Page 2041 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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It is not an issue for now, and I suggest to you that in this city it is unlikely to be an issue for another 100 years because of what we have agreed upon in this Assembly. The tenor of the agreement is that some measures are appropriate to ensure general water conservation, so a dam is not necessary. Mr Lamont has not been able to argue anything different. He did not even attempt to, because he knows that the argument I put up is absolutely correct. Mr De Domenico knows that. His approach to the NCPA and my discussions with a former NCDC water engineer have come up with the same conclusion, as indeed does the NCDC report on the same issue.
We also raised the issue of access and equity for tenants. It is an issue that Mr De Domenico asked for an explanation of as well. There is no explanation for private tenants. We are agreed that private tenants ought to be paying for their water, but they are not metered. ACTEW has not attempted to deal with that. It is part of the stuff-up in trying to change the system. The most important question that Mr Lamont failed to answer was: Who is going to pay for this? I will tell you who is going to pay. The money is going to come out of Consolidated Revenue, and it is going to come specifically from Mr Wood's department. Once that happens, we are going to have to see a shift around of money. It is a pointless exercise.
Why is it that ACTEW are doing this? Why have they put up this system? It is quite obvious that when we reduced the water allowance from 455 to 350 kilolitres ACTEW expected, quite properly, a windfall gain from the excess water charge. Here we have the conservation argument again, but the Minister was not able to justify it. I have even accepted that there is a conservation element. I accept that part of the argument just for this debate. Under this system, in wet years when watering is not needed ACTEW will not get revenue from excess water rates, but in dry years they will. Instead of their income being even, it will go up in dry years but not in other years. It is sensible that they find a way to get a nice even revenue. I do not have a problem with that. As I said, I am quite happy to have a system that actually works, a system that is designed properly, a system that is well thought through.
I would like to deal with Ms Szuty talking about independent advice. Ms Szuty said that she had taken independent advice on this, but instead of relying on a named independent adviser she went through her argument about a survey being self-selective. Anybody who has done a basic survey knows that self-selection is part of a bias that can be built into a survey. More importantly, Ms Szuty said that it is not so much the survey as the interpretation ACTEW put on it that matters. That was the most important thing she drew to our attention. She said that the things people really wanted most of all were points Nos 1 and 2, namely, education and conservation - - -
Mr Lamont: Education and conservation, and a pricing regime that underpinned those.
MR MOORE: And the third priority was a pricing regime that underpins those things. I do not disagree with that, but we have a question about the information people were given about conservation. People are being told, "We need a new dam; otherwise, you will be paying an extra $200 a year". Nobody wants to pay the extra $200. Nobody wants a new dam. The real question is: Do we actually need it? The Minister has not been able to indicate to us that we do.
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