Page 3620 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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has operated a separate resource management system for the water under its control. The operation of dual systems was inefficient and could potentially have led to the overuse of the resource.
The majority of commonwealth water users operate in a relatively loose control regime, taking water in a manner consistent with commonwealth guidelines, although some minor commonwealth water users have not been regulated at all, and others have voluntarily submitted themselves to the ACT water management system. The transfer of commonwealth water to ACT government control will see improved efficiency as all users will operate under the one system.
The ACT is not a significant water user in the Murray-Darling Basin, but it is a leader in water resource management. It has not overallocated its resources and does not overuse them. The ACT has allocated less than 16 per cent—I will say that again: the ACT has allocated less than 16 per cent—of its estimated average water resource of 500 gigalitres per year compared to 49 per cent, which is reserved for the environment. That has got to be good news for Mr Rattenbury. Absolutely good news, isn’t it? I can see him sitting there absolutely gobsmacked, because he is like that. Of the 16 per cent the ACT has allocated for extraction, it actually uses less than half, or seven per cent, of the estimated average water resource. That is something the people out there in the community are not aware of, and they should be aware of it.
The 1994 COAG water reforms and the 2004 national water initiative have been instrumental in supporting the ACT’s successful management of its water resources through objectives aimed at improving the sustainable management of Australia’s water resources. This bill will allow the ACT to further improve its water resource management capability, and I am sure that there will be further improvements in the future to ensure that the ACT remains at the leading edge of this field. It is with great pleasure that I commend this bill.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.01), in reply: I thank members for their support of this bill. This bill brings the management of the water resources in the ACT more closely in line with the intent of nationally agreed water reform as expressed in the national water initiative, the commonwealth Water Act and the Murray-Darling Basin agreement. It will further promote the sustainable and efficient management of water in the territory and facilitate the transfer of commonwealth controlled water in the territory to the ACT under a single management regime.
The ACT border was drawn to ensure an adequate water supply for the national capital independent of water use in the surrounding areas of New South Wales. It included the highly productive Cotter River catchment and access to the borders of the Queanbeyan and Molonglo rivers in New South Wales. The resources of the Cotter River have been a reliable source of water for Canberra since the construction of the original Cotter Dam in 1912. The resources of the Queanbeyan River were harnessed with the construction of the Googong Dam in 1979.
Successive commonwealth governments did not consider the level of water resource use in the ACT to warrant this specific legislation prior to self-government. At
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