Page 2038 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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MR DE DOMENICO: I spoke to the NCPA and others. They tell me that it is their belief that, at one stage, the reservoir capacity was built for a population of about 475,000 people in the year 2015, but now we are looking at half a million people by the year 2044. We also know that the water allowance was changed recently from 455 kilolitres to 350 kilolitres. Mr Moore suggested that on those figures it is going to be more than 50 years before we need a new dam. Once again, I am not going to argue with that figure, but I wonder whether we have taken into account our rate of growth. As we know, certain areas of the ACT are growing faster than any other areas in the country, except for south-east Queensland.
Mr Moore: That is exactly what I did take into account. I will explain it again for you.
MR DE DOMENICO: Thank you, Mr Moore. I agree with Mr Moore that more needs to be done about developing better strategies. Mr Moore talked about the use of "grey" water. I do not think he talked about the use of backyard water tanks, but it is something that Mrs Carnell and I and the Liberal Party have been interested in. Mr Moore mentioned sprinkler systems. He went on to talk about equity. Once again, I do not disagree with too much of what he said about equity. He mentioned discussions he had with ACTCOSS and letters he had received from ACTCOSS. The Liberal Party has received similar letters. We have spoken to ACTCOSS as well. ACTCOSS believes that tenants should be treated the same as owner occupiers. That is something that the Liberal Party has always said it believes in.
What Mr Moore was saying, if I understand him correctly, is that he fully supports the concept of user pays. I cannot disagree with Mr Moore on that basic principle. I also agree with Mr Moore that it is hard to understand how something that we are told is going to cost less for most people can be revenue neutral. So there were some more questions that we asked ACTEW. I would like to thank the Minister and ACTEW for being so ready to brief members of this Assembly.
I also agree with Mr Moore's argument that the big users should pay. No-one can go against the fact that the bigger users should be paying more. Like Mr Moore, we had a look at who the big users are, and the big users happen to be the Government - DELP, the schools and other government departments. It does not take someone with an economics degree to realise that in those sorts of circumstances we have the Government paying ACTEW and ACTEW paying back the Government. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a system under which everybody wins and which is revenue neutral. We have asked questions of ACTEW, but they are yet to come back with a detailed response. But let us not get into details at this stage.
Mr Moore continually used the word "stuff-up". I believe that Mr Moore used the same word last year when he moved a disallowance motion in respect of electricity prices. Mr Moore went on to say that his conclusions were that perhaps this new Minister had been snowed by the board and that ACTEW had done a con job on the Canberra community. He said that it was a stuffed up system. He said that if the private sector came up with a business system that was stuffed up the Liberals would not accept it; they would send it back. I interjected, inviting Mr Moore later on this afternoon to look at whether he believes that the Public Sector Management Bill is of a similar nature and asking whether he would be prepared to send that back.
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