Page 3759 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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use different methodologies. We have not funded, to the apparent extent of Queanbeyan, dual-flush toilets. We have achieved a reduction of the same order in the same time over the last five years of over 100 gigalitres. That is a great effort by both Queanbeyan and Canberra. One and a half year’s supply of water has been saved in the last five years by our two cities working diligently to achieve it.
I will conclude on this point because I know that the minister for education wants to say something about other issues the Leader of the Opposition raised in relation to schools. It also needs to be said in relation to this ongoing debate or dispute about our lack of attention to water education vis-a-vis Queanbeyan that we have achieved exactly the same reduction but we have not done it with the same level of impost on Canberrans. Another piece of information—and this is very relevant to Mr Stefaniak’s stewardship of Queanbeyan in this regard—reveals that, on average, Queanbeyan residents pay $130 more a year for water than ACT residents. For 250 kilolitres of water in the ACT, the average annual consumption of a household, the ACT charges $563. Queanbeyan City Council charges $695—$130 more.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (4.41): I would like first to take the opportunity to tackle Dr Foskey about some of what she had to say. She did not say this in her speech but she did by way of an aside, so I will respond to it because it has been said by the Greens around the country. I refer to the comment that “dams don’t make it rain”. Of course, we know that dams do not make it rain, but when it does rain it is good if you can actually catch some of that water for when it does not rain. I think that aspect has been lost by the Greens in the hysteria that they have been creating around climate change issues and other things.
In particular, if we accept that we are faced with more difficulties, with lower rainfall in the coming years—perhaps the next 10, 20, 50 or 100 years—surely it is incumbent upon us to be storing more water in those circumstances. Along with demand reduction measures, surely it is incumbent upon us, if it is going to be drier, to actually catch as much of the water, when it does rain, as we possibly can, so that we do have a security of supply.
In all of the arguments that are put forward by the Greens, both locally and nationally, that seems to have been neglected. We saw Bob Brown’s recent comments. He is opposed to dams; he says dams are “so last century” but he is also opposed to desalination plants in places like Victoria and Queensland. So all that you are left with, in the Greens’ view of the world, is demand reduction and, with a growing population, an ever reducing amount of water. We do want to be using less water per person, but that is not the total answer. We do need to be catching more water; we do need to be storing more water; we do need to be increasing supply. I think some of the Greens’ statements on this have been quite ridiculous.
Mr Gentleman talked personally about getting a water tank, and I think that is commendable. There have been articles in the past about how Mr Stanhope has moved from having a big lawn to now having little or no lawn. That is wonderful; that is what happens, I guess, when kids grow up. But what struck me, when I saw that article in the Canberra Times about Mr Stanhope, was that, through his government’s failures in supplying water infrastructure, those families who perhaps are not in the
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