Speech By Jon Krause

MEMBER FOR

Record of Proceedings, 6 September 2018

STATE DEVELOPMENT, NATURAL RESOURCES AND AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

Report, Motion to Take Note Mr KRAUSE (Scenic Rim—LNP) (3.20 pm): I want to make some comments about the committee report, noting the comments made by members of the committee. In particular, I note the point made in the report about continuing to make an operating loss which largely reflects ‘the historical under-recovery of the cost of water’ and the ‘past acquisition of highly geared businesses’. That may well be the case when it comes to looking at the financials of Seqwater, but it certainly would not be something that rings true to consumers of water in South-East who have seen over the past decade their water bills skyrocket continuously as a result of the historical investment and spending on the water network in South-East Queensland. I speak of things like the Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme, the Tugun desalination plant and the Wyaralong in my electorate. That dam cost $380 million and it has become a $380 million rowing dam due to the fact that it is not actually connected to the grid. It was built against the advice of many locals in that area who questioned the quality of the water that would be collected in the dam. It remains to be seen whether that water will actually ever be able to be used for the Seqwater grid. The water is said to be brackish. Some people say that it is contaminated by arsenic due to the historical land uses of the land on which the dam is built. That $380 million forms part of the debt held by Seqwater. Seqwater is paying interest on that debt. We are all paying the debt for things like Wyaralong Dam that is not being used. It is one example of being built without pipelines and pipelines being built without dams under the former Beattie and Bligh governments. A massive amount of money went into the Seqwater network. If we look at the bulk water prices this year we see that we are being charged $2.91 per kilolitre. It will be $3.01 per kilolitre in 2019-20. It will be $3.12 per kilolitre in 2020-21. We are still seeing continual increases in the Seqwater bulk price as a result of the mismanagement of the water grid by former Labor governments. The worst thing of all for most residents of the Scenic Rim electorate is that they are not even connected to the water grid. They are paying $2 or $3 per kilolitre of water for the so-called security of the Seqwater grid but they are not even connected to it. For all the people who live in Boonah, Beaudesert, Kooralbyn, Rathdowney and the other towns in my electorate who pay through the nose for the debt put on them by the forebears of the members opposite, they do not even get any security of water supply. It is an outrage that this amount of money has been spent and a dam was built against the wishes and advice of locals. They are now paying for it but they do not get one single drop of as result of it.

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I think it is time the people of my electorate in places like Boonah, Beaudesert and the other areas where they are not connected to the grid got some relief from these prices. It should be recognised that they are not connected to the grid. Seqwater and the government should be looking at reducing those bulk water charges for those areas that are not part of the grid and do not benefit from any so-called security but are still paying for it and have been for the last 10 years. I will give an example of the enormous costs to the community in this respect. Recently at a school in my electorate they had an undetected water leak. They were sent an enormous bill by Queensland Urban Utilities. They tried to fix this as soon as possible. They made appeals to QUU and Seqwater to waive those water charges. There was simply no give in that bureaucracy to allow for issues like that to be dealt with. It is bad enough that they have to cop the charges without any security, but then they also face administrative nightmares like that. This reports reflects poorly on Seqwater and historical investment by the Labor Party. (Time expired)

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