SA Water

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (15:06): Supplementary. Will any further performance bonus payments be paid and, if so, to whom?

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Housing Infrastructure, Minister for Planning) (15:06): I just had a meeting with SA Water today. I was speaking to the chairman and we were talking about these bonus systems. These bonus systems were present, as I understand it, every year under previous governments, of both persuasions, and these bonuses are paid at the discretion of management and the board of SA Water. I think we should leave the board and the executive to properly remunerate their employees.

SA Water staff work incredibly hard at providing safe drinking water and at providing a good sewerage system, and most of us just turn on the tap or flush the toilet and we don't need to think any more about it. But what we have got is a very sophisticated system of 27,000 kilometres or so of potable water pipes and 9,000 kilometres or so of sewerage pipes. It's an incredibly sophisticated system which serves the state well.

As we know from various places—and I know many members are interested in this—where you don't have potable water pipes and where you don't have sewerage provision you get blockages in the housing supply and blockages in your local economy. So this is a really important entity for the state government and very important for the provision of drinking water, sewerage access and the like. It's very important to the life and economy of the state and we should properly remunerate SA Water staff who do so much of that good work.