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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 3195 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Clearly, as Mr Wood has explained, if we are suffering severe water shortages, the priorities have to be drinking water, personal hygiene and so on. Then we look at the question of water available for outside use.

Obviously it's true that if you let ovals and sports fields die, you're going to have huge costs to fix them up. It is quite interesting, looking at the history generally of what's happened with sports ovals, Canberra in the 1970s was probably overserviced and watered in lots of ways, but then we saw changes occurring under the Follett government, I think, when there was a reduction in the number of ovals that were left on full maintenance. Then, under Kate Carnell, we saw school ovals handed over to schools to manage, under school-based management. That's been a particular problem, especially for small schools that don't have the capacity to fund the maintenance of those ovals to the degree that many would think was necessary.

We are in a situation now where people have a much greater awareness of the need to save water and the capacity for us to still have a beautiful city without it having to include lush green lawns. We can actually have a landscape and an aesthetic that are more in tune with the real character of Australia, which is a dry landscape, which has native grasses and native shrubs, et cetera. So I think that's a shifting consciousness that's occurring, all too slowly, particularly in regard to some of the NCA's aesthetics. They still seem to be a bit stuck in a vision that's totally unrealistic for the national capital.

If we want to talk about water conservation and ovals we should talk about use of grey water and how we can recycle water to water social spaces such as ovals. We also have to talk about other ways of saving water, that is, how we can encourage people to save water in their own homes or in their buildings, commercial buildings, community buildings. I've already raised publicly the possibility of the government following Queanbeyan Council's lead in supporting their water wise program, which has saved millions of litres of water as well as millions of dollars in terms of the need to process water and construct a new sewage facility.

We know that there is the capacity for government to show leadership in that respect, and I am hoping that the ACT government is looking positively at that because, while it would cost money up front, it's certainly a very worthwhile investment and has proven returns. I'm struck by it now whenever I go out. I was at a club just recently and I needed to use the ladies. I looked at the number of toilets there. Each flush was 11 litres basically. I'd suggest every club just about-maybe not the newer clubs but most clubs and hotels in Canberra-would have 11 litres going with each flush of the toilet. That's a shocking waste. I think that there is the potential for the government to really get in in a proactive way and change that, and we would save a lot of water, which would take some of the pressure off the community as a whole.

Just in terms of the water restrictions: I conclude by saying that I would have thought it was possible to be selective in the water restrictions. If it's possible-it does depend on the amount of water that's available-to prioritise, you could look at ways of perhaps not making the water restrictions quite as severe for the community sports and public spaces, but particularly the sports ovals and school ovals. But I don't know if that's logistically difficult; I wouldn't have thought it would be. But I would be encouraging the government to look at the potential of that as well.

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