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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-12-02 Daily Xml
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON SA WATER

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:31): I move:

That the report of the committee be noted.

It is my pleasure to be finally reporting on this select committee, and I have some comments to make about the select committee report and also some comments to make about the minority report from government members. However, before I do that, I put on the record my acknowledgement and thanks to the members of the committee who served: the Hons Ann Bressington, Ian Hunter, Stephen Wade and Russell Wortley. We also had, for a time, the Hon. Caroline Schaefer, and her position was taken during the committee's life by the Hon. Robert Lawson. Also, the Hon. John Darley joined the committee earlier this year.

I also thank the secretary to the committee, Chris Neale, and a special thanks to the research officer who was brought in to assist the committee with its work, Dr John Cugley. I also thank the various organisations and individuals who made submissions, and also those who gave direct evidence to the committee.

The question of water and its management has dominated public debate over the past couple of years, and members might recall that it was the Hon. Nick Xenophon who moved for the creation of this committee to inquire into SA Water. Unfortunately, the Hon. Nick Xenophon moved on to greener pastures before the committee had the chance to—

The Hon. S.G. Wade: Another parliament.

The Hon. M. PARNELL: I am reminded that he moved to another parliament rather than to greener pastures, but the committee carried on without him. It has come up with 38 recommendations. It is not my intention to go through all of them, but I want to explore some of the themes that came out of the committee's work.

The first of those themes relates to the fragmentation of water management in South Australia and, in particular, the roles of various agencies. Whether it be SA Water itself (a statutory corporation), the Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation, the Commissioner for Water Security or the Minister for Water Security, the fragmentation was seen as both confusing and, more importantly, not conducive to a comprehensive approach to the management of water in all its forms. So, probably the most important recommendation of this committee is the creation of a new department for water and a minister for water, with primary responsibility for water policy development and implementation—and that would cover all aspects of water, from urban water supply right through to waste water and water for non-urban purposes as well.

The committee's primary focus was on the agency SA Water, and it has recommended that SA Water be retained as a single government enterprise, but the committee recognised that it will need to operate in a competitive water market. That is not to say that the committee was at all interested in selling off water assets to artificially create competition. In fact, the committee recommends that the existing publicly owned water distribution system (including the reservoirs, water treatment plants and water mains) should all remain under state government control. However, we did recognise that if, as a community, we are serious about capitalising on all opportunities for recovering water, in particular stormwater and waste water, there will be a role for the private sector.

One recommendation that I think illustrates that is recommendation No. 24, which is a call for legislation to be developed to clarify the rights and responsibilities in relation to water that is injected into aquifers through managed aquifer recharge schemes. The evidence presented to the committee made it very clear that organisations (including private companies and private organisations) would be unwilling to invest in this important form of water storage unless they could be guaranteed that they would have some rights over that water once it had been injected into the aquifer. So, we found that we did need to clarify those rights and responsibilities if we are to put in place a climate that enables all of us in the community—whether it is the for-profit or the not-for-profit sector—to do as much as we can, especially in relation to our being more self-sufficient in the supply of water.

The recommendations, in many instances, parallel some of the recommendations in the Water for Good report. However, one theme that members will discover from our report is that we are more interested in legislating targets, criteria and rights and responsibilities, rather than leaving it all to the administrative level. One of the reasons for that—and this is not necessarily reflected in the words of any recommendations or in the report itself, but it is an observation that I make as the committee's chairperson—is that you cannot legislate for good government. However, what you can do through legislation is increase transparency and accountability and you can, in fact, make it harder for governments to make bad decisions.

We have, for example, recommended that we legislate for water recycling targets—that we put that in legislation—and that is very similar to the approach that we have taken in the energy sector in relation to renewable energy targets and greenhouse gas reduction targets as well. The value of increasing the significance of these targets by legislating for them and the advantage of increasing reporting requirements is that we reduce the ability of governments to get away with half-hearted efforts simply because all of the important targets are in administrative documents.

Some of the dissenting statements from the Labor members recognise that there is some duplication in our report and the Water for Good report. I do not think that is necessarily a criticism, given that we wanted to be as comprehensive as we could in our report. However, one comment that government members made cannot be let go without my responding to it, and that is their observation that they think some of the recommendations pursue an economic rationalist agenda, without enough weight given to how those recommendations might impact on lower socio-economic groups and their water bills, pensioners, the unemployed and low income families.

That is not an accusation that I accept for one minute. In fact, the majority of the committee went to some lengths to specify that we need to deal separately with community service obligations and rebates for low income people differently from resource allocation and pricing. In other words, we should take the approach with water that we take with any other form of rebate, that is, whether it is a pensioner getting rate relief or low income people getting rebates on their energy bills, your starting point is the price for the service, utility, product or whatever and then separately account for any rebate that you might give because that recognises that that is a social equity payment, rather than a reduction in the payment for the goods or service. I think we have covered that issue fairly well.

The other area that I think is important—and it goes back to the role of the private sector—is that, whilst the committee believes that all major water infrastructure should remain in public hands, we acknowledge that some of the opportunities for improving water recycling, water harvesting and water recovery rest with the private sector.

If we are going to have a situation where large industries (industrial factories, for example, with large roof areas) are going to capture their stormwater, there needs to be some incentive for them to do that. We either legislate to make everyone capture all stormwater that falls on their property or provide incentives. I think the committee has come up with a range of innovative solutions that not only fulfil the community's expectation that this essential human service be retained in public ownership and control but also recognise that the future may well involve more collaboration with sectors outside government as well. With those few words, I commend the report and the motion to the council.

The Hon. S.G. WADE (16:43): I intend to speak very briefly on this report because I think the chairman has addressed it well and also I will let the report speak for itself. However, I could not resist the opportunity to reflect on what the report and the dissenting report tells us about the Rann Labor government.

We all know that the Rann government has been slow to act on the water security challenges that South Australia has faced and that it has shown a pattern of being resistant to new ideas. Members will recall the government's addiction to old-fashioned punitive water restrictions and its opposition to desalination until the public support for it became overwhelming and they backflipped on that, and, thirdly, its ongoing scepticism about the relevance of stormwater.

The report of the Select Committee on SA Water reaffirms the fact that the committee is of the view that we are in a water crisis and that we need to think creatively and be proactive to address the water security challenges going forward. I think South Australians are becoming increasingly aware that, if this government had been more creative and more proactive in terms of addressing water security challenges, the impact of the drought may well have been significantly reduced. Also, South Australians need to appreciate that, with a government such as the Rann Labor government, which fails to be creative and proactive on water, the ongoing impact of water shortages is likely to be more severe.

In conclusion, I thank all members of the committee for their contribution, and I particularly thank the Hon. Mr Parnell for his chairmanship. I must admit that I was genuinely surprised at the high level of consensus that was possible in the committee. Admittedly, the Labor members tended to be slow learners, but even they could grasp some of the vision, even if only in glimpses. I would like to pay tribute to the work of the secretary, Chris Neale, and also the research officer, Dr Cugley.

A lot of the statements in the report are about a commitment to an ongoing conversation about some of these challenges, but I urge the council and the South Australian public to be open to creative and proactive ways of addressing our water security challenges. It is only in that way that we can have a healthy society, a healthy environment, and a prosperous economy.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (16:45): I was not going to speak but I cannot help myself; however I will be very brief. The Hon. Mr Wade reflected on our dissenting statement and said that we were 'slow learners'. Well, he may think that but, in effect, all that the new green/blue alliance that we saw in action in this committee—the Browns, if you like—has really done is pick up the recommendations that are in the government's own plans, in Water for Good, and elaborated on them somewhat, if that.

As we saw federally in Canberra with the ETS—with the Greens and their unpragmatic approach, and the Liberals, now new-found climate sceptics—all of them, bar two in the Senate at least, are uniting to bag the Rann government's proactive stance on planning for the future water security of this state. As I say, all they have done in this report is rehash what we have already just put in place or what is already in the government's documents in Water for Good. I commend them for picking up the government's recommendations, but we did not need to have a separate select committee to do that.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. B.V. Finnigan.

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