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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (21 October) . . Page.. 3864 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Stormwater reuse offers significant opportunities for reducing the use of water from dams. As the infrastructure ages in the older suburbs, we have an opportunity to develop uses for stormwater before it goes down the drains. We can use it for watering parks or ovals. We can also expand treatment for sewerage so that it can be reused on sports grounds and agriculture.

Reducing demand can be cost-effective and have a significant impact on conserving our water supplies. We need to get serious about how much water is wasted in the urban and rural environment. We do live on the driest continent in the world and our behaviour pattern should reflect that.

Linked to issues of demand and supply is the issue of who manages our water supplies. Water is a basic right and a public resource. As I have outlined in the Assembly in the past, I want the government to investigate options for returning the ACT's water supply and sewerage services to full government control so that these services can be managed purely for the public benefit and not commercial return.

A major point that came up in the debate over the commercialisation of Actew in the last Assembly was that water and sewerage services are fundamentally different to electricity supply. Actew's electricity business was working within a national electricity market, whereas with water and sewerage it had a natural monopoly. Electricity can be substituted with other energy sources and provided from other sources in many cases, but water has no substitute. It is an essential resource that has its natural limits.

Mr Quinlan has said that it would be difficult to unscramble ActewAGL, but this does not apply to the water side of the business. While the electricity side of Actew was totally merged with AGL, the water and sewerage infrastructure was kept under the ownership of Actew and only its management contracted out to ActewAGL. A review mechanism was also built into the water management contract to take into account the fact that AGL had never run a water business before.

The first phase of the contract was meant to be more of an alliance between Actew and AGL to work out the costs and risks involved in managing the water and sewerage business. The second phase of the contract was to be negotiated by 30 September 2004. This would set up an ongoing, arms-length commercial contract between Actew and ActewAGL. The government thus has a window of opportunity, before the second phase contract is finalised, to review whether the half-privatisation of our water and sewerage services is really in the public interest.

The Greens have always said that water supply and sewerage should be under public control so that our limited water resources are managed in the public interest rather than treated as a commodity to be sold to whoever wants to buy it and our waste water treated as something we need to get rid of. We need to think about the best ways of conserving this resource for the sake of the environment and future generations.

Now there is public discussion again on building a dam, and the Greens are naturally concerned that building another dam is the way to ensure that water supply grows and therefore guarantees growing profit for ActewAGL in the future. I am wary about calls for another dam. We need rather to recognise water as a precious resource.

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