WATER
PRICES
227. Dr D.J. HONEY to the Minister for Water:
I remind the minister of his government's significant
water price increases, up to 16 per cent in one year alone, 2018, for
consumption above 500 kilolitres, which the minister claimed was needed to
manage the budget and was aimed at water guzzlers in the western suburbs. I further
remind the minister that Water Corporation data exposed the fallacy of this
claim by showing that high water-consuming homes are mainly families across the
suburbs who happen to have four or more people in their house. Noting that the
budget position does not need added revenue from higher water prices and as
those large increases are an attack on larger families who are feeling the
pinch of the rising cost of living, will the minister rescind the large water
price increase that he inflicted upon families for consumption above 500 kilolitres;
and, if not, why not?
The SPEAKER: Just before the minister answers, Leader
of the Liberal Party, there is a lot of discussion in your question. I would
urge you to consider in future how much argument you should actually have in a question.
Although you need sometimes to add some context at the start, that preamble was
rather long. The minister in response, please.
Mr D.J. KELLY
replied:
I thank the member for the question.
I welcome him back to the water portfolio. I think members opposite have never really taken the water portfolio seriously.
When they were in government, they had four water ministers in eight years. I thought
that was pretty bad. In the five years they have been in opposition, they have
already had four different spokespersons for water: David Honey, Steve
Thomas, David Honey for a second time and James Hayward.
Point of Order
Dr D.J. HONEY: I believe it is appropriate to refer to members
not by their name, but by their designation—their seat.
The SPEAKER:
That is quite right. I give the minister guidance that members of this house
should be referred to by their seat title and members of the upper house need
to be referred to with the title ''honourable''.
Questions without Notice Resumed
Mr D.J. KELLY: I take that on
board.
The point is that the opposition has
had four shadow spokespersons for water in the past five years. I welcome the
member back to the portfolio so that he can renew his interest in the issue of
water.
There are questions from the other
side about water pricing increases. The opposition's record in
government was horrendous. At the end of its period in government, it was
cutting off 2 500 Western Australian families, having their water reduced to a trickle
because they could not pay their bills. That was 2 500 WA families a year, when
the Leader of the Opposition was the
Minister for Water. It is a terribly humiliating thing for families to find
that they cannot shower their children or wash their clothes. That was
the opposition's record in government.
When we came to government, we asked
the Water Corporation to review the way it dealt with hardship issues. In the
full year before COVID hit, that number of customers had gone down from 2 500
to just under 800. That is a massive decline in the number of customers who
experienced that, because we were proactive with families who were struggling
to pay their water bills. We introduced a whole range of new schemes to assist
people who may be finding it difficult. We were so successful that the
Financial Counsellors' Association of Western Australia wrote two
letters to us in two years outlining and congratulating the government for the
hardship measures we put in place through
the Water Corporation. Our record, compared with the previous government, has
been outstanding.
The previous government increased
the price of water. Again, the Leader of the Opposition sat in the Minister for
Water's position for a considerable
time at the end of that government. Every year, for the eight years it was in
office, it increased the price water by above the rate of inflation—6.7
per cent, 10.8 per cent, 8.5 per cent, 6.8 per cent, six per cent, 5.2 per
cent, 4.5 per cent and 4.5 per cent. Compare that with our record in office—six
per cent, 5.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent. The
residential price of water actually went down during COVID. The increases under
this government have been significantly less than those during the term of the
previous government.
The
particular increase that the member is talking about, the increase in the upper
tier for customers who use in excess of 500 kilolitres, was to encourage high
water users to use less water and, therefore, save more money. Interestingly, at
the time, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia
congratulated the government for that move. It saw it as a very useful price
signal to send —
Dr D.J. Honey: But you've
targeted big families—that's all.
Mr D.J. KELLY: If the member
looks at where those customers are, he will see that most of the people who use
more than 500 kilolitres are those on very big blocks, many of them in your
electorate, member for Cottesloe.
We stand on our record. We have done
everything we can to assist struggling families when they have needed
assistance to pay their water bills. We have a much better record than you ever
had in government.