LOCAL GOVERNMENT WATER ASSETS

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:21): Thank you, sir.

Members interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: Have I the floor, sir?

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader and the Minister for Education are both called to order.

Mr PENGILLY: I would just like to today draw to the house something that has occurred out of the parliament's changes to the water act in this place some time ago now, whereby local councils were put in a position where they could sell off their water management scheme assets. What has transpired in my electorate with the District Council of Yankalilla has been something of an eye-opener to observe.

The council, which is a pretty small council, has a certain amount of debt and is seeking to clear some of that debt and to make the appropriate moves towards spending more money in their community. They had some work done on the possibility of selling their waste management scheme. I think they did it with the best intent, I might add. I believe that, to a certain degree, they went into it with their eyes open; however, I believe they and the district were nearly taken for a very severe ride.

They were in negotiations with a company, which I have trouble finding out too much about, and they were offered a price on their waste management scheme. They went through the process and they took on some community consultation and, not to put too fine a point on it, all hell broke loose.

I have never seen the degree of angst and uproar in which the community rose up about it. There were public meetings and campaigns in the local press. It became extremely heated and pitted neighbour against neighbour but, more particularly, the public meetings were widely attended from the District Council of Yankalilla area. Ultimately, what happened was that the council backed off and decided not to proceed with this.

The worry for me is that there could well be companies that want to get their hands on councils' assets around the state and make a big quid out of them at the expense of the community—that worries me. I am not sure whether the legislation is tight enough and whether it does not need revisiting by a parliamentary committee (such as the ERD Committee or some such committee) to have a look at this and find out more about it, because it could have gone pear shaped in a big way. It could have dramatically impacted on the community, and it could have left some very red faces.

It was picked up by a gentleman called Mr Paul Newman, who used to be a member of that council. He is an extremely astute fellow and he did copious amounts of work to make sure that his case was rock solid in encouraging the council to give it away. I am very pleased that he did; he ran a campaign which was very professionally done by him, and he had a number of people supporting him.

The long and the short of it is that, in the future, this may well happen again. Some well-meaning local government authority may get caught and may hand over their assets at a vastly discounted price to what they actually should be. This is what nearly happened out in Yankalilla, in that they nearly got done over.

I bring it to the attention of the house so that members will be aware, and they can file it away for further use and keep an eye on it. I think it is potentially extremely damaging, particularly in rural councils. I can get more information to members if they wish, or, indeed as I pointed out, one of the committees may want to have a look at it. It was a worry; it did not happen, which I think is in the best interests of that district, but I felt it important to bring to the attention of house.