Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Faulkner, the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Water. The Salisbury council in South Australia is a national and world leader in stormwater harvesting, with the architect of their scheme, Colin Pitman, estimating that, if the existing local scheme is expanded, some 80 gigalitres of Adelaide’s stormwater can be harvested at an infrastructure cost of some $350 million, about one quarter of the cost of Adelaide’s proposed 50-gigalitre desalination plant. Does the minister agree that stormwater harvesting is a much cheaper and much less energy intensive method of delivering clean water than a desalination plant?