Page 441 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 4 March 2008
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We are now several years into this drought, this severe drought. As we are faced with the issues associated with climate change, surely we should be catering for worse conditions rather than better conditions. Instead of just hoping for the best and praying for rain, we should assume that things will be drier and that we will have less water flowing into our catchments and so we are going to have to store more in the good times; we are going to have to store more in the big rain events and flood events so that we have enough to last us through lean times.
We have seen a significant drought here and it is only in the last several months that this government has finally determined that it would be good to plan for the future and to secure our water supply. This is not a new issue; this is an issue that has been with us for a number of years. In fact, it was the Chief Minister who sat in this place and ridiculed the opposition’s plan for a dam. The opposition went to the election with a plan for a dam.
Mr Barr: Yes, in a place where it does not rain; in the worst catchment area.
MR SESELJA: We hear the interjections from Mr Barr. The government are embarrassed. The Chief Minister, in fact, said we would not need a dam for at least 20 years, if ever; we would not need another dam for 20 years, if ever. What a ridiculous statement! How embarrassed he must have been that only 12 months or so later he has had to announce that we do need a dam and we are going to start building it and building it really soon. Wouldn’t it have been great if there had been some foresight from this government and some forward planning and they had said, “Well, let us look at the worst-case scenario. Let’s look beyond our worst-case scenario and say that the city will grow. We don’t know exactly by how much, but we know it will grow. We have got our forecasts, we have got our low, medium and high range forecasts. The region is growing and will continue to grow. Things are getting drier and they may well continue to get drier, perhaps for the next 50 years; who knows? We know that we are potentially facing a 50-year dry spell compared to the previous 50 years, which have been comparatively higher by historical standards. Why wouldn’t we, in that circumstance, plan for the future?”
This government has failed to plan and, as a result, if we do see another dry spell in the next couple of years, Canberrans will face more hardship, will face more severe restrictions, and it would be particularly damaging to our economy and to a lot of businesses if we were to move to stage 4 at some stage. We are certainly not out of the woods yet. We hope that there will be more rain in the interim, until this dam is built. We hope that our dam levels will go up and perhaps that some of these restrictions can be eased so that people can use water, but the lack of forward planning has simply made that much more difficult for the people of Canberra.
Planning is important but also delivery on those plans is important. This government came to office with a number of plans: the Canberra plan, the spatial plan, the sustainable transport plan. It did not have a plan for a dam. We have seen in its execution, particularly in housing affordability and water, that it has not been up to it. It is all well and good to write a few things on a piece of paper. But planning is about much more than that. It is about foresight, it is about doing the thorough research that
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