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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 3497 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Bigga is only one of a number of communities in rural New South Wales that are in danger of completely running out of water over the next three months if there is no rain. The article goes on to report how the local Federal Hotel has become a drop-in centre for people wanting a shower.

We are lucky that we are not in that position in this territory. We are lucky that our reserves are very good, relatively speaking. But we know that there are people who are not so lucky, and it seems to me that we ought to take some positive steps towards assisting those people.

The effects are much closer to home in other senses. We have seen instances of water theft going on. There was a report just this week or late last week of the theft of about 32,000 litres of water from a property near Cooma. We saw in today's newspaper a report about the wine region of our district facing hardship as the quantity of the vintage will be severely cut as a result of the drought. Quality may well be improved, I understand, but the reduction in volume will have a disastrous effect on the region's wine industry, an industry which we have collectively done so much to set up and promote in recent years. A setback like this will be very difficult to cope with. There will also be long-term impacts on the associated tourist industry of our region.

The social dislocation that goes with drought is perhaps a little difficult for people in a community like ours to understand but can be absolutely enormous. Families in rural communities very often have no recurrent income whatsoever. They are completely dependent on welfare payments or other forms of assistance. Those of us with secure incomes in a place like this, at least between elections, find that hard to understand. But the drought can affect the livelihoods and the lives of people, and it therefore has a very severe impact on the social cohesiveness, the social fabric, of communities so affected.

Unemployment soars. Disposable income for small things like buying raffle tickets or buying a drink when you are out becomes a serious question. Entire communities become mendicant communities, and that is extremely sad. I would argue, Mr Speaker, that we have an obligation to do something about that.

What can we do about that? Apart from measures we might provide within our boundaries, within the ACT itself, we can assist in nationwide appeals designed to provide relief. The Farmhand Foundation is the largest group ever formed to tackle drought in Australia, which is appropriate, given the magnitude of the crisis we are facing. Its objective is to distribute support to communities badly affected, in particular to families and individuals, and to work on developing strategies for drought-proofing or preventing the effects of drought in the future.

The federal government has announced its own measures to help drought relief. It is looking at trebling, quadrupling or even increasing fivefold the range of support within the next few months. The Deputy Prime Minister announced just a couple of days ago-

Mr Wood: Very decent of them!

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. I agree with that.

Mr Wood: The rural community does not think so.

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