Page 3162 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 October 2006
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One of the things that were immediately evident during my meeting with Mr Turnbull was the seriousness of the water situation across Australia. We have, coincidentally, seen extensive media of this topic in this past week. For example, the recently released report Australian Water Resources 2005 found that, across the country, water resource planning and water resource development can only be considered to be of an adequate to poor standard with considerable room for improvement. Even though here in the ACT we are fortunate not to be in as serious a position as some of the well publicised and dire situations in other regions, this does not mean that securing a sustainable water supply is an issue that can be ignored. I am sure there will be no dispute in the chamber about that proposition.
I believe that water is such a major issue that cooperation is needed in this area of policy. Political point scoring will certainly not solve the serious issue of ensuring an adequate water supply into the future. That is why I believe that the ACT government should take advantage of the resources available at a national level, especially with the Office of Water Resources, to ensure that our forecasts and the data that we are relying on are as accurate as possible and tested as thoroughly as possible by the best available scientific resources this country can provide.
One of the issues that Mr Turnbull highlighted to me during our meeting was that some jurisdictions are relying on 100-year rainfall averaging data. These records fail to take into account the step reductions now coinciding with global warming. As I am sure we all recognise, global warning is happening. The world is heating up and it is getting drier, and this obviously impacts on the availability of water. Relying on long-range historic data may distort long-term water supply plans. If a region is to rely on such data, a decision, for example, not to invest more heavily in water infrastructure based on the anticipation that the existing dams would adequately service the population well into the future may well be flawed.
Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table three separate graphs for other regions that Mr Turnbull provided to me to illustrate the dangers of relying on 100-year forecasts.
Leave granted.
MR MULCAHY: I present the following papers:
Water inflow—Graphs—
Perth’s Annual Storage Inflow GL (1911-2005).
River Murray System Inflows (including Darling)—Annual Totals.
Lal Lal Reservoir levels.
The graphs deal particularly with the situation in Perth, in Victoria and in the Murray-Darling Basin. If members care to look at the graphs, they illustrate that for Perth, for example, a 100-year historical projection on rainfall levels or inflows gives an average level which has dropped quite dramatically since 1975 and is showing further dramatic step-downs from 1997. What might have seemed a comfortable measure in times gone by and served as a reasonable basis for making long-term projections is in fact now being dramatically distorted because of changes in rainfall levels.
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