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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Thursday, 1 July 2004) . . Page.. 3110 ..

57 per cent. This would mean that the population that could sustainably rely on water supply will be slashed dramatically.

“Think water, act water” is, like every one of the government’s policy initiatives, a Pollyanna policy—everything will be all right in the end—combined with Scarlet O’Hara—“Tomorrow is another day.” What it boils down to is that we do not have a policy where we think of what could possibly go wrong and how we plan to avert or alleviate that if it comes. This is what public policy should be about. We expect leaders to say, “This is the situation. The range of possibilities is this. The worst-case scenario is this, and we should plan for the worst-case scenario.” If we do not plan for the worst-case scenario and it comes up and bites us, we will be in big trouble.

“Think water, act water” cannot be regarded as a water resources management plan, because it has failed to acknowledge the significant water saving initiatives that are available to it. The government’s own department of housing has reduced, on a pilot, the water consumption of housing trust houses by 24 per cent, and in addition to those water savings it has saved tens of thousands of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Think water, act water” cannot be regarded as a water resources management plan because it is not serious about saving water. If it were serious about saving water, we would have something better than the targets that we have in this water resources management plan, about which we will hold the government accountable in 2013. We will come back in the Eighth Assembly and see whether we have met our 12 per cent target. That is not a target; that is a non-core promise. No-one will be able to hold Jon Stanhope accountable for meeting that because, unless he is a very long-lived man, he will not be here in the Eighth Assembly.

Mr Stanhope: You want to bet?

MRS DUNNE: I will take your money, Jon. We are not serious about water resources, saving water or being water efficient because we cannot even take up the simple, effective and proven program that is conducted just across the border in little old Queanbeyan. In the ACT we talk about struggle town. Canberrans joke about Queanbeyan, but Queanbeyan puts us to shame when it comes to water efficiency and actually biting the bullet. Mayor Pangallo and his council need to be congratulated for the sterling effort they have made. They have reduced water consumption in Queanbeyan by 12 per cent over the past three or four years because they have been prepared to put the money in. (Extension of time granted.)

In addition to the 12 per cent savings that we could pick up just by emulating what Queanbeyan has done, we also know from the department of housing’s own survey that we could add another 24 per cent to that. That is a 36 per cent saving with very little effort. Talking of effort, I would like to refer members to page 16, volume 2 of “Think water, act water”. There is a very informative table there called “Water efficiency measure cost comparison”, where you have a long list of various things and how much it would cost to save a kilolitre of water.

It is very interesting that many of the measures that we could take up that we have decided not to take up come at the cheap end of that category, whereas the things that this government likes to talk about, while they are laudable, come at the very expensive

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