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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 3104 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

When developments have come up in New South Wales that have required more water, the New South Wales Government has not been able to secure it for these people so they have just issued more licences. Clearly, that is unacceptable. The allocation system, which will allow a trade in water, will allow those who have excess water to use it or to sell it, to trade it as it were, and that will allow an appropriate and a proper use of that resource.

You have to remember that we have initially put aside water for environmental flows. We have allocated to existing users. We have put aside water for urban use. We have put aside a generous reserve. It is only the water which is left that will be traded. The system that we have put in place in this Bill, subject to this Assembly, through a series of disallowable instruments, will guarantee that. If members are saying they do not trust this Assembly, that they do not think we here have the ability to look at a disallowable instrument and make sure that it works for the good of the environment, then what are we doing here? Mr Deputy Speaker, we are well able to make this law. This is good law because at last we will have reasonable, efficient and effective use of our water resources. It will guarantee the future water supply of the ACT and it will guarantee water for the environment.

Look at the water that we currently have access to. Through the Cotter catchment area we currently pick up about 58 megalitres, of which 48 megalitres are allocated to urban use. Through the Googong catchment we pick up about 55 megalitres, of which 12 megalitres are dedicated to urban use. My understanding of the current Googong Dam legislation is that it specifies that water pumped from Googong to the ACT can only be used for ACT purposes. So even in that we have another security so that that water resource cannot be frittered away.

Mr Hird spoke about the work in the committee. He said that the committee had asked for some assurances and these have resulted in government amendments which I will move later. I thank the committee for their work. The Urban Services Committee works exceedingly hard. They get through a lot of work, and the quality of the work, in the main, is very good.

Mr Osborne gave us quite a good history lesson. I think Matthew Higgins, the local historian, would be quite proud of Paul because what he said is quite right. The unique shape that the ACT has is actually dictated by catchment lines. We heard from Mr Osborne that he has some difficulties with the Bill. Mr Osborne, there is a review facility in two years. That review will reveal any faults or flaws. All legislation has to be trialled to make sure that it works properly. I believe we have got it right. This is brand new legislation for the ACT and we need to make sure that it does work properly, so we will review it in two years' time.

Mr Osborne spoke of fees. The fees cannot be set until the mechanism for setting those fees becomes law, and that will occur, I hope, some time later today. There will be three kinds of payments made under the scheme in this Bill. First and foremost, we will have some simple administration fees. There will be a licence application fee and it will be set on the basis of full recovery of administrative costs. I do not expect them to be large,

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