approach, so they would make an assessment based on the risks, not through testing the water. They would make an assessment that all of the things that the honourable member has described are likely to be fine, and then there would be a process either to exempt or to exclude from whatever processes they might have to go through.

You would have to look at the facts of a particular case, that is the point I am making. The bottom line is that we want to make sure that the people of Copley and everywhere else are receiving good drinking water, and I imagine that the progress association of Copley would want that to happen as much as anyone.

It is really trying to work with the association to make sure that it is managed in a way which makes sure that the water is okay. On the face of it, if the supplier of the water at the beginning is registered and appropriately credentialled, then, if it comes through a pipeline, there would be a risk assessment as to whether that pipeline was in good order and it was not being affected by some other substance entering into it—there was not a leak which had something coming in. In those circumstances, I am advised that it would be fine.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I take it that, assuming that the original supply is okay, if it can be shown that the end supply is okay, then there will be no further requirement as a general rule across these outback towns. That helps me with my other example. The next thing I want to ask about with regard to the definition of providers has not so much to do with the chain of supply but more to do with cartage than pipelines. I recognise that water carting is dealt with in the bill, but in a lot of country communities—this is more country than outback—there are lots of regular, real world situations where non professional carters move drinking water around for people.

It might be that a farmer with a tank and a truck in a dry year does half a dozen or a dozen loads a year, just filling up different people's rainwater tanks around the district, usually as a favour, not even for a charge. Some of those users might be commercial establishments. For example, he might cart water from a perfectly good source—a recognised quality drinking water source—but it might then go, in a volunteer way, to the football club, which is a commercial operation that sells food, beer, water and provides, in a commercial hospitality type way, drinking water.

Would that football club have to undertake any more difficult obligations, or could I assume that exactly the same principle that you mentioned with regard to the pipeline would fit; that is, if you start out with good drinking water at the beginning and you can show, regardless of the chain supply, that you have good drinking water at the end, that is enough and they do not have to get audits, tests and all those sorts of things?

The Hon. J.D. HILL: There is a range of possible scenarios, of course. Let's assume that the original water that the carrier is taking is safe and is captured by whatever the provisions of the act are, and this carrier does it infrequently. He or she would not have to test the water. He or she would have to, through an online form that they would have to fill in, assure the system that they are registered and that they are doing this. As long as the vehicle is safe and fit for purpose is really the point. If it had been used for taking a petroleum product or septic waste, you would not want it used for taking a water product. You would want to make sure that it is fit for that purpose. It would probably have to be inspected every couple of years, but it would be a very light touch. Provided that happens, the hypothetical football club would not need to be inspected, either.

This is a very light regime, but we do know that the carrier industry, if I can describe it in that way, is very keen on this. They are worried that some carriers of water are not up to standard and are undercutting those who are doing the job according to proper standards by not necessarily having good standards. You have to look at both sides of this.

By and large, legitimate water carrying businesses support it, because it means that they can go out and say that they are certified by SA Health as a proper carrier of water. Someone who is doing it infrequently would still have to go through the process I have described. As long as the original supply is safe, their vehicle is fit for purpose, there does not need to be any testing.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I do then have a couple of concerns about that, and I understand what you are saying about the water carting industry. This would be, as I said, a local farmer, not a player in the water carting industry. It so happens that the member for Goyder mentioned to me yesterday whether the CFS will even do this on the Yorke Peninsula just to help. They will make sure their tanks are clean; they will make sure their trucks are okay. They will pick up some water from one place, use their CFS truck to take water to the football club, or wherever it happens to be, purely as a service. In these examples, there will not be a professional water carter involved. It is really just charity, a help, a community service. It is somebody who is not actually in the water carting industry but happens to have some of their own equipment for their own purposes who just does it out of the goodness of their heart.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Firstly, in relation to the CFS, the advice I have is that the CFS no longer does this because they are worried about liability if something went wrong. However, if they registered, they would not have that liability problem. So, this is a protection for anybody who is doing this neighbourly thing. It is a bit like having a neighbour whose grass is long and you go and cut the grass, or help prune a tree, or something. You would hope that your neighbour had insurance so that, if something happened to you while you were doing it, there is some protection. So, this is really kind of like an insurance, if you like, for the good Samaritans so that something does not go wrong.

If somebody does this infrequently, that is fine, and there would be a very light burden on them. The most they would have to do is be checked every couple of years. I would have thought that, if someone was doing it for their own purposes, they would probably want to check that the vehicle is still fit for purpose because, if you are running a vehicle which is only infrequently carting water, who is to know what state it is in between the various episodes of carting water. The maximum cost that any carter would have would be about $80 every two years to just check the state of their vehicle. It is a very light burden.

However, this is about protecting the community from unsafe drinking water. There is a potential there for an exemption, and I suppose it would be possible for somebody to seek an exemption to this as well. That would be the other way we could do it, but this is an attempt to capture the field.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: A very light burden on a volunteer is not quite the same thing as a light burden on a professional participant in an industry. I appreciate the fact that, in those situations, if it happens as a one-off, they could seek an exemption.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I would make the point that we have volunteers who drive people; they have to get a driver's licence, too. This is not having a go at volunteers, but anybody who volunteers has to have the skills necessary to do the job for which they are volunteering. If you had volunteers going in to a bushfire area with chainsaws and the like, you would want to make sure that those chainsaws were not going to do something damaging during the course of that process.

Obviously, in emergency situations—and this is the point I made to the member for Bragg—necessity kind of takes over and you do what you have to, but in a planned way, if you are going about doing something, even as a volunteer, you have to make sure that you have your driver's licence, a first aid certificate if you are attempting to give first aid to somebody, and the like. You cannot just go out there and do things which might create a risk.

Progress reported; committee to sit again.

At 18:00 the house adjourned until Thursday 24 March 2011 at 10:30.