Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2900 ..

the productivity and efficiency of water use, the need to service rural and urban communities and to ensure the health of river and groundwater systems.

The National Water Initiative is intended to lead to greater certainty for investment and environmental outcomes. It covers a range of areas in which greater compatibility and adoption of best practice approaches to water management will have substantial benefits in terms of stimulating greater investment of the water industry and improving the achievement of environmental outcomes, including those in urban areas.

The key proposals in the agreement centre on water access entitlements, water plans, environmental and other public benefit outcomes, interception, markets and trading, water pricing, urban water management and impacts on the community. The agreement also calls for the preparation of detailed implementation plans in each jurisdiction over the next 12 months and the creation of a national water commission to advise COAG on progress with implementing the agreement and to recommend any actions necessary to better realise its objectives.

Amongst other things, in urban areas, the agreement will:

• implement a national approach to a water efficiency labelling scheme (WELS), to be in place in all jurisdictions by 2005, including mandatory labelling and minimum standards for agreed appliances;

• develop and implement a “smart water mark” for household gardens, including garden irrigation equipment, garden designs and plants;

• review the effectiveness of temporary water restrictions and associated public education strategies and assess the scope for extending low-level restrictions as standard practice;

• develop national health and environmental guidelines for priority elements of water sensitive urban designs by 2005; and

• develop national guidelines for evaluating options for water sensitive urban developments, both in new urban subdivisions and high-rise buildings by 2006.

The ACT has led the way and provided an example for other states and territories in the development and implementation of our “Think water, act water” strategy. An agreed national approach complements the strategy the ACT has already committed to and has begun to fund and implement. As ACT arrangements are already mostly consistent with the National Water Initiative agreement, we should have little difficulty contributing to an effective national approach.

The most significant direct potential benefit to come from the National Water Initiative agreement relates to trading. If the ACT were to seek water from Tantangara in New South Wales—one of the three options that ACTEW is currently doing detailed scientific and other analyses of—the trading arrangements and clearer specifications of water entitlements would be of assistance. Some flow-on effects could arise from New South Wales improving water management in areas surrounding the ACT, particularly in relation to farm dams and bores.

In addition to the National Water Initiative agreement, the ACT is also a signatory to the intergovernmental agreement on the Murray-Darling Basin. Participation in this agreement particularly emphasises the government’s commitment to ensuring that

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .