ys John Barraclough, project director for builder Thiess Degremont. ''There was a need to build this thing … we responded to this process.''
And respond to the panic they did. The builders threw billions at the project and its ambitious - arguably unrealistic - deadline. Money has been no object, whether it was for wages, machinery, strike-breakers or lawyers.
Had they succeeded, the builders looked forward to as much as $500 million in pre-tax profits, to be shared between Thiess and Degremont, firms owned by industry giants Leighton and Suez respectively. But they didn't - the production of the first water from the plant could be a year late and the plant is not expected to be fully operational until early 2013. This frenzy around the deadline has reshaped IR in Australia, some say for the worse.
The wages at Wonthaggi are as much as 40 per cent higher than at desal projects in other states, according to calculations by The Age. For example, electricians on the project can earn $150,000 a year, even more when generous allowances are factored in. Also, unions have negotiated extensive rights to consultation and restrictions on outside labour.
All this has stoked the fire in the bellies - if it was needed - of right-wingers intent on IR reform.
Eric Abetz is a veteran IR campaigner who has had to publicly soften his stance on reform as the federal opposition's workplace relations spokesman. But he returns to type when asked about the desal plant. He slams Thiess as ''weak'' for agreeing to the ''extreme'' deal.
''Those sort of agreements become the benchmark. All you need is one extreme example such as Wonthaggi,'' he says.
Abetz warns of ''rippling'' effects around the country. Others in industry have echoed this sentiment.
Since coming to office a year ago, the Baillieu government has used the desal agreements to justify a planned Howard-government-inspired ''code'' for state-funded projects to try to stamp out ''undesirable'' union work practices.
''The rates at the desal plant have migrated to other projects,'' Baillieu said in June. ''If this continues, we will price ourselves out of infrastructure.''
There is much political self-interest in these claims but some truth also; wages in construction have risen sharply in industry deals struck in Victoria in the past year, and some, but not all, of the Wonthaggi conditions have spread.
This ambitious and costly punt by Thiess and Degremont put much at risk - for them and the industry - and required much to go right. It hasn't.
Now they expect losses of at least $700 million, including extensive liquidated damages from delays blamed on weather and labour problems. In a project where the money has flowed but the water hasn't, these are not trifling sums.
Barraclough, brought in to fix the Wonthaggi project this year, built the Sydney desal plant in about 2½ years - the same time allowed under the Victorian desal deadline. Sydney's plant, however, was about half the size, had a local workforce to draw on, friendlier unions, was less technically complex and did not have to face the wrath of Bass Strait.
Barraclough insists the deadline at Wonthaggi was ''do-able''. That seems a stretch with the builders having to start digging while the engineering was barely started.
''They had a very tight, unrealistic time frame as was evidenced by the site agreement being so unique,'' says Dean Mighell, state secretary of the Electrical Trades Union. His union agreed to work every day of the project as part of a four-day-on, four-day-off roster. ''It was the most accelerated project time frame we'd ever agreed to.''
By August this year, relations between the builder and ETU members were so bad that the company, which was meant to be ramping up the hiring of electricians, moved to sack 160, saying they were lazy and engaged in a union-endorsed ''go slow'' to draw out the project.
On most construction jobs the lay-offs would have been easy because work in the industry is generally short-term and tenuous. But due to its detailed 191-page agreement with the unions, the builder was forced in