Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about an issue of significant concern to local constituents in my electorate of Moncrieff and more broadly across the Gold Coast. In particular, I am talking about the water charges that are being now levied upon Gold Coasters by Allconnex. Allconnex is of course the new monolith that has been created by the Queensland state Labor government.

This Labor government completely stuffed South-East Queensland’s water supply as a result of many long years of Labor being in power and not planning adequately. We had a period of drought, to which the Labor Party responded with the ill-conceived, knee-jerk reaction of building a billion-dollar desalination plant. Then we had, unfortunately, all that terrible rain in January which—whilst it was amazingly good rain for the region—was, frankly, a little too much, and we unfortunately also saw the loss of life. To now compound the problem, we have Allconnex, established by the state Labor government, which has foisted upon the people of my constituency and more broadly the Gold Coast an increase in their water charges of some 20 per cent.

The reason that this is of particular concern to me is not only that this is a creature of the state Labor government but also because this highlights, because of who Allconnex’s shareholders are, the inherent problem with the structure. Allconnex’s current shareholders are the respective city councils and councils in the South-East Queensland area—Gold Coast city councillors among them. What we see now is that there is a record grab from Allconnex, going back, in the form of a dividend, to those council shareholders. This concerns me because it goes to the core of one of the fundamental problems with the Gold Coast City Council.

There are some councillors who stand up very strongly for their ratepayers and have been arguing that these charges have been too high. But it is my very fervent belief that, unless the Gold Coast City Council is politicised, unless we have, effectively, a government and an opposition within the council, and unless there are councillors who are willing to hold the government of the day accountable within the Gold Coast City Council, we will see this kind of outrageous rorting and ripping off of ratepayers by Allconnex which is allowed to go through unimpeded because it is effectively being done by a state government utility. Now, the funds all go back to the council, and it is high time that councils realised that slugging people an extra 20 per cent for their water at this point in time—when people are already feeling the stress and strain of the very high unemployment rate on the Gold Coast and rapidly escalating cost of living, with increasing prices, from fresh fruit to other things, for a whole bunch of reasons—is the last thing, frankly, that our city needs, and that is why it should not be happening. (Time expired)