LABOR says it will leave TasWater in the hands of local councils if it wins government at the next State Election.
In his reply to Premier Will Hodgman’s Address on Tuesday, which announced the State Government would take over TasWater from 1 July 2018, Opposition leader Bryan Green said if Labor won it would:
• LEAVE TasWater to focus on its core business.• RELOCATE the sewerage works at Macquarie Point to clear the way for the $2 billion redevelopment project.
• FIX the Cameron Bay treatment plant in Glenorchy, which threatens to hold up Mona’s $200 million expansion; and• ADVANCE the replacement of Launceston’s failing sewerage and stormwater system.
Mr Green said Labor would fund these projects by offering them out through tenders to long-term institutional investors and Australian superannuation funds.
This would pour billions into the state, he said.
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“There is an opportunity for long-term institutional superannuation industry funds to fund long infrastructure projects at a low rate of return and that’s what they will do as a part of our announcement,” he said. Mr Green also said Labor would work with the Federal Government and Infrastructure Australia to fast track TasWater’s planned water and sewerage improvements.
Treasurer Peter Gutwein — who put the State Government takeover of TasWater on the cards last month — labelled it a policy disaster.
He said it involved “fake money” from Canberra, privatisation, and putting pet projects in Hobart ahead of rural and regional Tasmanians. “These super funds will need a return and the only way to achieve that is through higher prices for customers,” Mr Gutwein said.
However, the plan to leave TasWater in local government hands was welcomed by the Local Government Association of Tasmania, while Tasmania’s longest serving mayor Tony Foster of Brighton said the state now had a real choice on water and sewerage ownership.
Cr Foster said the approach by Labor was more co-operative than the one by the State Government, and he and other councils would be making sure Tasmanians know this at the next State Election.
LGAT president Doug Chipman said his organisation would now consider both proposals.
COMMENT
Labor’s policy of leaving TASWATER in the hands of Tasmania’s councils is OK so far as it goes in regard keeping ‘ownership’ closer to the ‘actual shareholders’ in Tasmania’s water infrastructure. However, what is Labor going to do about TasWater as a corporate entity? What does Labor have in mind in regard to accountability to its ‘grass roots’ owners?,
Labor’s stated priorities of fixing the clearly failing and inadequate infrastructure is simply a ‘shot-from-the-hip’ and short of it mark? Moreover, worryingly Labor ‘tips its hat’ to the status quo.
No room anywhere here for the paradigm shift that is clearly needed if Tasmania’s water management is to be resolved in a 21st C context. Likewise, it appears that there’s no room whatsoever in Labor’s ‘policy determination’ for critical thinking – worryingly. Most of all two things need to be put in place: firstly room for credible accountability; and secondly, rational solutions in a 21st C context for Tasmania’s ‘water management’ – now more than ever.
TasWater’s shareholders are the state’s property owners and residents. There is no doubt that their investment, compulsory as it is, is being trivialised by all the major political parties. More concerningly ‘their investment’ is made light of by the bureaucrats who depend upon it for THEIR living. All this is very, very, worrying given what’s actually at stake and what is being left out of the accountability equation in regard to the operation of a ‘public utility’.
EDITOR'S NOTE
In Tasmania, TasWater is turning into being 'The fight we have to have'
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