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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. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (14:47): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Water and the River Murray a question about SA Water infrastructure.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: As the majority of colleagues in this house are aware, Adelaide is in the midst of what, according to the minister, is an annual SA Water show with pipes bursting in spectacular fashion across this city's metropolitan area. It is groundhog day in Adelaide as we awake each morning to the daily reports of water gushing forth across our roadways and into our homes, causing havoc for home owners and commuters faced with yet another break. The minister finally admitted last week that SA Water's record on this issue is not as rosy as he had boasted many times in both this house and on the wireless.

He finally came clean and admitted that the rate of pipe burst across the Adelaide metropolitan area was around 19 per 100 kilometres, rather than the much lower figure that the minister has preferred to brandish where he quoted 14 per 100 kilometres. According to the minister, our state has experienced around—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Thank you, Mr President. According to the minister our state has experienced around 4,000 breaks each year for the past 15 years, with an annual repair bill of around $150 million and a spend of $300 million on average every year to refurbish infrastructure. My questions are:

1. If, according to the minister, SA Water is putting $300 million a year into infrastructure refurbishment in addition to the money it spends on repairs, can the minister explain why the South Australian community is not seeing a reduction in the number of breaks?

2. Does the minister agree with the national performance report into urban water utilities, prepared by the Bureau of Meteorology, that South Australia spends one of the smallest amounts of any city service—city service, Mr President, not across the state—on capital infrastructure, and has the highest number of sewer breaks per customer and the most sewer breaks of any capital city, and in an average of two hours and 43 minutes, SA Water takes longer than any other provider in Australia to restore services?

3. My third and final question is—and I trust I will get three answers for a change: can the minister tell this house what studies have been commissioned and how much money has been dedicated to find a solution to what now all the media rightly so are claiming as a crisis in Adelaide's water infrastructure?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:50): Again I thank the honourable member for his hypocritical questions, where, again like the Liberals opposite, he cherrypicks bits of information, but never, ever goes to inform himself about the real answers. All he is interested in is getting on the wireless, as he says, and making a few inflammatory claims.

I have repeatedly said, and I will say again, with recent rain events and soil shifting, water main ruptures are spiking, as they do at this time of year, and have done every year. I understand that this can be a very big frustration and inconvenience to South Australians, of course. These ruptures do have an impact on people's lives and I expect SA Water to respond to those customers impacted by mains breaks. I have reiterated this expectation in here previously, as I have done in the media, and also have done in my meetings with SA Water.

What we have seen here is an opposition desperate to inflate this issue into a crisis to grab headlines and particularly to get into—

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: He is a branch affiliate of the opposition, isn't he, Mr President? Once a Liberal minister and now he is sitting over on this side as a crossbencher, but we all know where the Hon. Mr Brokenshire lines up. We all know where his heart lies: with the good old Liberal Party of yore, not the one they have today, which is, of course, a terrible failure in his eyes but the one that he very fondly reminisces about when he captures you in the corridors.

I tabled last week 15 years of yearly burst water main breaks across South Australia. The table shows that we have had 15 stable years for water main failures in this state. In fact, I am advised that to date, this calendar year, there have been 895 water main failures, bursts and leaks.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The minister has the floor.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I will repeat again: I am advised that to date, 23 May, this calendar year, this is up to yesterday of course, there have been 895 water main failures, bursts and leaks in the Adelaide metropolitan area. This compares to 945 water main failures between January and the end of May 2015. I will repeat that: so far, up to yesterday, we have had 895 water main failures, bursts and leaks in the Adelaide metropolitan area. This is compared to 945 water main failures between January and the end of May of last year. That does not mean that we do not have water main failures. Of course it does not; we do.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Nothing to be proud of.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: The Hon. Mr Ridgway again shows his ignorance. It shows his complete ignorance of the water system, of the business it takes to deliver water to our houses and to our homes and to our businesses. He has no clue, absolutely no clue what it takes to maintain a 27,000 kilometre pipeline of pressurised water pipes to deliver a reliable and safe product to our homes. Of course you will have breaks in such a water system; every water utility does.

