STORMWATER MANAGEMENT

Supplementary question: where was the minister during the 2010 campaign when the Liberal Party had an extensive policy on stormwater recycling, which his own government pooh-poohed?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) ( 15:18 ): Mr President, that is because their ideas were just rubbish. What we put in place is that list of projects that I just read out: Waterproofing the South, Waterproofing the West, Waterproofing the City of Playford. We have complicated programs involving council, state government and federal government, complicated engineering to slow down the water, to hold the sediment and reduce the nutrients that are going out into the gulf. Their plans were absolutely rubbish. They knew it at the time. It was a fig leaf to cover up the total absence of any activity in this space for the last decade and a half.