Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: Our water infrastructure simply isn't getting better

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Andrew Dickens: Our water infrastructure simply isn't getting better · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: Let's took the really important stuff. Let's took water. The
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  Speaker 1: government's new plan for water services has called local Water
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  Speaker 1: Done Well. It's all about keeping control on the hands
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  Speaker 1: of local councils and communities rather than creating those big
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  Speaker 1: centralized bodies, which was what three Waters did. Eventually, Labour's
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  Speaker 1: three Waters idea caved and the policy got renamed ten
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  Speaker 1: Waters because there'll be ten bodies. But even that wasn't popular,
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  Speaker 1: and of course it was that troublesome politics around Maldi
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  Speaker 1: co governance that freaked a lot of people out. So
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  Speaker 1: now we've got national in and councils have to submit
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  Speaker 1: their water services delivery plans showing how they'll manage drinking water,
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  Speaker 1: wastewater and storm water. There'll be oversight from regulators, but
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  Speaker 1: the big focuses on local decision making and community accountability
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  Speaker 1: and better outcomes. And that water service delivery plan has
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  Speaker 1: to be delivered to the Secretary for Local Government tomorrow
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  Speaker 1: the third of September. And these plans outline how each
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  Speaker 1: council will deliver and fund water services. It looks to
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  Speaker 1: me like it's going to be a bus and the
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  Speaker 1: big sticking point is funding, which was actually at the
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  Speaker 1: core of three Waters. Three Waters was going to force
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  Speaker 1: water services to be amalgamated. The assets used to borrow
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  Speaker 1: against and the loans paid off by water rates, not rates,
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  Speaker 1: to give them more money to fix the pipes. Local
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  Speaker 1: waters had done well allows for that to happen too,
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  Speaker 1: but the big difference was it has to be done
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  Speaker 1: voluntarily by the councils, and it turns out they don't
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  Speaker 1: want to do that. And I'll give you a concrete example.
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  Speaker 1: Thames Corrimandal might be a water services situation. The place
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  Speaker 1: is mountainous, the weather events extreme, there's hardly any ratepayers,
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  Speaker 1: and then the population explodes in summer. The Thames Corimandal
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  Speaker 1: Council wanted to join forces with Todonga and Western Bays
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  Speaker 1: to form a bigger regional body to fund the water
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  Speaker 1: off their existing assets. But Teodonger doesn't want the hassle
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  Speaker 1: of Thames Coramandal. Who would and so that deal hasn't happened.
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  Speaker 1: And the estimation is that this is going to put
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  Speaker 1: five to six hundred dollars onto the Thames Corimandal rates.
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  Speaker 1: Now we all want better water, but we also want
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  Speaker 1: lower rates, and we're going to find out tomorrow what's
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  Speaker 1: going to happen with the water. But at the moment,
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  Speaker 1: to me, it looks like the policy should be renamed
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  Speaker 1: local Water, done not very well and not funded. And
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  Speaker 1: after all the talk about water reform, we're right back
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  Speaker 1: at where we started from. And you and I and
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  Speaker 1: all the ratepayers are the ones who are going to
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  Speaker 1: have to pay for it. For more from Early edition
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to news talks. It'd be
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.