Page 2035 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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We, a family of four, use about 180kl per annum. I wouldn't mind our charges if the cut off were 180kl. We conserve but I don't tell my kids we underconsume.
I don't think its altogether fair because perhaps number of persons per household should be taken into account so as not to penalise large families who may actually be efficient - otherwise it's hard for me to judge as I am a tenant and never see my water bills - which I think is unfair on my landlord - the ACT Housing Trust.
Madam Speaker, I believe that ACTEW has got the question of future water pricing arrangements for the ACT wrong. The Assembly and the community need much more time to address the issues to ensure that a balance between social justice issues and green issues can be met. I urge members to support Mr Moore's disallowance motion today, which will allow the issue to be revisited over the next 12 months.
MR LAMONT (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Housing and Community Services, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (11.08): In responding to the comments made by Mr Moore and Ms Szuty, I do not intend to get into the sorts of personal issues about a new Minister and so forth that Mr Moore alluded to. I quite comprehensively reviewed the documentation in relation to the proposals by ACTEW. I questioned ACTEW extensively on the proposals as outlined and ultimately determined by the board. Then I agreed to sign and to table the appropriate instrument to reduce the budget allowance to one kilolitre, because there was no provision within the Act to have no water allowance. That means that, if at some stage we wanted to do away with that water allowance altogether, we would have to put an appropriate amendment to the house. That is the procedure that I will be following.
Let us talk about some of the issues that Mr Moore and Ms Szuty have raised. I am absolutely amazed at the anonymous independent expert. I suggest that it was probably the mermaid at Bondi Beach, an independent expert in water. That is about the sum total of it, and that is the only credence that anybody can give to an unnamed independent expert criticising a public utility. As a public utility, ACTEW has been prepared - as I believe is their obligation - to make clear whom they use and how they use them, to name the group, and to source information and references. Yet we hear criticism in this house that they embarked on an exercise to give them a desired result. The result was not necessarily what ACTEW would have preferred.
Ms Szuty has mysteriously squirreled away somewhere this independent expert who pops out of the woodwork to provide her with this sort of all-enlightening advice from time to time. I think as an Assembly we need to test the validity of that criticism before we accept it. I do not say that the validity is lessened when we know the name of the person making the criticism and we as an Assembly can determine whether or not that person is an independent expert. Quite simply, in relation to this independent expert - - -
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