Page 3147 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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Of course, 40 per cent is only 10 per cent more than his 30 per cent, so I am just wondering whether or not he is still committed to that. That will be tested in the coming months when the government announces its position in relation to the 2020 target and I look forward to Mr Seselja certainly not backing down on what he has himself put on the table, although I must say I think he may end up being as weak as he has been on greenhouse gas reduction targets for the past year.
The government is providing funding for improvements in relation to the development of climate change policy, energy efficiency policy and a range of other activities, particularly within government. Mr Rattenbury has commented on those, and those are measures that the government will be working strongly on.
What has not been mentioned is some of the investment that is occurring in relation to water. Two very important programs are underway as a result of decisions in this year’s budget. The first is for the design and installation of stormwater reticulation systems, pipes and pumps, at the new valley, Gungahlin and north-western ponds. This investment builds on the work of the existing Canberra integrated urban waterways project and, contrary to the criticisms of Mrs Dunne, in fact the investment in the Canberra urban waterways program is overwhelmingly supported by those communities. You only had to go to the community fair at Dickson that occurred about a month or so ago. Two thousand people in the suburbs attended that fair, overwhelmingly positive about the investment the government is making.
In relation to Lyneham, again, yes, there have been a couple of residents who have expressed concern, but again, the overwhelming comments have been extremely positive. My department has worked closely with the residents who have had concerns to talk through their concerns, and significant modifications to the scheme have occurred in the design for Lyneham as a result of that.
In relation to the Auditor-General’s comments, particularly around the efficacy of programs such as ToiletSmart and so on, I do have to raise some concern about that issue, because the auditor took the view not that there was not value in replacing single-flush with dual-flush toilets but took issue with the way it was measured. She felt that the use of estimates was not acceptable from an audit perspective. Okay, I accept that might not be acceptable from an audit perspective. However, unless we go into every single person’s house and physically measure the reduction as a result of the implementation of these savings measures, we are not going to get a more accurate estimate, a more accurate measure. From a cost perspective it is completely impractical, and from a privacy perspective probably quite objectionable, to go into each and every person’s house who has had a toilet retrofitted and try and measure the water saving in detail to provide a better accounting of that saving.
So we use examples based on estimates. We know what we can generally save from replacing a 12 or 15-litre single-flush toilet with a nine, seven or four-litre—whatever it might be—low-flow, dual-flush toilet, and we make the estimates on that basis. It is very difficult to achieve the level of detail that the auditor was requesting and, whilst I understand that that may not be acceptable from an audit perspective, I think there are a number of other practicalities that need to be had regard to.
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