Water at Pioneer …
If Peter Gutwein’s meeting today with David Downie and the 29 councils goes as it is planned, Tasmanians will need to hold onto their cups through the media storm and hope for the best.
With no plans to fund TasWater themselves, Peter Gutwein’s government is imitating a force of nature this week. This may in part be because Mr Gutwein’s Federal counterparts have said no to TasWater’s plea for more funding.
Meanwhile, the Federal Labor Party has committed $75 million to improve water and sewerage infrastructure in Launceston if they win the next election.
The Tasmanian Greens have also made it a priority to fix Launceston’s water and infrastructure woes.
TasWater’s Chairman, Miles Hampton, earlier this week defended the 29 councils from Minister Gutwein’s wrath. Chairman Hampton said that a further slash to dividends to councils would make little sense, given that this action would bring forward the date of completion of infrastructure works by a mere one-and-a-half years over a 10-year plan.
This week the State Government’s Sam McQuestin created a public petition against the 29 councils with regard to TasWater. But the public may smell a rat. The public may wonder if council amalgamations are at the heart of Mr Gutwein’s work this week, for example.
Yet public praise may blow the State government’s way, in time for the possible calling of an early election by the Premier. The Tasmanian Liberal government could certainly do with a boost to their popularity in the polls.
Is Minister Gutwein serious, as he would have us believe, about a State takeover of TasWater, which would cause an overhaul of the entire governance structure of TasWater, and of course, the elimination of all dividends to councils?
Tasmanians will note that a 2016 motion by the Tasmanian Greens for a parliamentary inquiry into TasWater was voted down by the State Liberal Government and the State Labor Opposition.
If Minister Gutwein is teary about the poor state of Tasmania’s drinking water, and hand-on-heart, when he says that he and his government have done all that they can, Tasmanians are entitled to ask of the Minister:
Why did the State Liberal government put a freeze on a parliamentary inquiry, into TasWater and their government overseers, in 2016?
Tasmanians living in towns with lead-contaminated drinking water today ~ Pioneer, Winnaleah, Rossarden and Avoca ~ know that there has been no-one to turn to for help when TasWater has failed to support them. From my earlier articles for Tasmanian Times ( HERE ), readers will know that I say this from personal experience as a resident at Pioneer. Calls for help over many years have fallen on deaf ears …
At today’s meeting the 29 councils may be furtive in their search for a gift for the government ~ lest Minister Gutwein reduce their dividends further, or else, take-over TasWater and withdraw council dividends for all time. Is it possible that Chairman David Downie, and the owner-councils, rather than hand over the silverware, may consider gifting a policy?
A policy such as the reporting of real-time data on TasWater’s website, for example. In the spirit of good governance and transparency. A Win-Win.
A policy for real-time data reporting on TasWater’s website will not worry the bean-counters, so it is possible that it will come up for consideration by Chairman Downie and the mayors within the Owners’ Representatives Group, as they try to talk their way out of a corner today.
As I have presented to readers in my most recent articles for Tasmanian Times, this option may become especially tempting for the owner-councils today, given the support for real-time data reporting by Tasmania’s Legislative Council, and by the Tasmanian Labor Party and the Tasmanian Greens.
Indeed, LGAT passed a motion of their own, for improved transparency for data reporting, in their motion of 2015 just months after the death of past president of LGAT and Mayor of Dorset, Barry Jarvis.
The gifting of this policy to the Minister and to Tasmanians would also be to correct an agreed sub-standard process in the development of a policy for data transparency, following the aformentioned 2015 LGAT motion.
This admission of fault was forthcoming on February 2, earlier this month, by TasWater’s CEO Mike Brewster, during my extended conversation with him after the completion of our public meeting at Pioneer Hall.
CEO Brewster also clarified a corresponding lack of process by the Owners’ Representatives Group in this matter.
Please read below for my letter to CEO Brewster on February 20, discussing his comments and their relationship to the belated need for TasWater to complete a cost-analysis for this policy.
With the emphasis of today’s meeting in Hobart focussing on dollars and cents, one would hope that the State government will at long last put their hands in their pockets and commit to funding Tasmania’s ailing water and sewerage infrastructure. But this morning, there is no sign of this on the horizon…
All of the players ~ the Premier, Minister Gutwein, Mr Downie and the councils, CEO Brewster and the residents of Tasmania ~ may do well to remember a necessarily concurrent principle to funding:
Transparency and proper process is something money can’t buy. It is the gift that keeps on giving.
Tim Slade.
Letter to TasWater’s CEO Brewster, from Tim Slade, February 20, 2017 …
Mike Brewster
CEO of TasWaterFebruary 20, 2017.
Dear Mike,
I realise that today may be a busy day for you with the Minister for Local Government due to deliver a new document, but I wanted to touch base with you again after our extended conversation at the Pioneer meeting on February 2.
It was a useful conversation that we had. In the light of our discussion of the facts, you agreed to consider going back to the Board to ask that a cost-analysis be done for the policy of real-time reporting of data.
May I please ask you to share your thoughts with me?
You said that you were unsure if data for lead (Pb) had been collected at Pioneer before 2012, so I have attached again for you here the graph of Pioneer’s data for lead (Pb) for the years 2009 – 2012. These were the three years before the alert. There were several test results exceeding the health guidelines for lead (Pb).
As I mentioned to you again in our conversation, in relation to this period at Pioneer, 2009 -2012, your Water Quality Officer, Mr. Stapleton, said to me, on March 11, 2016:
‘That wouldn’t happen now. I’m here now.’
I hope you can understand that the residents of Pioneer would have liked to have known about this data at the time.
A policy of real-time data reporting would satisfy.
You also said to me that you probably should have selected a more suitable group of members for the Water Quality Group, rather than asking for volunteers. This group of volunteers, three General Managers, approved the one-page pictorial (no data) quarterly model, designed by Mr Stapleton. You also acknowledged that the results of this Group were not taken back to the 29 councils for input and agreement before it was activated on TasWater’s website last year. (Nor did the 29 councils approach TasWater).
In light of all of these circumstances, in concert with the support of the Legislative Council, the Tasmanian Labor Party, the Tasmanian Greens, LGAT, via their 2015 motion, and the Tasmanian Liberal Government, on condition that the 29 councils agree (see Peter Gutwein’s letter to Tania Rattray MLC), I remain hopeful that we can progress this issue without fanfare, to a standard consistent with the definition of real-time as used in the deliberations of the Legislative Council, and with minimal expense, as per the independent cost-analysis of Mr Daniel Taylor, senior computer engineer ~ at $12k per annum, after a one-off start-up of $20K ~ also cited by the Legislative Council.
Thank you Mike for our extended conversation after the Pioneer meeting. It was a good one for us to have. I hope that our constructive communications may continue.
Good luck to you.
Tim,
Tim Slade
Pioneer, Tasmania
*Tim Slade lives in Pioneer, Tasmania. Tim’s many articles about drinking water in Tasmania can be found in the archives of Tasmanian Times: HERE
