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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 3201 ..

Mr Pratt: Or use your tea water for shaving.

MR SMYTH: That's it. You can shave with the tea water, as Mr Pratt has done on many occasions. But it is amazing how much water we use individually, and it's all those simple things which, to his credit, the minister's been talking about.

One is water efficient showerheads. If you've got one of the old rosettes, it uses about 30 litres a minute as opposed to about 9 litres a minute which an A-standard water saving shower head uses. But how much water do we individually waste every time we brush our teeth, those of us that still leave the tap on as we brush our teeth? Perhaps if all of us just brushed our teeth out of a cup of water instead of out of a sink full of water, that would be enough to keep the ovals of Canberra alive.

MR QUINLAN: (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (4.36): Mr Deputy Speaker, I'd just like to say a few words. What I would first like to do is just inform the house that I've had recent discussions with Actew. I've instructed Actew to conduct some consultation with various stakeholders in relation to stage 3 water restrictions. We have to remember that these restrictions were put together because we're going to be short of water for a while-within that regime. We're now talking about the probability of stage 3 water restrictions through the full course of summer, which lasts until damn near the end of April in Canberra.

I've said to them, "We actually do need to look at the impact of stage 3 restrictions right through the course of a Canberra summer and see if they do need to be tweaked or changed in any way to accommodate some commonsense concessions or changes that are needed."

In relation to sports ovals: I tend to agree with Mr Wood who says that we ought to try to share the load and apply the restrictions equitably. Contrary to some of the claims here-I think there were a few statements made that followed the assertion that most Canberrans wouldn't mind or wouldn't begrudge-my recollection is that, when we get a call from the public, it's usually: "It was raining and I saw the sprinklers,"or "There are water restrictions and I saw the sprinklers on the ovals."There does tend to be the other side of that coin where people justifiably resent what they see as waste of water when they are restricted in their own use.

What's important about the structure of the water restrictions now is that they are to some extent on/off; they're binary; you know what you can have; you can use a sprinkler or you can't; you can use a handheld hose from a certain time if you live in an odd numbered house or whatever. There are rules that people could work against. What we've heard in this debate today is: "Well, maybe we could just ask people to have a shorter shower and to be water conscious."We've been doing that anyway. But I don't think that really we can start using water in one sector simply because we've made an appeal over and above the rules.

I don't think there's been any suggestion of a rule that could be actually policed and all people could clearly follow. Remember that we're talking about quite a number of months-we're probably talking about six or seven months-where we will have

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