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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4256 ..

from opposition. When this issue was first raised—before water restrictions was a “sexy” issue—I was pursuing it simply from a public policy point of view and not with the imperatives we now have behind us.

At any time since November 2002, if this government had really been committed to water efficiency measures, the Minister for Planning could have made the regulations we are making tonight with a stroke of the pen. This is the principal problem with this process and Ms Tucker touched on it. In addressing the issue I want to pay tribute to the staff at the Parliamentary Counsel’s Office. One might get the impression, from listening to the minister’s speech, that somewhere along the line there were a whole lot of incompetent people involved in the drafting of this bill.

Mr Corbell: No. I did not say that.

MRS DUNNE: No. I did not say that you said it, but one might get that impression. I want to put on the record that that is not the case. One of the single biggest problems that people on the opposition crossbenches have is the inability to obtain the level of advice that makes sure you do it right the first time or the second time.

This has really been brought home to me in this process, because the staff at the Parliamentary Counsel Office’s did a fantastic job with one hand tied behind their backs. They could only talk to me. At no stage could they obtain advice from professional plumbers and experts in the plumbing code employed by the ACT government, because they were not working for a government minister, they were working for a private member.

Those avenues of research are closed to them in the same way that they are closed to me or to any other member, simply because it is a government department which provides advice to the executive of the government of the day, not to the Assembly. As a result of that policy initiatives like this become very cumbersome. In many ways it boils down to the government saying, “You guess which is the right way to do it.”

For 18 months I have had discussions with the Minister for Planning over this issue. Commitments were made to various stages of the implementation of these regulations so that this bill would never have to come forward and be debated. I do not know for what reasons, but those commitments were never able to be kept. It seems to me, from the outside, that there is a lack of commitment to the policy issues at hand.

The Minister for Environment talks about how important water is but, “By their fruits”—and their actions—“you shall know them.” There are no actions to cut water consumption in a comprehensive way like this. This is only the beginning; this relates only to new domestic work. That was the clear intention of this from the outset. Perhaps we should have moved on further by this stage, but getting this first step all the way through has been like extracting teeth. I think it reflects badly on us that it has taken so long, and that there has been, to some extent, a lack of cooperation from the government.

When we had discussions on this about a month or six weeks ago, quite frankly, some of the arguments put forward by the government as to why we could not do it were simply laughable—and Ms Tucker touched on some of them today. They said that, if you put a secondary flow-reducing valve in a tap, the interaction of that nickel with the nickel in

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