Page 281 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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talked about, he would perhaps need to ask some of the colleagues sharing the bench with him.
I notice and I comment again on the clever politics of an aspiring leader. In every question Mr Mulcahy leaves just a gap which allows the obvious criticism of those of his colleagues who previously occupied the government benches. Here it is again. Who was the relevant minister? I am not quite sure who it was. In fact, it was now Senator Humphries, and his senior policy adviser on water, of course, was Mrs Vicki Dunne. But, then again, she is on your side in this never ending leadership dispute.
We are now counting down the next 18 months to the election. Let us be blunt about this. We do know, Mr Mulcahy, that it will be you and I that go head to head at the next election. We all know it. Your colleagues know it. Mr Stefaniak might not be fully aware of it yet, but in his heart in the quietness of the night he knows it. I do look forward to the stoush in 18 months time, Mr Mulcahy. I am sure it will be fun, but you have not got a hope.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Can we come back to recycled water?
MR STANHOPE: I will. I am coming back to recycled leaders. I will stick to recycled water and not persist with the recycling of leaders. We are up to—what is it?—three or four. Actually, we could get to the next election with four separate leaders of the opposition in a single term. That would be an all-time Australian record. We might make it that in a four-year term; we might see four separate leaders of the opposition before we actually get to the election.
Mr Mulcahy: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order as to relevance.
MR SPEAKER: Can you, Chief Minister, in the next minute and a half, come back to recycled water?
MR STANHOPE: I will. Mr Mulcahy, I am pleased always to receive questions on this government’s responses to water because over the last four years they have been quite magnificent! We have invested in the order of $100 million on infrastructure. We were prepared to pursue innovative initiatives such as the Cotter-Googong bulk transfer system. That initiative was resisted by you and was resisted by your previous minister for the environment, who was responsible for water.
We would be in far more serious circumstance now if it was not for some of the innovative steps that we have taken. For the first time ever in Canberra’s history, we have the capacity at Stromlo to treat all the water which our people need on a daily basis. That is something that you should have had in place, but did not in your previous seven years. You left this city exposed and without the capacity to treat water. After seven years in government you left the catchment in such a state that it did burn as it did because you did not do any of the remediation or hazard control work that you should have done.
There were seven full years of neglect. There was no water treatment capacity and no capacity to think laterally to actually develop a capacity to transfer water from the
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