Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share 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?