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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2903 ..

5. Tens of thousands of farm dams and off-stream storages are also denying water from the rivers.

6. Dryland salinity affects 300,000 hectares now, with the prediction this could increase 11-fold over the next 50 years.

7. The cost of dryland salinity is expected to escalate to between $600 million and $1 billion annually over the next 100 years.

8. In-stream salinity could mean that within 20 years Adelaide’s drinking water will not meet World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for two days out of five.

9. Salinity levels in the Macquarie, Namoi, Lachlan, Loddon, Warrego, Balonne and Condamine rivers are expected to exceed WHO standards for 50 per cent of the time by 2050.

10. About 4000km of rivers in the basin are artificially chilled by thermal pollution.

11. Algal blooms are now common place, adding costs to water use and posing risks to health.

12. Turbidity levels due to soil erosion are a major problem along vast stretches of the rivers.

13. Native fish are at 10 per cent of their pre-European level; eight of 35 species threatened; Murray Cod numbers down 30 per cent in the last 50 years.

14. European carp now represent 60-90 per cent of the fish biomass in some areas; densities can reach one per square metre of water surface.

15. Since European settlement, 259 animal species and 247 plants have become extinct or are endangered, vulnerable or rare.

16. 123 out of 251 woodland bird species from the Basin’s wheat and sheep belt are now under threat, 38 of these having been officially listed as extinct, endangered or vulnerable.

17. The platypus has an uncertain status and future.

18. Willows are a looming threat to the waterways.

19. Fifty per cent of the former floodplain wetlands, the natural filters in the system, are gone.

20. Several of the nationally and internationally recognised wetlands of the Basin are under threat.

This MPI focuses on Canberra’s impact on the Murray-Darling Basin. People are highlighting what I would agree are the three main points. First is the question of supply: how we can reuse water. Second is the question of how we live, how we change our culture: do we want green gardens and irrigated verges, as the NCA still requires in the National Capital Plan? Third is the question of the quality of water that leaves the ACT. There is an obvious fourth point: the impact our water use has on the ACT ecology and downstream ecology.

People have spoken about the way we can use water and the way we can reuse water and how well we are doing that. I agree with Mrs Dunne that there has not been a strong enough commitment to the reuse of water. In fact, a number of developers who have spoken to me recently who have quite innovative ideas for their developments about the reuse of water are finding real obstruction in ACTPLA. There is real paranoia in ACTPLA about the reuse of water.

That is not so much the case in New South Wales. In fact, one developer was telling me that the response from the ACT bureaucracy to his proposal was, “If you can get it accredited in New South Wales, we might consider accrediting it here.” These grey water schemes are not that risky, and I think that the ACT needs to look at its standards and understand that the imperative is so great that we need to move away from being quite so

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