SA Water

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:07): My question is to the Minister for Water and the River Murray. Minister, the National Performance Report that you selectively quoted last week shows that SA Water takes longer than any other utility to restore services. Have you investigated why this is the case and, if not, why not?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:07): A sensible question from a very sensible member; I thank him for it.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: That's not what you said a couple of weeks ago.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: But he's learnt a bit in that time. It is important to understand the context of the question, and the context of the question is certainly this: 27,000 kilometres of pipe, 28,000 kilometres of pipe. That is the context of the question, Mr President, because you know that, in relation to that, people have a longer way to go to attend to leakages. If you are talking about a water utility that is based just on a metropolitan area, like Sydney Water for example, then the amount of time they take to get to a job is considerably less on average than it would be across the state of South Australia, which is what the measure is.

If you wanted to compare—and I do not believe these figures are available—the outcomes in terms of response to metropolitan callouts, you might find a similar level, but of course we have 27,000 kilometres of pipe. So, there is going to be a longer average attendance on jobs because, if you consider those large expanses of pipe in the country, it is going to take time to get your teams and your crews out there.

The honourable member talks about the Liberal Party cherrypicking figures, which of course they are wont to do, but it is also important to understand the Bureau of Meteorology has other tables which commend SA Water for the work that it does. Other tables show, for example, again, SA Water in the top performing utilities when it comes to responding to telephone inquiries in less than 30 seconds. We are up at the top of the league table there as well, Mr President. I do not think that was mentioned when the Liberal Party was cherrypicking these figures, Mr President; they just went to one other table they wanted to go to.

Another one they raised relates to the leakage index per head of population. Of course, again, the context is 27,000 kilometres of pipeline compared to some of our competitors that might only have 10,000, 12,000 or 15,000. Of course the leakage over 27,000 kilometres of pipeline is always going to be greater than those with a smaller portfolio of pipes. And, of course, those water utilities based in the big urban centres have a higher population to divide the amount of water loss through than South Australia does.

With a larger network of pipes and a lower population than, say, Sydney Water has to service, of course that figure is always going to look bad for us, purely because of the structure of our state, the structure of the pipes right across South Australia, and the number of connections being considerably lower than what you would have in Sydney, for example. They can get a better outcome by simply dividing by four million people instead of what we can dividing by two million people, or 1.8 million—whatever the figure might be in terms of connections at the point of time.

When the opposition does cherrypick figures, it is incumbent on people to be wary of that because there are mixed outcomes in those reports for every water utility. SA Water performs exceptionally well in some areas and not so well in others, and they are the areas that SA Water needs to pick up its performance on.

One of the other areas that SA Water will be picking up its performance on is customer relations. When we are out there fixing those breaks with our technical crews, we will have customer relation teams out there doorknocking at the same time, explaining what the break is about, how long the expectation will be for the water to be off, providing the information that is required, and providing water if it is requested and required if the outage is going to be over a number of hours. That is what we need to do better: relate to those communities and give them the information that makes them understand what is happening with the technical crews who may be two or three streets away.