Water Pricing

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (15:16): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister update the house about measures the Marshall Liberal government has taken to reduce water bills?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:16): It's a great pleasure to be able to answer this question because we were able to get hold of the figures on the weekend of how much South Australian households and businesses have saved since the Marshall Liberal government put massive downward pressure on water bills and delivered tens of millions of dollars back into the pockets and the wallets and the bank accounts of people and businesses all across the state.

Why were we able to do that? Well, I will be brief in this response because we do want to get onto the Independents. It is simply because we reversed the dodgy way that the previous government were cooking the books. We know—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: And we hear 'what?' from the other side, as if this is a surprise. It is certainly not a surprise for the member for Lee. We know the inflated regulated asset base was inflated for many years. When we came to government we asked Lew Owens, a respected South Australian businessman and leader, to look at the way that the regulated asset base had been calculated by the previous government. His independent review, his report, was quite damning. It was quite clear the previous government had inflated the regulated asset base to the level of hundreds of millions of dollars, which resulted in water bills being driven right up, ripping hard-earned money out of the households of South Australians across the state.

Since we came to office and wrote down the regulated asset base, as Mr Owens recommended we should as part of the 2020-24 SA Water regulatory determination, we have been able to reduce bills significantly: $200 for the average household, $1,350 for the average business—money back to South Australians so that they can choose what they want to do with it.