Tasmania’s enviable reputation for having a clean and safe environment is being put at risk by local government’s inability to ensure all Tasmanians have access to clean and safe drinking water, and that our wastewater systems comply with environmental standards.
Today, ahead
of my speech to CEDA tomorrow, I am releasing a document which lays bare the extremely concerning state of Tasmania's water and
sewerage.
The document, which has been compiled from publicly available sources, shows,
among other things:
Yet, despite this, from 2009 to the end of TasWater’s current 10-year plan, local councils will receive almost $400 million in distributions from TasWater. That’s money from TasWater that is not being reinvested in desperately needed upgrades to infrastructure.
The fact is, local councils have sacrificed investment in our water and sewage infrastructure for a long time, in order to pay themselves dividends.
While TasWater’s Board did take the extraordinary step last year to override their local council owners and reduce dividends to them to help increase spending on infrastructure, it’s not enough, and local government need to do more.
Councils are failing in their fundamental duty to ensure TasWater delivers safe drinking water and sewage services. Tasmanians expect and deserve better. In my address to CEDA tomorrow I'll have more to say about this issue, and outline the next step the Government will take to address this most serious issue.