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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-10-16 Daily Xml
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DESALINATION PLANT

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:36): I have a supplementary question. The question was: will the Premier release all of the documentation upon which their decision was based?

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: I rise on a point of order. Restating the question is not a supplementary.

The SPEAKER: No; it is not a supplementary.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Minister for State Development) (14:36): The question proceeds from the false premise that the chain of reasoning which is contained in the final report is materially different, or different in any respect, from the information that cabinet was briefed upon.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! I cannot hear the Premier.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: There are no documents which exist beyond that which have been supplied which are not cabinet documents. All the rest of the material are cabinet documents. I can tell you that cabinet received the same information which is contained in the documents which have been released to the broader community. That is something I chose to do (to release those documents) so that people could inform themselves. While members opposite agreed with the original decision to put in place a desalination plant (that in fact is common ground between us), the truth is that the easy decision was to go from 50 gigalitres to 100 gigalitres because it was nonsensical not to.

It is an extra 10 per cent in relation to the value of the plant to take you from 50 gigalitres to 100 gigalitres, when the additional cost of actually building the 100 gigalitre plant, if we had to build a separate new upgrade, would have been estimated in the order of an extra $200 million beyond that which would otherwise be required. Of course, there was no guarantee that we would have a commonwealth government that would be prepared to meet half of the cost of that upgrade.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: So, Madam Speaker, can I just ask members opposite to pay attention. If they do not believe me, then pay attention to Nigel McBride, who said yesterday at the CEDA lunch that people need to grow up and realise that you cannot advance this state as a serious investment destination unless you can have the long-term water security of the state justified, and that involves a 100 gigalitre desalination plant.

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