Yesterday the Treasurer made number of statements that need to be addressed. Firstly he stated “I stand by the comment I have made, we have raised this issue over and over again … what do you think the head of an infrastructure corporation talks to the Treasurer of the state about?”
While I have no desire to enter an ongoing debate with the Treasurer, the simple facts are that in 2015 we sought help from the Treasurer to address drinking water quality in small towns. We were advised by him that tanks were an acceptable solution and that no support would be forthcoming.
As a result, we developed our own plan to solve the issue. Our subsequent discussions with the Treasurer focused on a $1.8 billion proposal by TasWater to fix Tasmania’s water and sewerage system including that would both resolve the relocation of Macquarie Point Sewage Treatment Plant and address overflows from Launceston’s combined stormwater and sewage system. While the Treasurer was initially supportive of this proposal, ultimately the state and federal government advised they were not in a position to offer assistance. As a result of this we developed an alternative $1.55billion plan that excluded Macquarie Point and Launceston’s combined stormwater and sewage system on the basis that without government support, we could not justify water and sewage customers paying for these projects.
While I do not wish to continue in an ongoing public debate over what was and wasn’t said in meetings with the Treasurer, I cannot let the statement that ‘ …we have raised the issue over and over with TasWater” remain unchallenged, given that it is simply not true. I stand by my comments yesterday that not once did the Treasurer raise concerns about our progress, in writing or directly to myself or our CEO.
The Treasurer has also provided a media release confirming my statement in the recent GBE Scrutiny hearings that with more money we could build things faster. Of course, with careful planning and additional external funding we can look to accelerate certain elements of our program. The concern is that the Treasurer has stated that the 10 year plan can be halved without any attempt to engage with us in order to understand the complexity and risks of such an acceleration which we believe is unachievable and will result in significant wasted public money.
Unfortunately, since August last year the Treasurer has made no attempt engage with us on h proposals including the recently announced halving of our plan. To date we have not seen his plan on how he will achieve a halving of the timeframe.
The Board of TasWater is comprised of independent professional directors, each of whom has a fiduciary duty under company law to act in the best interests of the corporation and ensure that it remains viable now and into the future. Based on our financial modelling of the government’s announcements, by 2021 TasWater will no longer be a viable entity and therefore require substantial ongoing external support or a significant sustained increase in customer prices to allow it to continue operating. This is not a situation that any responsible independent Board operating under company law can ignore. To date we have not seen any modelling by the Treasure of the long-term effect of his plan on TasWater’s financial viability.
We remain willing to work with the government and our owner councils on how we could sensibly accelerate elements of our plan and would certainly welcome additional funding, provided it is made available in a manner which is sustainable in the long-term and does unfairly penalise future TasWater customers.
TasWater