Page 3760 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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same position as his, who do want to have a bit of lawn in their backyard and who feel that it is reasonable to water their garden and their lawn so that their young kids can run around on it, have not been given that option under pretty severe water restrictions through much of the past few years. Because of the government’s inaction, the complete delay in action, we will see those kinds of restrictions potentially for many more years than perhaps needed to be the case if the government had acted when it should have.
I want to refer to what Mr Costello, the head of Actew, said some time ago on 2CC. He was asked whether environmental flows had affected storage. His answer, which I think was quite extraordinary, was to this effect: “I’ve checked with the experts and they’ve said if we had not had the level of environmental flows that we did, more severe water restrictions wouldn’t have kicked in as soon, and therefore we would have about the same water storage.” So his argument was, “People’s gardens wouldn’t have died as much, but we would’ve been left with around the same water storage,” which is quite an extraordinary defence of the over-allocation of environmental flows that we have seen in recent years.
Mr Gentleman must have brought forward this MPI with a sense of embarrassment. He portrayed this government as having achieved significant things in the area of water management. If we go back to the 2004 election, it was the Canberra Liberals who took to the electorate a plan to secure the region’s water supply through the construction of a dam. And what was the government’s response? Mr Stanhope mocked the plan for a dam. He said:
What the innovation, the lateral thinking, the engineering skill of ACTEW confirm …the Liberals are so hopelessly marooned on the question of a dam.
He must have been quite embarrassed, which is perhaps why he did not speak about these issues very much. He said:
We have seen that, through just a bit of simple scientific, considered work, we can avoid the need for a dam for at least 20 years and perhaps forever.
Mr Mulcahy: How long?
MR SESELJA: Perhaps forever. This is the complete lack of vision we have seen from the Stanhope government on this issue. They have had their head in the sand on the issue of water management, on the issue of water storage. They have refused to act in the way that the Canberra Liberals committed to do. We would have secured our storage much earlier than this government, who have belatedly come on board, after several years, only about 12 to 18 months after Jon Stanhope uttered those words. I will repeat what he said:
… through just a bit of simple scientific, considered work, we can avoid the need for a dam for at least 20 years and perhaps forever.
That attitude shows a complete lack of foresight and a complete lack of vision by the Chief Minister, who seems to pride himself on his forward thinking, on his visionary approach to issues. He has absolutely been caught short on this. As a result,
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