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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-07-22 Daily Xml
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WATER BILLING

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:13): My question now is to the Treasurer. Treasurer, will you table the documents and advice you received from SA Water CEO, Anne Howe, which led you to change your view as to who was at fault over the SA Water billing confusion? On Saturday 19 July the Treasurer said:

SA Water knew exactly what the government's intentions were and in a classic case of Yes Minister, we have been wrong-footed...SA Water will know exactly how I feel when I meet with them on Monday morning.

Yet, on radio this morning, the Treasurer shifted the blame to the Minister for Water Security and said: 'Karlene did not sufficiently explain to cabinet about the billing cycle.'

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Industry and Trade, Minister for Federal/State Relations) (15:14): The minister has just said that. It actually is—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The deputy leader.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Anne Howe will sue me.

Ms Chapman: She can sue you.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Can she really? On what grounds?

Mr Williams: Will you table the document?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Sorry, on what grounds can Anne Howe sue me?

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I was very happy—

Ms Chapman: Your incompetence and now you're going to blame her. How pathetic.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: She can just keep getting away with that, can she, sir?

The SPEAKER: Order! The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will come to order. The Treasurer has the call.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Thank you, sir. I was glad to see Kate Lennon go. She deserved to be dealt with. As it relates to Anne Howe, I do not resile from anything I said.

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! I warn the deputy leader! If she interjects again, I will name her.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Sir, I stand by everything I said in The Advertiser. It was well reported, properly reported. I said that blind Freddy could have seen what would happen once this was known publicly, that SA Water did know what the government's understanding was, because my memory was that the Premier's press release was checked. We assume it was checked by SA Water, and again I stand to be corrected. But the point is—and I said that this is a good case of Yes Minister—when I met with the SA Water officials yesterday, I made that very clear to them and they accepted that.

Anne Howe has said publicly that in hindsight two things should have happened, and this is what she said to us in the morning. One is that they should have put a far greater explanation in the cabinet submission as to the water billing cycle and the timing impacts, and they acknowledged that did not occur in the submission; and, secondly (by Anne's own admission), they should have put something in the bill itself, that there should have been a note of explanation to consumers. Anne quite rightly accepted my argument that cabinet was not properly informed by SA Water. However, what I have also accepted from—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Sorry?

Ms Chapman: You used kindergarten language, did you?

The SPEAKER: Order! I do not know whether that was an interjection or an aside to a colleague, but any interference, anything which is in any way disrupting the Deputy Premier, I have to treat in the same way. I am loath to name the deputy leader on what I presume was just an aside to a colleague, which obviously the Deputy Premier picked up. I will not, but I do implore the deputy leader not to interrupt the Deputy Premier. The Deputy Premier would also make my life a lot easier if he simply ignored interjections and proceeded with his comments and did not allow himself to be so easily disrupted. The deputy leader is on her absolute final warning. The Deputy Premier.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I will do what I can, sir, not to be so easily interrupted by the barrage of screaming and yelling coming from the other side. Of course I was annoyed that this happened, and I am a fair bloke: I stand by my criticisms of SA Water in this. I do not even for one second resile from that but, in fairness to Anne Howe and her people, they operated lawfully and within the law. They incorrectly assumed that the cabinet fully understood the billing cycle.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for MacKillop is warned.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: As I have evidenced to the house already, when in government even the Liberal Party's ministers were ignorant of the billing process because Rob Lucas did exactly the same thing, and when Martin Hamilton-Smith, the leader, was a cabinet minister around that table. But I acknowledge that SA Water could have assumed—and I can understand that they did—that we knew what the billing cycle was.

When boiled down, it was not a deliberate act of SA Water, it was not, as the Leader of the Opposition was reported on Friday as saying, that this was some Machiavellian way of ripping off taxpayers, a sneaky trick and whatever other language to that effect he used. It was not. It was an honest error, where a government department assumed that cabinet knew the full details of the billing cycle. The cabinet did not, and the cabinet is quite right, through me as Treasurer, to have made it clear to the senior people of SA Water that that is not good enough. It is a good signal to all of the bureaucracy that we need to ensure that there is a very upfront process in terms of informing cabinet of complicated matters.

Having said that, I respect the work of SA Water, and I respect the fact that they were following the letter of the law. It did nothing wrong. It was a serious breakdown in communication. On balance, when I took all of that into account, I put up my hand and I took responsibility as Deputy Premier and Treasurer. Ultimately, we are the elected government. We are responsible for the actions of government, and, in this case, when I analysed it, the greater fault lay with the government than it did with the bureaucracy. When I looked at the matter, greater fault lay with the elected government than it did with the bureaucracy, and I have apologised for that. I cannot do any more than that.

We have not made anything up. It is not in our interest to make anything up. As soon as we realised the error, we moved to correct it and to apologise for it; and we did it in a decent way and in good faith. We have not been about apportioning blame other than to accept the fact that, if anyone is to blame, the majority of blame sits with the government.

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