Page 3753 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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We really are facing some significant issues. The rain we get seems to be with very strong storms which might last for 30 minutes and bring down a lot of hail. It is a very different scenario now from what we had. It is crucially important to have that extra storage. Thank god now that you have realised that. You have picked the Cotter option rather than Tennant, but at least you have picked a storage option. You had to be dragged kicking and screaming. It goes completely counter to the idiotic statements made by the Chief Minister on 17 August 2005, but at least we actually have that occurring now. That, at least, is something.
Over the last six years there have been some rather serious problems which I do not want to see repeated again. The restrictions have not been handled well. On 28 October 2005, Mr Stanhope, the environment minister, declared, “The ACT’s three-year drought is officially over.” Storage levels were then close to 70 per cent; I think they were 67 per cent and the Cotter catchment dams were overflowing. Stage 2 water restrictions, which people were used to and were doing well under, were then wound back to stage 1 and the Chief Minister declared, “This new system is not about restriction so much as conservation—a way of being which respects our environment and protects our way of life.”
This lack of foresight has done Canberrans no favours. While Australians overall consumed six per cent less water last year, Canberra residents used about 10 per cent more in 2005 and 2006 than a year earlier. Clearly, we should have stayed on stage 2 until our dams were up to 100 per cent, if they were ever going to get that far. Had we done so, instead of being on 41 per cent capacity now, we might be at 50 per cent or 55 per cent because clearly we were not out of the woods. Certainly I hope that if we ever have a normal rain season again we do not ease off too much on the restrictions. People are used to it. People appreciate the need to conserve water. They certainly need more encouragement, but certainly I think it is essential that the government actually get it right, and it did not.
Water is about storage, storage and more storage. It is sad to see that no dams actually were built in Australia anywhere in the 1980s and the 1990s so at least we welcome your decision to expand the Cotter Dam. Thank you for providing departmental officers—at least the Actew staff came along—in mid-June. Experts like Mr Paul Perkins indicated that he felt the ACT was likely to need both an expanded Cotter as well as the Tennant Dam at some stage in the future to provide our long-term water needs. Again, it gets back to the question of a real need for storage.
Of course there are some real issues in relation to the government’s recycling proposal, which they seem to have put on the backburner, and some issues raised by eminent people like Peter Collignon in terms of whether that is, indeed, a real option. Issues in relation not only to costs but also to public health I think are of concern, and that is something that we simply have to get right.
But we can do a lot more. Mr Gentleman did mention—I will finish on this point—greater use of non-potable water for things like industrial use. Yes, that is great, and I am delighted to hear that you can actually get water down at the lower Molonglo treatment works.
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