SA Water Infrastructure

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:57): My question is to the Minister for Housing. Can the minister inform the house how SA Water is meeting the needs of South Australians? With your leave, sir, and leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: In the regional areas of South Australia, and in MacKillop, we are in need of further SA Water expansion and development to meet the housing shortage.

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Housing Infrastructure, Minister for Planning) (14:58): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question. He has been very passionate about the challenges his electorate faces, and indeed that all regional South Australia faces.

We face a national housing crisis, so this is an issue that is coming up across the country, the interrelationship between housing and infrastructure work to enable that housing. Of course, water and sewers are critical parts of the infrastructure that is needed, and that is one of the reasons the Premier has created the new portfolio of Housing Infrastructure—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: It is hard to respond to those opposite, but I will resist the urge. SA Water is a very important institution for the state. They provide services to 1.7 million South Australians with 220 billion litres of water each year, and have the longest water mains of any state utility—27,000 kilometres and 9,000 kilometres of sewer. It is a significant network and it has done a magnificent job for South Australia. If you look at the long history of it, particularly the expansion of it that happened in Playford's time, that was critical to the growth of housing then.

The honourable member has talked to me about Bordertown, and we know that Bordertown's water supply is under pressure. I have just been over to the Eyre Peninsula. I have to say that I was shocked by some of the briefings I received on the ground there from the Landscape Board. This is a critical issue for many in regional South Australia, and it is also a critical issue for the northern suburbs and the broad growth front that we have there and, sadly, also for the southern suburbs.

We as a government have put in place a land supply dashboard, so that everybody in the development community can see both land supply and development-ready land supply. That includes supply of water and sewerage, but I have to say we are at a critical point now, because in the past the appropriate investment decisions were not made to ensure both the growth of the network and, therefore, the growth of suburbs, towns and regional cities.

I know the honourable member will be interested to know that the UDIA sent a letter on 30 April 2020 to the then Essential Services Commission. In it, they said:

While the UDIA appreciates the role of the Essential Services Commission of SA (ESCOSA) and the need to consider the impacts on consumers pricing, we would caution that there is adequate balance.

Members of the UDIA have expressed concern that the draft determination is weighted too far in favour of price reductions at the expense of future investment.

If you go back and look at 2020, and you look at some of the judgements that needed to be made then about putting investment—that is, pipes and water mains and sewerage pipes—into the ground, not just for metropolitan South Australia but for regional towns and regional cities, people are entitled to look at some of the judgements made at that time and ask if the right decisions were made for the growth of this state.