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SA Water sale call “ridiculous”, says Koutsantonis

Oct 19, 2015
No intention of splashing out with a SA Water sale, says Koutsantonis.

No intention of splashing out with a SA Water sale, says Koutsantonis.

South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis has swiftly dismissed a “ridiculous” call to sell off SA Water, one of the state’s largest and most profitable assets.

Responding to the Civil Construction Federation’s challenge to the State Government to sell off the asset for a quick injection of up to $13 billion, Koutsantonis quickly rejected the suggestion, saying it would be an economic “disaster” for the state.

“We’d never sell SA Water,” he said on ABC 891 radio on Monday morning.

“It’s too important an economic asset for the people of this state and … we are the driest state in the driest country in the world.

“Monopolising our water into the hands of a private company would be a disaster for South Australians.

“It’s an asset that makes us money every year, selling it would be quite frankly ridiculous.”

Koutsantonis said there would be no benefit to South Australians from privatising SA Water.

“The returns that we would get would be spent relatively quickly and then we wouldn’t have that income-generating asset long term,” he said.

The Treasurer rejected the sale of the asset after it was proposed by CCF chief executive Phil Sutherland, who said  the sale would help turn around the state economy and unemployment and get SA out of a “quagmire”.

“Tough times demand robust, brave and unprecedented decision-making by our state’s leaders,” Sutherland said.

“SA is teetering on the edge of a major economic depression which demands strong stewardship to lead us through this quagmire.

“Never before in recent history has South Australia required such bold and unqualified leadership to turn around its prosperity.”

Former SA Premier John Olsen, whose Government privatised the state’s electricity network, told 891 he would not sell off SA Water if he was in power today.

“No I don’t think I would and I think the reasons apply today as they did 18 years ago when we seriously considered the matter,” he said.

“If we go back 20 years ago the circumstances in South Australia were not dissimilar to today – high unemployment.

“You had a loss of confidence, there was a general malaise in the community and you had to rebuild, create jobs, and we did that by first of all privatising and reducing debt, managing the public service down to what I would consider manageable numbers where they weren’t taking excessive funds away from the State Budget but we did it in an innovative way, as it relates to SA Water.

“… life depends upon water and as a result of that it’s in a different category and in addition to that the sewerage treatment plants and removal of waste, it’s also a significant health issue in a large populated area and so we decided that we wouldn’t sell SA Water but we would bring in private sector operators to manage SA Water and the infrastructure still owned by the Government and the taxpayers of South Australia.”

Koutsantonis said, in the wake of upheaval in the manufacturing industry and job losses in resources, the SA economy was in “transitioning” and said claims SA was heading for a recession were “hysterical”.

“Well, our economy’s growing so it’s not a recession, point one.

“Point two, what we are doing is we are transitioning from having a very large automotive manufacturing base to different types of employment and at the same time as we’re transitioning out of automotive industry we’ve seen commodity prices plummet around the world …

“So there is no recession and people who are saying we are in recession are being hysterical.”

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