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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-11-01 Daily Xml
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Recreational Fishing

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (15:10): Supplementary question: the minister may want to take this on notice and come up with a conflated answer. Would he like to come back to the chamber and give us a figure for how much he estimates this will cost, and has he—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The member has the floor.

The Hon. P. Malinauskas interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Malinauskas, cease immediately. I must say, I am more disappointed with the Leader of the Government, at his behaviour. The honourable member has every right to ask a question without abuse from the other side.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: I apologise for exciting your members. The rest of my question was to ask the minister—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: Given his clear concerns with this particular matter, has he raised the issue with his fellow Murray-Darling Basin ministers in regard to any of the activities that take place, not just on the River Murray, but on dams like the Hume reservoir, which is one of the largest storage facilities in the world?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:12): I feel sorry for the Hon. Michelle Lensink, trying desperately to defend this ridiculous suggestion of her leader, Mr Steven Marshall, the member for Dunstan, in the other place. For goodness sake, the Liberals coming in here asking the government to cost their policy for them! This mob really thinks the community is going to take them seriously when they are making major policy announcements with no clue whatsoever—no clue whatsoever—about what that impact might be on taxpayers of South Australia. Now they are saying, 'Well, why don't you do that for us? Why don't you cost it for us? It would be very kind of you to use government resources to cost our Liberal Party policy.' That is an offer. Goodness gracious me. Then she goes on—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The minister has the floor.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: —trying to sow confusion by trying to compare water catchments and storages in the Eastern States with ours. In New South Wales and Victoria, they have the Alps. They have deep catchments and storages. They can supply water out of their catchments and storages for four years. We can barely supply water for four months out of ours. That is the key difference. Their catchments are also surrounded by a pristine environment; it is protected. Ours are cheek by jowl with agricultural practices with all of the run-off associated with that.

No, the Liberals don't know this because they have been out of government for so long that they don't bother to do any of their policy work. They are totally out of touch with their local communities—totally out of touch with their local communities. They don't know what those communities want.

On the other hand, as I said, we in the state Labor government go out and talk to our communities. We ask them what they want and we deliver those policies hand in glove with local organisations, local communities like RecFish SA, and we come up with the best outcomes that protect all of the interests, particularly of SA water customers, and supplying safe and reliable drinking water.

That's not what the Liberals are proposing. They are proposing just the opposite, with no costing whatsoever—no costing whatsoever. How irresponsible is that? They pretend to go out there and say, 'We are the alternative government, but we are not going to tell you how much these policies cost. We are just going to come up with a nice, pretty flyover', something someone dodged up on a Minecraft program, popped a few virtual trees on land they used to own and then sold off.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Now they want to buy that land back at massively inflated prices. Goodness gracious me. What a bunch of no-hopers. No wonder they have been out of government for so long, no wonder they will only be back in government by 2036.

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