Page 4788 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
is to put in place the kinds of measures—whether it is through the sensible use of water, whether it is through water efficiency or whether it is through investigating future storage needs—to ensure that we do not ever go through a period like this again.
Droughts will come again, but it is up to us—it is up to leaders in this town, the government and others—to ensure that the next time the drought comes we are far better prepared and we respond far better so that we do not have these years and years of water restrictions which I think have put a dampener on the city. I think they have made it difficult for families and the elderly and they have affected businesses.
We welcome this change. I commend Mrs Dunne for the work that she has done. I think she has been a real leader in this area over a long period of time. It is good to see the government responding to that now. But we need to learn from these last few years and make sure that we do not experience the same in future when the inevitable dry spell comes about again.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.52): I thank Mrs Dunne for bringing on this motion today. It is clearly a very important topic and one in which the community has a great interest. Her motion is very timely, or it may be that the overnight announcement was very timely; I am not sure which is which. Nonetheless, something was timely there. This certainly follows on nicely from the MPI my colleague Ms Hunter debated here in the last sitting on the ongoing importance of water efficiency.
Canberrans have made a big effort to save water over the past seven years, changing their behaviours to minimise consumption in response to a number of government-initiated and Actew-initiated strategies. In 1997-98, our water consumption peaked at around 78 gigalitres. By 2007-08, it was down to 43.5 gigalitres. That is an extraordinarily turnaround. I think we all know how much the community has got behind this effort of being water conscious and being very aware that each of us needs to make our own contribution. I think Mrs Dunne touched on it right at the start of her speech. We have all been to those barbecues and sat around those dining tables where people have talked proudly about the things they have done to minimise their water use.
Mr Hanson: No, I haven’t been to one of those.
MR RATTENBURY: You should get out more, Mr Hanson. You would probably learn a lot from it. We all appreciate that the recent rains have not only left our city looking greener than it has for some time but also left our dams at 87 per cent capacity. I think this opens up some real questions about what is the macro landscape on water. If you look at that very simple statement that the city is green and our dams are almost full, you could draw one set of conclusions. But if you look at the big picture you may well draw a different set of conclusions.
I think some of those macro factors that we need to consider are that there is major infrastructure under development—the Cotter Dam extension, which is obviously underway, and the Murrumbidgee to Googong pipeline, which is not yet approved but clearly on Actew’s program. There are the well-discussed—and there is a lot of discussion to come—changes to the Murray-Darling Basin allocation that has
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video