Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about an issue of vital importance to Australians at large and to people from my home state of South Australia in particular—water security. It is vital to city people and to country people. Efficient water collection, storage and use are economically and environmentally sensible, but the South Australian Labor government’s current nonsense is neither efficient nor sensible. South Australia is the driest state on the driest continent; yet we have the Rann Labor government dithering in critical planning for our future water supplies whilst letting the country’s driest state dehydrate. It is a state government which has sat on its hands and prayed for rain and done little else to prepare for either the shorter or longer term.

In recent weeks my fellow South Australians and I have had to endure the state government’s attempts to deflect to the Howard-Costello government the blame for water woes, when we know that the state government is in charge of our water supplies. We have had to put up with condescending messages from the South Australian government about saving water, from a state government progressively forcing South Australians to abandon their gardens whilst it abandons the watering of our state. Without rain, water restrictions alone mean little. We know that water restrictions will not solve our state’s water crisis and that water restrictions are like trying to solve the crisis from the end of a hose. But we have had stern messages about how state taxpayers must fund water cops on the beat and about how it is good to dob in your neighbour.

Whilst the state government tries to tell us it cares, it says we do not care enough to be responsible. In March this year, the South Australian government was lauding the success of water restrictions in South Australia. The state minister was daily telling South Australians they had saved thousands of megalitres of water with drippers and hoses with a nozzle. Then suddenly something must have changed, because the state government slammed the people of South Australia, accusing us of using sprinklers for the maximum period allowed whether our gardens needed it or not. The state government said that householders had been given a chance to prove they could responsibly use drip irrigation during level 3 restrictions last summer—and had failed.

What had changed in a matter of months? We were told it had not rained but we were told little more. For that, the Rann government told us we were to have buckets, and buckets only. What is the empirical evidence for buckets? None, bar that buckets are burdensome. In short, they are pretty hard work. So we got buckets and saved even more water, as the state government quietly continued to pocket increasing amounts by way of a property charge assessed independently of the amount of water used. People living in suburbs like Kilburn, Burnside, Dulwich, Unley and Ashford were burdened with carrying buckets of water to keep their gardens alive. Senior citizens and pensioners staggering about their gardens at night watering plants with buckets of water they have saved would be ludicrous if it were not so tragically real.

According to the state minister, forcing people to bucket water was apparently the result of South Australia’s superb negotiations with the eastern states to release more water from the Murray to South Australia. When people started to question the quality of negotiating skills shown by the South Australian government, it supposedly became the fault of the Prime Minister and Minister Turnbull. On 29 August this year, in the face of the Rann government’s ongoing failure to secure South Australia’s water supplies, the state opposition released their comprehensive 19-point plan to secure and waterproof South Australia. Opposition leader Martin Hamilton-Smith outlined initiatives to end water restrictions, to reduce South Australia’s reliance on the River Murray and to secure South Australia’s water supplies for generations.

But a backlash against buckets continued to fuel public anger at state government dithering. We were told we had best be grateful for buckets, because the state government could ban buckets too. Responsible South Australians were offended.