The Hon. Mr Brokenshire gets up here and makes claims in his preamble. A lot of it was wrong. I believe I am right in saying he said that we spend $150 million every year on repairs. That is not right. The figure I have used in here in the past was $50 million, $50 million to address repairs; and over $300 million—he got that bit right—in terms of asset and infrastructure renewal. Again, he doesn't check his facts. He comes in here fast and loose, making claims around the place, probably basing his information on press releases from the member for Unley, his great mate, his old Liberal Party mate, who also gets his facts and figures completely wrong. So, he comes in here and talks about Bureau of Meteorology comparative tables, but when I use exactly the same information—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! You don't have conversations across the floor while the minister is on his feet giving an answer. Show a little more respect for the processes of this parliament. Minister, continue.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: So, whilst he comes in here and references these comparative reports, which I have used before, he never accepts it when I am talking about water main breaks and the comparative figures for the other states. I have read into the Hansard record several times, for the benefit of Mr Brokenshire and the opposition—

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire: This is from the bureau.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Yes, it is from the bureau—the comparative rates of breakage per 100 kilometres of pipe per year, and it puts SA Water's performance right at the very top in driving down the number of breaks year on year, a stable number of breaks, one of the smallest number of breaks per 100 kilometres of pipes in the country. The Hon. Mr Brokenshire will not talk about that. He says he doesn't care what happens interstate, but he is very happy to come in here today and use interstate figures of comparison to make up another story. The other story is—cherrypicking of figures is a fatal flaw in his make-up, one that he probably shares with the member for Unley, Mr Pisoni.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: As we have seen from the member for Unley, when he wants to make an argument he conveniently drops off one year's budget papers to only present two to try to back up his arguments. He does not want to give people the complete picture, and neither does the Hon. Mr Brokenshire. Whilst we do have more failures at this time of year, as we move from long periods of dry seasons to wetter months we will see an increase in breaks. We saw them last year and, as I said—I remind the Leader of the Opposition (again, I will use the figure I used earlier)—to date (yesterday) I am advised that there have been 895 water main failures in the Adelaide metropolitan area.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: We heard this four minutes ago.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Yes, and you weren't listening. This is compared with 945 water main failures between January and the end of May. Like the Hon. Mr Brokenshire, the Liberals have now cherrypicked—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Minister, please take your seat. I do not know about you, but I am finding it difficult to hear the answer of the minister.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: He is answering the question in the way he wishes to answer it. It is totally inappropriate to have conversations across the floor, in particular the Leader of the Government should know better. Once you do it you will encourage everyone else, because they all follow you and regard you and respect you, you understand. Allow the minister now to finish his answer.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Thank you, Mr President. The inestimable leadership of the Leader of the Government here is followed by almost everybody in this chamber, except the Hon. Mr Brokenshire from time to time, who goes his own way, as we all know and as the Liberals tell us quite consistently.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Answer the question.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I already have.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Then sit down.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I have a bit more information for the Hon. Mr Brokenshire, because he asked a series of questions.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I could do, but I am sure for those who are very interested they will go back to Hansard and check it for themselves. The Hon. Mr Brokenshire talks about other comparative tables that show we perform poorly across the whole state—and this is the key point—across the whole state in terms of time taken to restore services. But, the Hon. Mr Brokenshire will not compare apples with apples. Why are you trying to compare, in terms of time to restore services, a utility that has 27,000 kilometres of pipeline with one that has 5,000 kilometres of pipeline? Why are you trying to make a direct comparison between a utility that has only 5,000 or 15,000 kilometres of pipeline, whereas SA Water has to be responsible for call-outs along 27,000 kilometres of pipeline?

Unless you do kilometre per kilometre, unless you do an analysis where you break it down by 100 kilometres so that you can do a direct comparison, we will always perform badly on that metric because we have the greatest length of pipeline of any water utility in the country. Of course it takes longer for our crews to get to breaks in that situation, because the table the Hon. Mr Brokenshire is referencing is not broken down to metropolitan call-outs, it is across the whole state. Think about what it takes to get a crew out to some of the more remote pipelines, into the country areas. Those figures for country call-outs form part of that table, and it is dishonest of the Hon. Mr Brokenshire not to reference that.

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire: No, it's not. I represent the whole state.

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr McLachlan.

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