Page 2029 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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to be no water allowance and we should simply charge as people use it. But to do that we have to have in place systems that ensure that all people are charged equitably. That will mean the metering of water right across our community, right across our system. Instead, what we have is ACTEW completing a snow job on this Minister with a system that is half baked and based on faulty information.
I would like to start with the conservation issue, because the only conservation issue is the con that ACTEW has put in conservation. Let us begin with conservation of water. What we should all understand from the word go is that water is a renewable resource. The water that is supplied in Alice Springs or where I lived on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, which gets water from the Polda Basin, is not a renewable resource; but in the ACT it is indeed a renewable resource and, as such, there is no fundamental reason to conserve a renewable resource, unless we are talking about the issue of whether or not to build another dam. When we are talking about the issue of whether or not to build another dam, we are talking about a real and genuine conservation issue.
What is the truth about a new dam? Madam Speaker, I have had the opportunity to speak to NCDC water engineers who worked on the design of the ACT water supply system, starting back in the 1960s. Huge water restrictions in 1968 meant that the only watering you could do was by standing with a hose in your hand for two hours. That level of water restriction caused concern. After 1968 engineers designed a water storage for an ACT population of 475,000, which they perceived being reached by about the year 2015. Things have changed. In our latest estimate, we are talking about 500,000 people in the year 2044. We have a system of water storage, designed back in the late 1960s, that can handle 475,000 people. We have already changed our water allowance from 455 kilolitres to 350 kilolitres to take account of the increased level of population and to take us through for more than 50 years. It is more than 50 years before we need to even look at a new dam. That is the first point.
The second point, Madam Speaker, is that we are developing new and better strategies for ensuring that we use water more carefully. Many people are introducing appropriate sprinkler systems. The gardens that are being planted in new suburbs throughout Canberra are native gardens that require less water. People are more conscious of using less water. More importantly, Madam Speaker, we are in the early stages of introducing a system using "grey" water - in other words, water that is at least partially treated - on ovals. The indications are that we are unlikely to need a new dam in the next 50 years and that we probably never will. We probably have an adequate water supply already, taking those things into account. So the whole issue of conservation is simply a con.
There is also the issue of equity. Madam Speaker, we have heard that ACTCOSS is very keen to ensure that this system goes ahead. ACTCOSS wrote to the Minister - and I have a copy of that letter - on 5 June, after this announcement, presenting a series of concerns. They support in principle a change to a more equitable system, as do I and as, I imagine, do most members, but not the stuffed up system that ACTEW has proposed. The letter written to the Minister by Allan Anforth talks about, amongst other things, about two basic principles which should guide the Government's response to tenant issues. The first is:
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