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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-05-24 Daily Xml
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SA Water

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY (14:36): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Water and the River Murray questions regarding SA Water supply charges.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY: SA Water levies a separate supply charge for each individual in properties that are generally served by one or two meters. These properties include retirement villages, where each separate living unit is required to pay the $286.40 annual supply charge. The ownership and responsibility of the pipework within the common boundary of these properties is the responsibility of the owners. That is to say, if there is a leak, it is up to the village owner to organise and pay for all repairs to the pipe and roadway as the pipework is on private property. SA Water do not take any responsibility for pipework within a retirement village and will only take responsibility for pipework to the meter or meters that service the property. Given this:

1. Why does SA Water levy a separate supply charge per unit?

2. What exactly are they supplying, given their responsibility ends at the meter?

3. Does the minister agree that it would be much fairer to only charge one supply charge per meter and split this cost across the number of occupancies?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:38): I thank the Hon. Mr Darley for his important question. He has of course raised this and similar issues previously in this place. As he will understand from his past life, the fixed assets of SA Water—which I said a little earlier are around $13 billion, in terms of a cost renewal or replacement price—need to be recovered.

The way we have traditionally recovered it, and the way that seems appropriate, is to do it through a supply charge, rather than a cost on delivery of water. That is why we have the twin approach; so, the fixed charged (the supply charge) talks about the asset prices, and then the cost of delivering water is the three-tier charge that we utilise in this state.

Other states have slightly different approaches; they use a two-tier or one-tier charge. We have a different charging system for business, as opposed to households. In terms of the various units, my understanding is that the supply charges are levied based on titles that are developed and declared by the Valuer-General.

The honourable member would obviously be aware of this, because we had a situation last year, I think, where we did some work in terms of retirement villages. It was a very difficult proposition because, as I said, the Valuer-General makes decisions about land titles, and we therefore apply our processes to that.

In the situation of retirement villages, we have addressed that issue here previously. I will not go through that again because we have done that rather exhaustively. But, in terms of in general and in terms of developers developing land and having separate titles to that land, the situation will always be, at least into the foreseeable future, that a supply charge will apply to each title.

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