Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

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

The community expressed its indignation—indeed, colleagues—to Liberals, including the Liberal candidate for Adelaide, Tracy Marsh, as well as the member for Sturt, the Hon. Christopher Pyne, whose petition calling on the state government to develop a comprehensive water infrastructure plan has since gathered more than 10,000 signatures. On 31 August this year, two days after the state opposition’s outlining of its 19-point plan to waterproof the state, the state government still stood steadfast and strident. South Australia’s water minister announced that only rain would change the state government’s policy.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame.

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

Ah! Less than a fortnight later Labor Premier Mike Rann announced the breathtaking backflip: drippers would again be allowed and, following the state Liberal lead, a desalination plant would be built to supply water to Adelaide.

As commentator Mike Smithson noted in the Sunday Mail on 16 September, rattled Rann ‘was forced’ into an early announcement:

The timing and delivery of this week’s news that Adelaide will receive a desalination plant was bewildering, but one thing is certain – it’s the right decision ... Despite the Government claiming that desalination has always been its idea, the simple fact is that the Liberals have led the charge for many months ...

Where are the state Labor government’s details? Where are the plans? Where will the desalination plant be sited? Premier Rann says the desalination plant will supply 25 per cent of Adelaide’s fresh water, will cost more than $1.4 billion and take up to five years to build. It took Western Australia two years, and New South Wales says it will take 26 months to be up and running. So why five years? Where are the costings?

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They’re hopeless.

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

You may well suggest, colleagues. Scant details suggest that Adelaide will pay three times as much as Perth for its desalination plant, and water rates are tipped to rise by $300 annually—some six times Perth’s annual rise of $43 per year.

We can all see that water prices should and will go up. But the South Australian government must justify why about one-third of everybody’s water bill currently goes into general revenue and explain why the numbers add up about as well as the cost estimates on the North Terrace tram extension and the opening bridge at Port Adelaide. The Rann Labor government are not really committed to the idea. They are probably still hoping they will not have to build it.

Of course, a desal plant is part of the solution. Indeed, farmers and those who live along the Murray, through the Riverland, the Murraylands and the Lower Lakes, must be happy to see that, in future, Adelaide may not have to take 90 per cent of its water supply from the Murray, like it currently does during very dry periods.

Most amazing was that the Premier did not need the Prime Minister’s permission to change his policy. The state government’s botched attempt to blame the Prime Minister for South Australia’s water woes is ill-concealed by the state government’s subsequent attempt to claim credit for a long-overdue backflip under community and Liberal Party pressure. But where are the Rann government’s short-term plans to secure the state’s water supplies—the short-term plans in advance of long-term plans being completed?

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’d have to ask Don Farrell about that.

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

We may well. Where are their realistic plans for more storm and waste water recycling infrastructure?

That brings us to the federal election. To see the hallmarks of what a Rudd administration would be, look no further than the Rann administration and its withering and dithering dehydration of South Australia. Labor administrations lack the experience to govern responsibly. They lack the vision to plan for the future and the ability to generate resources to afford to build for the future. Where they do attempt the right initiatives, they echo Liberal initiatives. Labor administrations play politics with issues like water because winning elections is more important than governing. And, if they get to govern, they flounder, because they do not know how to do it. Australians recognise that the job will not get done unless Liberals do it.