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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2892 ..

small communities along the way. The basin faces major and growing problems of salinity and rising water tables. I quote the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. It says:

At the present rates at which the groundwater levels are rising, most of the irrigation areas in the southern section of the Basin will have water tables within two metres of the surface by the year 2020. Where the sub-soils contain large volumes of salt, salinated water begins to poison vegetation when water tables rise to within two metres from the surface. In many parts of the Basin this has already happened.

The commission’s Dryland Technical Report No 1 of 1997 noted that, within the Murray-Darling Basin drainage division, at least 2,000 square kilometres of land are grossly affected by dryland salination and an estimated 10,000 square kilometres are at risk of salination by 2010. That is why in the past few years the federal government has undertaken its much needed initiative to address salinity across the country.

As I said, the issue of managing access to the Murray-Darling Basin’s waters has been part of the COAG agenda for 10 years, and it has been the thorn in the side of many states during that time. The agreement rightly focuses on agriculture, which accounts for most of Australia’s water consumption and, by implication, most of the problems. That does not let us off the hook. The initiative has agreement on a full cost recovery pricing. That is welcome news to people like us who pay 50 to 100 times what many irrigators pay.

According to last week’s Australian newspaper, while we in the ACT are paying in excess of $1 a kilolitre, the country’s largest irrigators—Murray Irrigation Ltd and Goulburn Valley Water—are paying 2c to 3c a kilolitre. If you look at the extravagance that is Cubbie Station, according to one source they pay $3 a megalitre, which is 0.3c a kilolitre, for their water. Cubbie Station, by way of information, has a dam that stores as much water as Googong Dam, but over a much larger area, and they are paying next to nothing for the water in it.

The difficulties of securing cross-jurisdiction agreement means that this agreement will not be perfect; there are too many vested interests to get involved. It was a little saddening to see that WA did not sign up—on the pretext that there was nothing in it for them. Although on the surface it does not seem that there is much in it for them, there is the collegial responsibility of taking responsibility for one-seventh of the landmass of the nation.

One of the issues I want to concentrate on today is the role of city dwellers, particularly Canberrans. Ours is the largest city in the basin and the city at the head of the basin. We need to show that we, as well as the irrigators further downstream, are prepared to work to address this issue. The ACT has led the way in addressing the issues of environmental flows and reducing water consumption, but we cannot ask farmers to make sacrifices if we are not prepared to make sacrifices as well. There is a clear understanding in this place that we need to do more.

We need to do more than impose blanket restrictions and pass on the burden and the risk to consumers. We need to have a much more imaginative approach than cutting back on supply; we need government input on the issue—both money and ideas. I question whether this government has any ideas when it comes to addressing the vital issue of water supply in Canberra and the effect that that will have on the Murray-Darling Basin.

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