Page 2026 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 4 June 2019
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Murray-Darling Basin has been described as the heart of the nation because it produces most of Australia’s food and provides over three million people with fresh drinking water. We have all seen the terrible and traumatic pictures of the Murray-Darling Basin where there have been mass deaths of fish, algae blooms, and animals like sheep and kangaroos dying due to lack of water.
We recently saw the results of a South Australian royal commission into the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. The commissioner was scathing about the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s negligence in managing the basin. One of the failures was its negligence when it came to considering the impacts climate change would have on the basin. It failed to consider climate change, in ignorance of the best available scientific knowledge, allowing too much water to be extracted and the basin health to consequently decline.
In this environment it is particularly important for the ACT to do a good job of its own water resource plans and sustainable diversion limits. The failures of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the disaster in the Murray-Darling Basin highlight the risks of poor decision-making and the failure to prioritise the environment and to properly account for climate change risks.
Minister Gentleman said in his introduction speech that the ACT government’s approach to water allocation is always to ensure the environment is prioritised. We reserve water for environmental flows before taking it from the system for human consumption. That is the right approach, and the Greens commend it. The ACT’s water strategy also follows a principle whereby it tries to ensure that water leaving the ACT is of the same or better quality than water entering the ACT.
I will quickly note two other important water issues for the territory. The first is the importance of protecting our own Cotter catchment. I was pleased to join the ACT’s National Parks Association on a tour of the catchment at the end of last year, as well as of Namadgi National Park and Ginini wetlands. This is an amazing natural environment that is critical to producing the healthy and high quality water that we enjoy in the ACT.
Unfortunately, there are risks to the catchment. One of these is bushfires. The 2003 fires already severely damaged the lower Cotter catchment. It has since suffered from issues such as turbidity and sedimentation which reduce water quality. The recent Auditor-General’s report on the lower Cotter catchment said that it was still exposed to significant risks which, under adverse conditions, could accumulate and lead to a catastrophic failure of the water catchment.
I know that the government is working hard to address these issues. It needs to because, particularly as climate change worsens, the bushfire threat to the catchment remains and will continue to grow. We need to make sure we invest resources into the Cotter catchment in a timely manner to ensure the restoration of that environment, the stability of the hillsides and the like, so that we do not see significant inflows of sediment, uncontrolled erosion and the like impacting on the Cotter catchment.
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