Page 1543 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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Setting up this committee would also give the Assembly the opportunity to investigate the extent to which demand reduction strategies outlined in think water, act water have been implemented. A number of the targets set by think water, act water may have been achieved. We need to know which, and to what extent. Targets may need to increase and new strategies devised to meet them. It could be time to go much further than the steps already in place. The ACT, for instance, could follow Queanbeyan’s example and ensure that every toilet is a dual-flush toilet, subsidise grey water recycling schemes and have a really good look at schemes such as water rewards.
It is time to revisit and expand upon the work of Turner and White, who provided information for think water, act water. We need to look at international best practice principles and priorities for urban water management suitable for the ACT. Other cities have done this work. We need to look at what they have done and whether it works for us.
We need to look at the role of Canberra as Australia’s national capital and provider of water to the largest urban population in the Murray-Darling Basin. We have to see ourselves as embedded in the biggest food producing area of Australia at a time when that food production may be in crisis. The commonwealth benefits very much from the management by the ACT of the water it uses. We need to quantify that use and bring it into process, and perhaps the commonwealth needs to pay.
We should compare the relative merits of staged water restrictions with a permanent water conservation strategy. At the moment, we are looking down the barrel of level 4 restrictions. That has the potential to kill our trees and certainly to make it very difficult for people who grow food and so on. At a time when we need to be thinking about the miles that food travels as part of our climate change impact and also as a recreational activity, there is every good reason why people should be allowed to continue to maintain gardens. Let us not take that option out of people’s lives.
We need to maintain the health of trees and gardens and the city’s bush capital character. We know that trees and shrubs can reduce local temperatures by more than four degrees. We must not sacrifice our trees. They play a role as a carbon sink. There is every good reason for making sure that trees survive.
We must look at the relative financial, environmental and potential health impacts of water capture and re-use practices. Let us compare other kinds of recycling schemes with the water2WATER proposal. It may be that it is absolutely the best thing to do, but the community needs to know about the issues. Here I include governance issues. We need effective arrangements for integrated catchment management to ensure that our rivers and riverine ecosystems are resilient and a body that monitors and proposes strategies to ensure progressive water efficiencies. It is all about governance. Billions of dollars have been spent on the whole Murray-Darling scheme, but we have got nothing out of it. Governance arrangements are the problem.
Finally, I believe that the committee should be a select committee. I believe that referring this matter to the planning and environment committee would be a kind of death for this proposal of mine because the planning and environment committee is already very, very busy. I have designed a short time range for the committee and, of
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