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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-03 Daily Xml
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Question Time

DESALINATION PLANT

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:22): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Urban Development and Planning a question about the location of the Port Stanvac desalination plant.

Leave granted.

The Hon. B.V. Finnigan interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: The day has only just begun and he is already annoying me, Mr President. Last weekend I spent a couple of hours with the Liberal Party's very hard-working candidate Maria Kourtesis in the seat of Bright; in fact, I visited a number of constituents down there and, in particular, spent some time at a shopping centre with Ms Kourtesis. It was interesting to note that a significant proportion of the large number of people to whom we spoke raised concerns about the location of the desalination plant at the Port Stanvac refinery site, so I took the opportunity to drive down and inspect it from the roadway. My questions to the minister are:

1. Given that the area of the Mobil site is almost 1,000 hectares, why is the government building the desalination plant at the extreme northern end of the buffer zone?

2. Is the minister aware that the desalination plant is now closer to residents' houses than the refinery site proper?

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:24): The choice of the site at Port Stanvac for the desalination plant was, of course, made after significant consideration of the matter by SA Water, which proposed it. Port Stanvac is an ideal site because it is adjacent to deep water; that is why it was a port. It was also zoned industrial.

The honourable member would be well aware of the history of the land at Port Stanvac. There is some contaminated land, and there has been an ongoing issue between Mobil—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: What would you do? The honourable member can say what he would do in relation—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: He would get tough with them, would he? He might consider how he would do that. I would be very interested to hear his treatise one day about how we get tough. The honourable member would be well aware that the land is owned by Mobil. I am sure that Mobil would have liked the state government to compulsorily acquire it because, presumably, that would then mean that the state would have to assume liability for what could be an extremely contaminated site. As the honourable member would be well aware, the land is the buffer zone around there, because those issues could be resolved without taking the length of time that it might otherwise have taken to resolve the ownership issues.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: That is rubbish; that is one of the myths. It is a Liberal myth.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: It was our idea.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: They say we took their idea. Anyone can come in here and say, 'We will build a desalination plant; we will build a stadium.' It is easy enough to say that and to come up with an idea. I could come up with an idea and say that we will build $50 billion worth of transport infrastructure in the next 30 years. It is easy to say—it takes one word. However, whether it stacks up economically, environmentally or in any other respect is something else.

Governments do not spend $2 billion on a whim. Just because somebody says, 'Let's build a desal plant,' without any investigation, without even looking at it, really means nothing. Anyone can say that they will do that, just like anyone can say that they will build a sports stadium—

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: 'Hear, hear', they say. In other words, this opposition is going to be committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a facility that not even the people who might benefit from it want—but that is another story.

In relation to the Port Stanvac desalination plant, it is just rubbish to suggest that the opposition could have built another plant earlier. In any case, why would you do it? This is one of the things the opposition is saying; that it would have had it two years earlier. We have not needed it yet. Sure, we are going to need it in the future but, if it had been built two years earlier, you would have spent all that money and for what benefit? The thing is that this government will build it when it is needed—

The Hon. S.G. Wade interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: The Hon. Mr Wade clearly has an ability that the rest of us do not have, and he can predict droughts. He knows when a drought is coming. Obviously, the Hon. Mr Wade, unlike the rest of us, predicted that South Australia was going to have the worst drought in history, that it will be an unprecedented drought, that the rainfall will be deficient in an unprecedented way, and that it will continue for a period never seen in the history of this state. He might be gifted in that respect, in having a particular sense of forethought, but the fact is that this government has managed the water resources of this state so that we have been able to address all of the relevant needs. What is more, we are building a desal plant.

How can members opposite say that they would have done this? What location would you have used? Come on; you were interjecting before, so where would you have built it?

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: Of course you are, because you do not have the answer, do you? You know that you would have had to do the work. You know there are very few sites that are suitable. The opposition knows that it would have needed months and months of study—as this government has done—to find the appropriate site.

If members opposite do not want a desalination plant at Port Stanvac, where do they want it? They really are frauds. They dream up ideas like a new stadium and all these facilities. They do not bother about costing them. Every day they come in here calling for millions of dollars more expenditure. They are calling for tax cuts and extra expenditure. They have absolutely no economic credibility whatsoever.

The particular site at Port Stanvac was chosen for the desalination plant because it is a buffer area and the government was able to reach agreement with Mobil in relation to that site. There are clearly issues with the remainder of the site, because of contamination and the like that will have to be addressed at some stage in the future, but they are matters for my colleague.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: If the honourable member wants more details in relation to that, he can ask another question, and I will refer it to my colleague. In relation to the planning for this project, this site was readily available for the government to build the desal plant in time for when it is needed, which is the start of the summer season next year.

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