Page 3169 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 October 2006
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we do not have wasteful practices in place and that we are facing our responsibilities in a serious way in the context of acknowledging and recognising the value of this resource. At one level we are reflecting that, of course, through the steps that we have taken to ensure that we do move to price water appropriately—hard decisions for government that other governments around Australia have shirked.
In relation to the issue of water supply and securing the supply, we have worked, I think, more innovatively and more vigorously than any other place round Australia as well. We did inherit good infrastructure at the time of self-government. We have not been complacent. In the last three years, through Actew, we have invested over $70 million. Yesterday, I announced that we would invest an additional $15 million as a minimum, taking our investment in infrastructure in the last three years or so to $85 million. We have, through some most innovative engineering and thinking, created the capacity for and possibility of transferring water en bulk from a high-performing, high-flow catchment to a low-flow catchment.
We have already moved 10 gigalitres, one-sixth of our annual requirement. With the initiative I announced yesterday, we will have the capacity to move 24 gigalitres a year across to Googong, more than one-third of our annual capacity, by the simple expedient of upgrading our water treatment facility and transferring water en bulk to a performing catchment. We have done the necessary investigations, the necessary science. We have pursued vigorously, relying on the best scientific advice available to us, our needs into the future, taking into account all the variables and all the parameters of climate change, historic flows and population growth. We are doing the work and will continue to do the work.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.53): This MPI in National Water Week is an important matter that requires constant revisiting by this Assembly to ensure that we do have the best possible policies for the ACT. The Chief Minister is right in saying that the ACT has a proud history of being at the forefront of water efficiencies and water management policies since before self-government. There are many measures that this government has undertaken which are good as far as they go. As the shadow minister for the environment and water over a long period, I have been unstinting in my criticism of the government for its failure to be really innovative, to be really at the cutting edge, to come up with absolutely the best policies. They are doing okay, but there is much more that can be done.
Mr Gentleman has come along with a speech that someone has prepared for him listing the litany of wonderful things the Stanhope government has done. I suppose that is the job of a backbench member of a government, but we should be a bit more realistic about what has in fact happened. There has been a fair amount of stinting by the government when it comes to water policy. We have to look at that in the context of this matter of public importance, which is about the importance of securing a sustainable water supply for the future.
The Chief Minister finished his presentation by talking about some of the capital investment that the government has made and the reason for its particular path. The Cotter-Googong bulk transfer system is pretty whizzy technology. It has been without a doubt quite an innovation and the people who came up with the idea should be applauded for their attempts to make the situation better. But it always strikes me as strange that,
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