Page 4541 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 23 November 2005
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residents. Here we might be getting to the nub of the problem: perhaps—I do not know—it is hard to sell medium-density dwellings these days without these in-sink garbage disposal units.
I have never even experienced one of these things. I think I have seen sinks that have got strange big holes in them—big enough to chuck down half a chook or something like that, but also big enough for a child to put their hand in. I think that is another reason why—
Mr Mulcahy: They’ve got a safety mechanism.
DR FOSKEY: Okay. As I said, I have never had a chance to put my hand down one of these things. I do not know; maybe they are a way of manicuring your nails. They need to have another, more useful function before I am even going to countenance one. So perhaps it is medium-density-dwelling developers that have put the pressure on the government; I do not know. But there are other ways that we could solve this problem that residents have who have to flush away their wastes, flush away their peelings—if indeed they have any these days. To me, the problem with these things, apart from their use of water, is that they divorce people from the impact that we have on the environment.
We live in our environment; we create wastes. We create so much waste that we are practically drowning in it, but we pop it out there where we cannot see it. It is a bit like with our electricity from coal-fired power plants; we cannot see the smoke, so that is okay. We will turn on our heaters and our airconditioners because they do not affect us; they affect the people in the Hunter Valley or wherever. So I believe that in itself is sufficient argument against them.
So how else can we do it? Well, Queanbeyan has waste collection units. We know that Queanbeyan is also ahead on a lot of water efficiency measures as well. I am not sure whether they have these in-sink garbage disposal units in Queanbeyan.
Mr Mulcahy: I reckon they do. They are very upwardly mobile over there.
DR FOSKEY: They do? Okay, well that is something that people do not lose the benefit of when they cross the border. But I am sure that is one of the things that will be taken into account when people seek their BASIX accreditation, because that is one of the things that could be traded off.
Well, how about we just ensure that there are a few square feet on all medium-density dwellings where compost facilities can be installed, rather than allowing inefficient systems to become the norm? In his explanatory statement, Mr Corbell also writes off the amount of organic matter that will be disposed into our sewerage system. Even though this may be unproblematic to Actew’s waste water treatment plant—Mrs Dunne gave some evidence from California that suggests that perhaps it is not unproblematic—it is still a waste of nutrients and good drinking water. On the one hand, we have got a government that is—or was—pushing its think water, act water policy and, on the other hand, it is introducing conflicting water regulations like this one.
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