Page 3167 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 October 2006
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the coast. It is a good idea. It is a good principle. It makes people understand how much water they use. But it is a very small measure. Let us take ourselves beyond self-congratulation on how we are managing our water catchment. I think we have said enough here to know that we have not always managed it well, and our recovery after the fire was actually very, very slow. It took the government a very long time to listen to the advice of scientists and quietly decide not to replant pines. They did make that decision, though, and I commend them on it.
In Castlemaine they have just introduced water restrictions that prohibit the use of water outside the household, and we have new dwellings being built with swimming pools. I have really got to question the wisdom of that. I am always surprised at how few people in Canberra relate to the environment that they live in, who believe that their green lawn is more important than an environmental flow in a river. One is always having that argument. But it is not just a nicety any more. The crunch has come.
I briefly want to mention an amazing report from the Business Council of Australia, which sees water as a market resource only. It also quotes Mr Turnbull, with whom Mr Mulcahy spent so much time. It is worth a read. (Time expired.)
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Minister for the Arts) (4.43): The subject of this debate is very important and it is very pleasing to see members engage in the debate in the thoughtful way that they have been. This community and the rest of the nation have engaged to a very high degree in the debate around water issues—water supply, water security, water use and water recycling—in Australia. The drought we are experiencing, which may be just part of a cycle, and the level of awareness and acceptance now of climate change and the implications of climate change have led each of us to focus on issues of water and water supply to a degree that perhaps one would not have imagined even five years ago.
This government and all other governments around Australia are working very hard, vigorously and cooperatively to deal with the drought issues and the implications of climate change for the nation in the context of the Living Murray initiative, the discussions which have been a feature of the meetings in relation to water trading and water reform, and the quite rigorous assessment which for many years has been consuming the time of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and ministers of all jurisdictions that are members of that commission. We now have the commonwealth’s investment of $1 billion in the national water initiative and the establishment of the national water council and, indeed, a separate office within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to lead on the issue of water.
I think it is fair to say in any debate on water that the ACT can take some pride from being the most active, and certainly the most innovative, of any of the jurisdictions around Australia. That has been a matter of pride for some years, not just since we have been in government, and is reflective of the history of the ACT and of Actew. To some extent, that has been forced on us by the fact that, by inland standards, Canberra is a large city. It is by far the largest inland city in Australia and that does impose a certain
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