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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2904 ..

defensive. This is water for gardens that we are talking about at this point; it is still such a major issue.

On water quality, I acknowledge the work that Environment ACT does in water quality monitoring. The ACT water report, which is produced by Environment ACT, comes up with an analysis of our water. I have just been having a look again at the 2002-03 ACT water report. It has indicators; it has biological monitoring. I will read out a little bit of it, on the biological monitoring. It says that the results for Spring 2002 and Autumn 2003 show, I quote:

There is significant biological impairment recorded in both the Spring and Autumn samples. Urban activity, agricultural and forest activities resulting in sediment addition leading to habitat degradation are thought to be a major cause of degradation.

The spring 2002 sample shows the reference sites maintained a Band A rating, even though there was a drought. These sites fall on the Murrumbidgee River, which has a large volumetric flow, and more resilience to the drought conditions. Tuggeranong, Ginninderra and Jerrabomberra Creeks and Queanbeyan and Molonglo rivers all indicated serious levels of impairment. These sites fall into rural urban and industrial zonings, which seems to indicate that the effect of the low flows and prolonged drought conditions, is being exacerbated by these land uses.

The Autumn 2003 sample occurred after the January bushfires. This combined with the worsening drought can be seen in the results from the majority of sites…

I think we could see a much greater interest in this sort of reporting from the government and see them set targets for the quality of water that we can all work to and see them be accountable.

I also want to remind members that the Greens have been calling for an upper Murrumbidgee catchment authority, and the reason we have called for it is that it is quite consistent with the Wentworth group notion that we need to have community-based, regional catchment authorities for all major water catchments. They need to be properly resourced, and they need to be statutory and community-based catchment management authorities.

The reason this is so important is the argument that Mr Smyth put up: “We’ve got Tantangara, and New South Wales has got Googong, and there are issues around management.” We obviously have to move away from the lines on the map and understand the regional responsibility and the regional catchment work. That is a really fundamental step to addressing our regional responsibilities for water.

MR HARGREAVES (4.46): I welcome the motion put forward by the opposition today and the opportunity it affords the government to assist them in getting up to speed with what the government has been doing for some time. Following extensive consultation with the ACT community and the input of advice from leading national experts, the government released the “Think water, act water” strategy for sustainable water resource management on 28 April this year.

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