Page 3150 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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species like the superb parrot can actually live in. And that is what we are losing in places like Molonglo or Crace, as Ms Le Couteur was asking about in question time today, when we knock over these stands of developed and mature trees.
I come now to water. Against the backdrop of the enlarged Cotter Dam, a project that perhaps we now understand to be ahead of its time or at least built to withstand the very worst of climate scenarios, I wonder whether conversations about managing the demand side of our water consumption seem a little disempowering for the average Canberran. I hope not. There is no doubt that we still have work to do on water demand management and that, with an expanding population and new developments going in, we need to learn how to do things better than what they have been done to date.
The government seems to have focused on water sensitive urban design at a precinct level but it is unclear that DECCEW is developing large amounts of expertise about the application of non-potable water services at a household level. We certainly are not getting any reassurance that household level non-potable water will be available by the time new suburbs are built.
The Greens support the development of the urban wetlands and non-potable water for public facilities but we think that the government will need to spend more focus on household grey water, which will also mean further work on the regulation issues and the impact of different grey water systems, the point being that we do not want to have rules that are too rigid and do not allow different options. But people who are selling products need to have a clear set of guidelines to abide by.
I spoke in my last speech about the fact that we are still waiting for the government to expand the ToiletSmart program to include a visit by a plumber to offer a home tune-up. Again, that is something Mrs Dunne spoke about earlier, the Queanbeyan experience. It is not a big ask really to include a free water tune-up for those who access the dual-flush toilet rebates. I understand that the government is loath to subsidise average income earners in Canberra for items that they can purchase themselves but I wonder whether the opportunity of a plumber’s visit would also provide a tool for engaging with the public more effectively.
On this point, the recent Auditor-General’s report indicated that residential water saving measures had low take-up rates, take-up rates that were small relative to the population of the territory. In some ways this does not surprise me, and I do wonder how we might be able to change our approach to capture the majority of houses and not just those few who are early adopters and who are motivated and perhaps have the time to get out there and do it themselves, but rather ensure that we implement these efficiency measures right across Canberra so that we can be confident in the knowledge that our houses have been retrofitted and tuned up.
I do not know that I have got the answer now for how that should be done but I think we can do it better. We really need to proactively engage people. We know that the National Water Commission has found that the ACT uses more water per property than Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide or Brisbane. While we have done a good job cutting our water use by 20 per cent since 2003, we clearly still have much to do as a dry, inland city.
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