Page 5179 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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But the central point that I would like to focus on here, and one that I have made in this chamber before, is that as our population grows and we build new suburbs and we create new industries, we must keep investing in being more water efficient. As I said, I have made this point on a number of occasions, and I am starting to feel a little bit like a broken record. New suburbs such as Molonglo must be developed mindful of the water constraints and the water stresses that we are likely to face in the future. We have got a real taste of that with what the MDBA has suggested in their guide is the scientifically based number that they think applies to the whole of the basin and then what the rough-cut proportion is that the ACT might be expected to take in that. We need to start making this city more water efficient. Suggestions that we can somehow keep building supply capacity to overcome these constraints are simply not realistic.
On Mrs Dunne’s motion specifically, I would like to briefly comment on a few of the paragraphs. The Greens are able to support paragraphs 1(a) to (c) as being points of fact. That seems to be quite relevant to the matters at hand. I will use Mrs Dunne’s numbering to start with and come to Mr Corbell’s amendments in a moment. From paragraph (d) onwards, it appears that Mrs Dunne is building a case to say that the MDBA and the commonwealth have made mistakes and that the Canberra community has more of a right to water from the Murray-Darling Basin than other communities in the basin and that we should go and fight for it tooth and nail. I will not go through those paragraphs as I am running short of time, but the Greens, while agreeing with Mrs Dunne’s statements of fact, do not necessarily subscribe to the case that Mrs Dunne is seeking to build, I think, in her motion. As such, we will not be supporting large chunks of Mrs Dunne’s motion.
Firstly, paragraphs 1(d) to (j) seem either irrelevant to the case being made or not the case that the Greens would make. In paragraphs 2(a) to (e) we have a similar problem. Firstly, paragraph 2(a) seems at odds with what paragraph 2(c) quite substantially. In the first paragraph Mrs Dunne makes the statement that we should vigorously defend the ACT’s current limit and then—and I am sure this is not quite how she meant it, but it is certainly how you could read it—she argues in paragraph (c) that the government should commission the research to justify the case that it wants to make. Now, I am sure that one can always find a consultant to get you the outcome you want, but I do not think that that is the basis on which we should be arguing for a water allocation.
Mr Corbell has moved some amendments and, as he noted, we did have a discussion over lunch. Certainly, they substantially rewrite Mrs Dunne’s motion, and the Greens will be supporting quite a number of the proposals that Mr Corbell has put forward. We are still not entirely comfortable with all of them. As we come to each of them, perhaps there will be an opportunity to put our views on those, particularly if we put each question separately.
Overall I think that there is a long way to go on this debate. I think there is a lot of information still to be extricated. I am sure we will be having this discussion again. In light of the Greens taking a slightly different approach, I would now like to move the two amendments circulated in my name. The first of them inserts a new paragraph right at the beginning of Mr Corbell’s amendments and simply notes the findings from
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