DESALINATION PLANT

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:30): My question again is to the Minister for Water and the River Murray. Can the minister confirm that SA Water paid an additional $125 million to Treasury—and I quote from the budget—'mainly due to decreased operating expenses and borrowing costs associated with the delay of the delivery of first water for the Adelaide Desalination Plant to the end of July 2011'?

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton—Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation) (15:31): I find it very interesting that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—who has been deputy leader for a long time, of course (almost a record over there); I am sure that is going to come to an end soon—has sent off these various questions to the Auditor-General. It is interesting that all transactions related to payments and transactions under all the contracts have been forwarded to the Auditor-General and no areas of concern have been raised.

What the deputy leader just said is not true. It is not true that customers have been asked to pay twice for it. The Adelaide desalination project has an approved budget of $1.824 billion for the full project. What we are saying is that, because of the changes to the first water milestone, some payments have been deferred from the previous financial year and it is as simple as that. It has not been the case, as has been asserted by the deputy leader, that water customers are being forced to pay $125 million twice simply because of the delays in the construction. I mean, $125 million remained unpaid at the end of the 2010-11 financial year because of construction delays and was paid into the Treasury account. I mean, it cannot be any more transparent than that.