Page 3108 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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When it comes to the Murray-Darling Basin, the next 12 months will see important announcements about the plan. Again, I think it is important that we focus on the evidence and the science in the commentary we make on the basin plan. And I think we need to think about this very much in a basin context, not a state versus state or a downstream versus upstream context. For decades water reform in Australia has been plagued by this approach, which has been to the detriment of good policy and good river health outcomes. And for this reason I was pleased to hear the minister recently report back from a meeting of water ministers in Sydney that the meeting agreed as follows:
Foremost was a shared vision for the Basin. The vision is a healthy working Basin in which a healthy river system underpins strong and viable communities.
And I think the minister has summed the situation up very well by stating that communities rely on a healthy river system. If you allow the river system to fail, communities will suffer. A more stark way of saying the same thing of course is that there are no jobs on a dead planet.
Rumours are swirling at the moment about the final amount of water that will be returned to the environment. Rumours have put the figure at 2,800 megalitres, which is below the 3,000 to 4,000 figure that was recommended by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. I think this discussion is too important to be based on rumours and I await the next stage of the reforms where we will see firm figures and importantly the science that underpins those figures.
However, it is important to bear in mind what the basin authority did say in its guide to the proposed basin plan. It said that between 3,000 and 7,600 megalitres needed to be returned to the basin. It made the point that if the only goal was to return the river to health the 7,600 figure would be the one adopted but, based on a balancing of social and environmental factors, the 3,000 to 4,000 was the one recommended. So there is clearly quite some work to do there.
I think we have got some very difficult discussions ahead and I think across this entire directorate there is really some work to be done. There are so many important pieces of work that the time line keeps slipping on that we really need to see a lifting of the game. As I have touched on in my speech, there have been some good initiatives but at a macro level I really do feel we are falling behind and we need to be more ambitious, more focused and deliver more in this directorate if we are going to achieve the important sustainability goals that the ACT needs to meet.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (10.35): I thank members for their comments in relation to the appropriation proposals for the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate. The merging of planning and land use functions with a broader environment, energy and water policy is a very important development for the territory. Bringing together these two key policy functions into a single directorate of the government allows for a coordinated function across the built environment and the
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