Page 843 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Connolly is shaking his head. Perhaps I am oversimplifying the position, in his fashion; but I will continue. ACTEW needs more money to build a new dam; it is putting lots of money aside to do that; it needs to be able to increase its rates in order to put that money aside; and therefore we should not be stopping ACTEW from putting that money to one side to build the dam in future years, to save the Territory ratepayers from having a huge hike when the cost of the dam actually hits us.
The fact of life is that the money being put aside here is not going into some fund to build a dam; it is going into the Government's Consolidated Revenue Fund. The Government is generating this extra money and then skimming it straight off, putting it into Consolidated Revenue. When it gets to Consolidated Revenue it is not going to be used to pay for a new dam for the Territory; it is going to go into paying for the hospital budget blow-out and whatever other budget blow-outs we do not know about at this stage. It is going to go into paying for the sorts of problems that have been identified by the Chief Minister today in her budget strategy statement. That is what it is going to pay for, not a new dam. If the Minister wants to raise money for a dam, he might be able to do that in another fashion.
Mr Connolly: We do not want a dam. We want to cut down on water use.
MR HUMPHRIES: We do not want a dam either. We would rather provide for the efficient use of water by ACT residents so that we do not need a new dam. We all agree on that. What the Minister is saying is that, sooner or later, if we cannot achieve these sorts of objectives, that might have to be put on the agenda.
Mr Connolly has also raised the question of the Lower Molonglo treatment works. Money is needed for that - and not in the far distant future, but right now. The Minister has for that purpose raised this new concept - or not so new concept - of an environmental works levy. Madam Speaker, you would wonder, looking at this levy, what the purpose of it is. It is dressed up with this nice, warm, comfort-giving epithet "environmental". "Environmental" carries this great sense of doing something good for the environment.
Mr Cornwell: Not in Rio it doesn't.
MR HUMPHRIES: Obviously this is Rio-inspired. Madam Speaker, I am not entirely sure that you could describe those works as necessarily being directly related to the environment. Certainly, what it is all about is upgrading the facilities available to ACTEW, and that is a good thing, of course. But I could in another sense describe everything that ACTEW does as being environmentally related. It delivers environmental services. Electricity and water are both environmental services in a sense. In that sense, everything ACTEW does is environmental, and an environmental works levy could, in theory, be as large as the whole budget of ACTEW. But of course it is not.
In this case, the levy that is being raised does not even cover the cost of the Lower Molonglo treatment works. In fact it covers only half of those costs. What is the point of separately labelling this money in that fashion, except to create the impression amongst people that the increase we are generating here is somehow environmentally acceptable and therefore is a good thing and they should not worry about having to pay extra money in order to get that. But that is not the only increase they are paying, and there is a real problem about nomenclature.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .