SA Water Charges

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY (14:57): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Water and the River Murray questions about SA water charges.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY: As I briefly outlined on 10 February, I understand that this financial year SA Water sent out individual accounts for each unit in a retirement village at Para Vista, when in previous years the village was receiving two accounts for the entire village as a whole. For this village it has resulted in 26 supply charges at a cost of $7,352.80 per annum, compared with $565.60 last year. The sewerage charges have also increased from $1,556.97 last year to $9,136.40 this year. The cost per unit, based on these costs alone, have increased from $81.63 last year to $634.20 this year.

I understand that having individual accounts means that those who are entitled to a pensioner concession will now be able to apply for their concession. However, I am concerned that the maximum pensioner concession for sewerage is $110 and up to 30 per cent of the charge for water consumption, capped at $295. Based on these figures, residents are at a minimum $147 worse off per year if they received the maximum concession totalling $405 per year. In other words, even if all the residents are pensioners, SA Water would be receiving an extra $3,822 per year from the village. My questions are:

1. Can the minister advise whether the accounts for this village have now been placed on hold while SA Water investigates the impact that this has on their customers?

2. Can the minister advise the status of SA Water's investigations to remedy the problem?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:59): I thank the Hon. Mr Darley for his important question. I have answered this question in this place this year already. To summarise, the situation is this: essentially an independent statutory authority, the Valuer-General, has made some changes in terms of title for retirement villages. Those changes have resulted in a policy change being applied to those titles, which has had the inadvertent effect of driving up costs to individual residents of retirement villages.

I have indicated to this place before that I found that an unacceptable approach to adopting a policy that flows from one agency to another, albeit that the first one is an independent statutory authority, and I have asked SA Water to urgently review the situation, to make sure that retirees are not caught out in this sort of situation in the future.

However, there are swings and roundabouts involved. As the Hon. Mr Darley mentioned—and this has been a constant complaint—pensioners have not been able to access pensioner discounts on their water bills because they have not had any individual water bills. The situation, however, has resulted in a net increase in cost to these pensioners in the retirement village, which the Hon. Mr Darley brought to my attention. That was never the intention of SA Water's policy in this regard. As I say, it has flowed from a decision made by an independent statutory authority, and I have asked SA Water to change the way it applies those decisions into the future.

The PRESIDENT: Supplementary, Mr Darley.