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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (21 October) . . Page.. 3870 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

I am sorry but if some of the statistics that I have looked at are correct and we have no dam, we will run out of water, even if we do not grow, in the next 15 years. In 15 years time we will possibly not have enough water, and we need to have the debate and the discussion and share the information with the community so that the people have a clear understanding of why policy direction is moving in a particular way.

Much has been achieved. There is the glossy draft water resources policy, and there have been workbooks and the public consultation Mr Stanhope spoke of. However, I am concerned about some of that public consultation because of the reports that have come back to me saying, for example, "You can only talk about things that are on the agenda and managed by the bureaucrats. If you want to raise any of the other issues, heaven help you because you won't even get an opportunity to raise them in general business."That is not community consultation, and it is what I want to see an end to.

Much of the water resources strategy and much of what we read about water restrictions is about outside. I refer members to page 9 of the draft water policy, which has a lovely pie graph that shows where those living in detached housing-the biggest users of water-use most of their water. Then there is the fact that the percentages in the pie graph only add up to 93 per cent, so there is an area of 7 per cent somewhere that is not in there. It has evaporated.

More than 50 per cent of water is used indoors, but none of the measures to save water address indoors. We need to encourage water efficient appliances and approaches more sophisticated than, as I have called it, the brick in the loo approach. That is what my Buildings (Water Efficiency) Amendment Bill, which I introduced last November, is about beginning. It is a beginning process.

I am grateful to the Minister for Planning for his support-limited support at this stage-and his undertaking to address some of the issues raised in that bill through the emerging plumbing code, rather than through the cumbersome method of a Building Code Amendment Bill. I am hoping that by the end of October we will have negotiated an appropriate outcome that might make that piece of legislation unnecessary. However, if we do not negotiate an outcome, we will be in here in November debating that bill.

One of the things that I have noticed of late is that there is no encouragement by the ACT government to deal with waterless loos. I had asked a question on this, and they cannot tell me how many waterless loos there are in the ACT. They do not do anything about encouraging their use; they manage to discourage it because of the permissions that you need to have. If this is something that is an Australian Standard, if you install it according to the manufacturer's specifications, you surely do not need permission to do it.

One of the biggest issues we need to talk about is where we go to with the dam. As I have said before, we cannot come to this debate already having made up our minds. That is not a debate. I admit that a few years ago-even six months ago-I was of the view that we should avoid building a dam at all costs. But I am no longer absolutely entrenched in that view. I am moving away from that view. I may move back to it, but we need to have the conversation.

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