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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-09-21 Daily Xml
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Reservoir Management

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (14:26): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Water and the River Murray on the subject of reservoir management.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: I would like to take this opportunity to thank the minister for his commitment to me yesterday that he will provide me with the protocols—you read the Hansard, minister—that his agency, SA Water, uses.

In an interview on ABC Radio yesterday, the minister, in response to questions from Mr David Bevan about this matter, said, 'Everybody will be criticising SA Water if they didn't pump water through winter when pumping was cheap and electricity was cheap.'

My question for the minister is: can he expand on that statement and provide the chamber with a quantum of how much it would cost to pump water in winter—I think it was actually in autumn when it was pumped from the river—compared to if the water was pumped either this spring or summer, what the difference in costs would be on a relative basis?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:27): I thank the honourable member for her most important question. At the outset, I should say that she has misunderstood the explanation that I was giving, in terms of the pumping costs. SA Water pays for electricity on the spot market, as I understand it, so that they can actually time the pumping to match the lowest price on the spot market of electricity.

It is not a question of: do you pump it in autumn or do you pump it in spring, or whenever, it is a matter of the amount of time that you take to pump. The longer the time you have the greater the amount of time you can spread your pumping purchase price over the period when electricity is the cheapest on the spot market. They don't have a contract for this. They play the spot market and therefore can utilise the lowest cost of electricity to do the pumping.

If you actually shorten the period from which they can do that pumping, then they have to pump much longer and they have to disregard, in many ways, the cheapest available electricity because they have to pump over a period of time that is out of their control. That's the key difference. The longer the time they have to pump into a reservoir, the more spread over the cheap electricity times they can utilise. If you stop that and say, 'No, instead of over three months, you are going to pump it in 30 days,' then they would have to utilise the electricity at a higher rate, obviously, which is spread over much more increased prices in terms of the electricity.

So, I can't provide her with any differential other than that because the spot market changes on a minute by minute, hour by hour basis, and SA Water purchases its electricity when it is cheapest to do so. That's why they plan to pump ahead of time, so that they have enough water in the reservoirs to meet—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: So they can let it out when it floods.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: —the needs of residents. The ignorance of the Hon. David Ridgway in this matter—thank goodness he will never be in charge, he will never be in government to be in charge of very important water policies. He hasn't got the first clue about how to run a business. No wonder he is here in the chamber—not the first clue. No wonder he failed as a businessman.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Minister, just one second. You don't refer to the President as 'him', if you don't mind.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: I apologise, Mr President.

The PRESIDENT: I forgive you.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: But I know it was a cash business that you ran.

The PRESIDENT: Minister.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Mr President, he should pay all due deference to you, as I do, as our most illustrious President. That would be the appropriate way of addressing your eminence. All I can say is the Hon. Mr Ridgway has not got the faintest idea about how to run a business. God help us all if he gets his hands on the Treasury benches.

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