LET’S TWIT AGAIN (Mamamia’s the best Member that you’ll ever see.)

Holy Shiite,

That historic rats-nest, York, is like a retirement village for the Taliban. I’ll have to get the boundaries changed so I can get it exorcised from my electorate before the next election.

Bad week voters! Someone says the Treasurer (without any treasure) entered my backyard without telling me?

If it’s true I’m going to give that Mike Nahan a very nasty wedgie. (I’ll call it a special Parliamentary Opening Time and a Special Sitting, if he still can.)

What was he doing? Sniffing around for excess fiscal booty? Some left-over Royalties for Regions?

Mike……….Northam’s not a ‘Super-Town’ with hundreds of new permanent jobs yet. But we’re working on it.

Merredin hasn’t got a new, five-star, Mercure Hotel, full to the brim with Chinese tourists
eager for a Central Wheatbelt experience. But that’s not from a lack of trying.

The fifty thousand hectares of ‘Waterwise Rice Paddies’ at Kellerberrin was probably not a good idea. As your dedicated Minister for Water I had to can that one to allow SITA to do a country-dump at York.

And the York Light Show, bigger than the Sydney Opera House, with historic lantern slides
projected all over its historic buildings ain’t going to happen. York’s just too naughty!

However, it might get a few plastic Merinos and Papier Mache wheat sheaves if it begs nicely

NOW DON’T FORGET TO LOOK FOR ME ON www. nationalswa.com/The Team/
(sorry it has been taken over by Robots.)

                     SO LET’S ALL DO COFFEE & CAKE SOMETIME- YOUR MAMAMIA

                                                  ‘ ON THE WATER FRONT’

(A great movie- and a WA urban disaster in the making- so Mia Davies sends out letters of  complaint to water-users)

The three ingredients for human life, in order, are oxygen, water and food. Without
oxygen there would be no human life at all. Without water there is death by both
dehydration and starvation because, without water, there is no food.

In 2006, Perth, with a population of 1.256 million, had a water crisis with dam levels dangerously low. The Carpenter Labor Government built the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant at a cost of $387 million to provide an estimated 144-250 mega-litres of water, per-day or 17% of Perth’s water supply needs at that time.

In 2013, Perth, with the population of 1.970 million, had a water crisis with dams critically low. The Barnett Coalition Government had built the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant at a cost of $955 million to provide an estimated 100 mega-litres, per-day, or 20% of Perth’s water supply needs. (The Minister for Water was Bill Marmion.)

The comparative cost, output and percentages of water manufactured for both these projects are quoted in reliable, independent information resources in the public domain. Their accuracy has never been questioned.

However, a question is that one plant cost $387 million, produces at least 44% more mega-litres, per-day and provided just 3% less to Perth’s water supply at that time? The other cost nearly three times more, produces 44 % less and provided 3% more to a population that was already 58 % larger?

Actually, in this case, a 20% water supply capacity into 1.970 million does not go unless there is a math equation that nobody has heard of. And you can now add a further 230,000
thirsty citizens to this equation.

In 2016, Perth, with a population of 2.2 million, close to double what it was a decade ago, has the same water crisis with its dams now nearly empty. (The Minister for Water, for the past 3 years, is Mai Davies.)
The conundrum once again is that just over a decade ago 140 mega-litres provided Perth’s 1.256 million population with apparently 17% of its needs? And 100 mega-litres provided 20 % of a 1.970 million populations’ needs in 2013. (How? is anybody’s guess.)

So Ms. Davies, what actually is the water volume needs of Perth’s population of 2.2 million in 2016-17, without taking into consideration the needs of Rural Regional and Remote WA?, something that is not officially registered as occurring. (Perth appears to be the centre of the political, socio-economic and water-usage universe.)

Also, have you, and your department started to factor in the amount of drinking water required by Perth’s predicted population of 2.8 million in 2025 and what sources it will come from? Based on current statistical information regarding Perth’s, per capita, consumption figures, it is an extra 53 million kilo-litres per day and 19.4 billion litres per annum!

WA (along with South Australia) is the hottest and driest state in the driest continent on earth. (As a matter of water supply interest, the entire population of South Australia is 600,000 less than that of Perth.)

Perth’s reasonable predictable annual rainfall of 760mm (30 inches) of 50-years-ago no longer exists.

The problem today is that any excessive use of water by the average West Australian, compared to the rest of Australia, is caused by the climate. It is hot and dry and now the current water gathering processes will not keep up with the biggest influx of population in the state’s history.

So what is the Minister for Water, Mia Davies’, solution to how many billion litres of water go into a population of in excess of 2.8 million in a rapidly drying climate that will get worse- not better?

It is letters. Specifically, signed letters from a Catherine Ferrari, General Manager, Customer
and Community Group of the Water Corporation, the largest of the group of agencies, accountable to the Minister for Water, that enjoy the watery- gravy train that is the water resources industry in WA.(Ms. Ferrari’s surname, unfortunately is rather evocative!)

These letters make the water consumer feel that they, not the politicians and their bureaucrats and the weather conditions, are entirely responsible for a looming water crisis because of their unexplained, greedy over-use of water.

At the beginning of summer, in 2015, Perth had used 9 billion litres over its target water use. Guess why? Because it was hot and dry!

Apparently January was cooler than average and there was a sprinkling of rain. So guess what? Perth consumed less water, but is still 2 billion litres over its water target use.

In early February this year, Perth suffered a record breaking ‘four consecutive days of above 40C temperatures’ which caused 12 people to be hospitalized. So what can be predicted? Perth will be way over its target water use again.

Ms. Ferrari wants us to make sure that any water-use increases are a one-off! This defies logic as necessary water consumption for the health and wellbeing of the population of Perth will be regulated by the Highs and Lows of weather patterns, not the Minister for Water or any of her departments. (Otherwise people’s lives could be put at risk.)

The supposed overuse of 9 billion litres of water by consumers compares with the 10 billion litres lost annually through the Water Corporations’ water delivery system’s-infrastructural failures.

The particular letter in question, from Ms. Ferrari, was directed to a household to which two
FIFO workers had returned after being retrenched by Rio Tinto. No gluttonous water-orgies or a front yard like ‘The Hanging Gardens of Babylon’, just two extra adults having their daily 4-minute Waterwise shower.

The SITA question will always raise its ugly head, as long as it remains on the agenda as a politicized act of environmental vandalism in a water-deprived state.

A letter was sent to Ms. Davies when she was elected as Member for Central Wheatbelt.
It asked had the previous Member, the Minister for Regional Development and the Minister
for Lands, Brendon Grylls, been involved in any way with the SITA proposal for Allawuna Farm, Ronans, York.

It would be logical to expect that given his portfolios, (the SITA proposal was a new development in a regional area, involved land use and was in Grylls’ electorate), he would have been included in the process.

SITA had approached The Environmental Protection Authority in early March, 2013, at the same time as the WA State Election. It is highly unlikely that SITA would have done so without the prior approval of the relevant Ministers and their departments. (It was a multi-million dollar project.)

SITA was very much relying on the Coalition Government being re-elected and that the Shire of York Council and administration remained as it was- to ensure its project would proceed.

As was pointed out to Ms. Davies, if Mr. Gylls, had not been approached by SITA it would have been an embarrassment for him, both as a Minister, who should have some involvement in the application and as the Member, who should have been approached by SITA as a matter of courtesy.

Ms. Davies, who had by then become the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Regional Development, and Lands, who was Brendon Grylls until December 2013, categorically denied that he had ever met with SITA in any capacity.

I believe the Hon. Ms. Davies lied!

David Taylor.