Page 2866 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 August 2005
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I thought very hard about whether the opposition should support this, simply because the environment minister’s office have been absolutely and utterly unwilling to provide the information they undertook at that briefing to provide to me.
This bill came up for debate in June. It was listed for debate in June, and my office was very diligent in pursuing the environment minister’s office to provide the information that they undertook. At the last minute they said, “We have some information, but it is not in a form that we are prepared to give to the opposition. So, no, you can’t have it.” There is really a problem with communication and with being open and able to debate legislation in an adult way. What it really boiled down to was that, in the end, somebody in the government decided that the opposition could not have this information. Either it is secret and they are hiding something that we as a community need to know or it was an act of complete venal hubris. I do not know.
On reflection, my instinct has always been that we should support this part of the bill. I reflected on it for some time and at one stage I was of the view, and suggested to my party room, that perhaps we should not support it because the minister’s office, and presumably therefore the Minister for the Environment, was unwilling to provide us with the information we asked for. But, on reflection, we have decided that, notwithstanding the fact that the information has not been provided, this is an important measure and it should be supported.
So far as I can tell, and from the people that I have spoken to, this is an uncontroversial matter. But it is something that needs to be closely monitored to ensure that when a utility is dipping into one catchment, rather than another catchment, it is not having an adverse effect on the first catchment. This is an area that perhaps the planning and environment committee should take some interest in because it is about the quality of water and the impact of environmental flows. It is something that this whole place should take an interest in. I will be pursuing the matter on a regular basis to ensure that the allocations are as they should be and that the shandying from one catchment to another is not having an adverse effect on one or other of those catchments. So the Liberal opposition will support proposed new section 35A.
The second part of the bill is completely unrelated to the first. As the bill is currently drafted, it gives the minister the power to impose a moratorium on the Environment Protection Authority’s ability to issue licences pursuant to the Water Resources Act. The government argues that this is necessary because catchments from which bores are operating in areas like Red Hill, Forrest and Yarralumla are under critical stress on account of the drought. The government has circulated amendments that will essentially keep that situation in place but will tinker with the mechanism that starts the moratorium, and I will address that during the detail stage.
The government argues that granting a moratorium on further access to water would provide an opportunity to review the criteria under which there is access to water. The government submits that, in the light of the prevailing drought conditions, it may be necessary to amend the criteria in the act that the Environment Protection Authority is obliged to consider when it is issuing a licence. The government have stated that they are primarily concerned with those waterways supplying essentially domestic bores. In the briefing the government advised that the review that they need to undertake, which
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