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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Thursday, 1 July 2004) . . Page.. 3108 ..

could take along to a number of seminars. But woe betide you if you said anything other than the received orthodoxy about water in the ACT. You were fairly quickly silenced and told to go away or sit back in the corner and just listen.

When we eventually got “Think water, act water” in April this year, there was a long list of things to do, things for the most part on the never-never. There are some targets, which the Liberal opposition has been critical of simply because of their very modest nature. The principal targets are to reduce per capita consumption of mains water by 12 per cent by 2013, which will be during the Eighth Assembly of this place, and we are now in the Fifth Assembly. So, two elections out we might consider whether we have met the first target. The other target is to reduce per capita mains water consumption by 25 per cent by 2023. If you say it very fast, it sort of sounds impressive. But when you think that the first of these targets does not need to be met until the Eighth Assembly and the second of these targets until well into the Tenth Assembly, these are pretty pathetic targets.

In addition to that, there is no mechanism in “Think water, act water” for the government to report on how it is going to meet these targets. It is difficult in public policy to set targets that are really meaningful, and when you do set targets that are really meaningful you set yourself up for (a) hard work and (b) the possibility that you might fail. But setting up a set of targets that do not have to be reported on until such time as probably none of us who make the policy will be here to answer for it is, frankly, risible.

This is what we are here to debate today. I do not want to spend a lot of time running a critique of this document, because it is perfectly fine as an aspirational policy document for the ACT ALP. It is perfectly fine for the Stanhope Labor government to say, “These are the sorts of things we would like to do.” It is very much in the mould of the Canberra plan or the spatial plan. None of its components has been brought into this place for the endorsement of this Assembly. Making this document a disallowable instrument under the Water Resources Act is requiring the Assembly to endorse something that is essentially a policy document for the ACT ALP Stanhope government, and we have to make sure we understand exactly what we are doing. Because this is essentially an aspirational document, it cannot be considered a substitute for a water resources management plan.

“Think water, act water” cannot be regarded as a sound water resources management plan because its facts and figures are unable to withstand expert scrutiny. For example, water loss due to climate change is quoted by the government as being only 10 per cent in the next 30 years. But according to David Jones, head of climate analysis at the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology, and James Risbey, of the Centre for Dynamical Meteorology and Oceanography at Melbourne’s Monash University, what is called an “antarctic vortex” is plunging southern Australia into a state of perennial drought that could reduce average annual rainfall by up to 20 per cent.

Another reason why “Think water, act water” should not be regarded as a water resources management plan is that, in this climate of diminished water resources and increasing evaporation, “Think water, act water” has increased its estimation of the Googong Dam’s resources by an average of 39 per cent. At the same time the government has reduced its environmental flow obligations in that catchment from 16.8 per cent to 9.1 per cent and currently, because of permissions given by Environment

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