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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2897 ..

western side of the city, there is room for significant plantings of native grass as a fire protection barrier. We have to take these opportunities as they present themselves, and we have an opportunity here and now. I think we have an obligation to show best practice in the city. We are asking farmers to show best practice—to get back to sustainable agriculture—and we must do the same.

I notice that, in one of the answers during question time, the Chief Minister said that we have a water-trading arrangement with the ACT—I think he meant New South Wales—with regard to the pipeline. That is a significant backflip from the 1998 sittings, when we passed the water legislation. At that time Mr Corbell said:

The Labor Party has considered very carefully the issue of water allocations, and we are not confident that it is in the best interests of the Territory to enter into such a regime.

It is good to see that we have thrown that one out. It continues:

We are not confident that it will protect the best interests of managing the Territory's water resources.

That apparently has gone by the board. It continues:

We are greatly concerned that it will place the management of these sorts of resources into a competitive market, with the subsequent risk of market failure and the other consequences of such a regime. So, we will be supporting consequential amendments and the key amendment—amendment No. 7.

Basically the Labor Party is saying that it has concerns about a competitive market, as it is called, and the sale and trading of water. I go on to quote Mr Corbell again. He said:

We do not believe that it is an appropriate course of action in dealing with the management of the Territory’s water resources.

Obviously there has been an outbreak of commonsense in those opposite—the government benches tend to do that to you. It is good to see that we are at least talking about it; however, I have some concerns about the government’s approach. Until recently the advice coming from the CEO of Actew was that the government was particularly interested in the pipeline to Tantangara—the pipeline to nowhere. It is worth having on the record and reiterating for the interests of members that Tantangara Dam is a holding dam. When they have an excess of water in the Snowy Mountain scheme they put it into Tantangara until they can either send it down to Eucumbene, pump it somewhere else or shift it to where it is required.

The holding dam is the first dam that empties out when there is a drought, because there is nothing to pump into it. Tantangara is located in the northern part of the Australian Alps. One water and climate change expert has told me that he thinks that, in 20 years, the chances of any snow that will melt and flow naturally into the Tantangara reservoir—which is the other way some water gets into it—are minimal. From this government we have a proposition to build a pipeline from the ACT to a reservoir that, for most of its life, is empty.

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