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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 3090 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

(b) to protect waterways and aquifers from damage and, where practicable, to reverse damage that has already occurred; and

(c) to ensure that the water resources are able to meet the reasonably foreseeable needs of future generations;

The significance of this legislation has been acknowledged by this Assembly and it has, therefore, been referred for inquiry and report by the Assembly's Standing Committee on Urban Services, of which I am a member. That committee has produced a report on the Bill and the amendments circulated both by the Minister and by Ms Tucker.

I would like to clarify up front Labor's position in relation to this Bill. We certainly see that many of the measures outlined in the Bill are sensible ones and ones that deserve support. We have to recognise that this Bill effectively has two strands. One is to deal with the environmental management of water resources, to protect the viability of water resources, to take stock of the Territory's total water resources, and to put in place a regime for protecting those resources. Measures in relation to environmental flows and determining levels of flows through watercourses are commendable. We accept such measures as entirely appropriate.

However, the other side of this Bill has bigger questions to be dealt with, and it is there that the Labor Opposition has some difficulty. I draw the Assembly's attention to the issue of water allocations. Obviously we will deal with this in some detail during the detail stage of this debate, but I think it is important to put our concerns on the record immediately.

The provisions in the Bill that allow for a water allocations regime are provisions which we have enormous difficulty with because, at the end of the day, the allocations process is as much about putting in place a tradeable regime as required under agreements of the Council of Australian Governments as it is about protecting the environmental qualities of watercourses and other water resources.

There is a real possibility that, if we are to go into this process of a water allocations regime, where we allow for the trading and sale of allocations, we are turning water into a product that can be bought and sold on the open market and we are putting that in place in the context of national competition policy reforms.

Mr Speaker, in my dissenting report of the Urban Services Committee report into the Water Resources Bill, I made my concerns clear and it is important to reiterate those here. I said in the report that I am not convinced that these water allocation provisions "will adequately protect and ensure the continued provision of clean safe drinking water for the ACT into the future". I went on:

Further I am concerned that the proposed process for sale of allocations may ultimately result in a situation where the Territory's valuable water resources are over committed as a result of a "competitive" water trading market.

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