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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 728 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

There is leeching of pollution from landfill sites into the water system. For example, the old Pialligo tip currently leeches into the Jerrabomberra Wetlands, and that is stated in the State of the Environment Report. There is inadequate enforcement of water run-off controls from building sites in places like Gungahlin, and this leads to sediment build-up in Ginninderra Creek. There are irregular clean-outs of the gross pollutant traps that have been built across ACT streams, leading to the build-up of rubbish in those streams. There is a need for comprehensive strategies to prevent pesticides, fertilisers, oils and other chemicals from being flushed down the stormwater system from households and businesses. These are not just our concerns. The 1995 ACT State of the Environment Report highlighted a number of these problems, and many others. We are concerned about the lack of resources being committed by this Government to policing the regulations and guidelines that protect our waterways. Compare, for instance, the budget that the Commissioner for the Environment has, $212,000, with the budget of the Auditor-General, which is $722,000.

Other States have in place clearly identified and resourced environment protection authorities, or at least departments which deal with these issues. In the ACT we used to have a Department of the Environment, Land and Planning. Although there were problems there, at least it was clear which part of the bureaucracy dealt with environment matters. The Liberal Government has since abolished that department and the environment protection functions are now buried somewhere out of sight in the Department of Urban Services. This represents a significant downgrading of the importance of environmental protection within the ACT administration, and I have had discussions with Mr Humphries about this. The Greens believe that the Government should review the adequacy of the enforcement of existing policies, regulations and guidelines which impact on water quality in the ACT and downstream and report back to the Assembly on the outcome of this review.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.59): Mr Speaker, this is an interesting MPI. I think Ms Horodny spoke for about six minutes or so and she spent most of the time giving us the speech that she would have used for the jet ski debate had we had one this week. So, I probably cannot - - -

Mr Wood: I will spend all my time on that, let me tell you.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Wood is going to spend all his time on it, so I might as well spend some time on it as well. We might as well have a jet ski debate, since obviously everyone wants one. Mr Speaker, I want to speak also about improving and protecting water quality in the ACT; but let me say something about jet skis, first of all. I personally do not enjoy the fabulous capacity to foresee what is going to happen that Ms Horodny obviously does. She listed a number of things that she felt sure would flow from the use of jet skis on Canberra's lakes. What she had to say about pollution and noise pollution, the problems of people having their amenity compromised and things like that, may well have turned out to be true; but, Mr Speaker, with the present scenario, we will never know, because the capacity to see how an ACT specific trial might have operated in the context of one of our lakes has now gone. The question of what we do in future to consider such suggestions for use of those sorts of craft on our lakes is an issue which we are going to have to visit again.

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