Page 5187 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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reasonable for us to say on behalf of the people of the ACT, “We are doing more than our fair share, given how much we pay and how much we use.”
The relevant words in the amendments from Mr Rattenbury are:
(2) calls on the ACT Government to engage in a constructive way with the current consultation process … to assess how it might contribute to the proposed returns …
It is not about arguing the case, saying, “We do not want to be facing permanent water restrictions as a result of this process.” We believe we should be arguing the case but the Greens, in these amendments, are saying, “We just need to find a way of complying with what the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has had to say.” We do not believe that is good enough and that is why we will not support these amendments. That is why Mrs Dunne has rightly advocated that the government and all parties represented in the Assembly should be standing up for the people of the ACT.
This goes even broader than that. We need to look at the way the ACT is being treated. Firstly, I think this process has been very poorly handled by the authority. The ACT is just not any city. We are the nation’s capital and we should have regard to that, quite aside from the fact that we have contributed much more than other communities, quite aside from the fact that we pay more for our water and that we divert less. The fact that we are the nation’s capital should also come into this.
We believe that the Greens’ approach to this, which is to simply accept whatever the authority puts forward and to not argue the case on behalf of the people of the ACT, is not doing the job that we are elected to do, which is to advocate on our behalf. And if the argument is “we need to do our bit, we are doing our bit. We will continue to do our bit. And we are doing more than our bit. Just because an authority says that it is a good idea does not make it a good idea. We in the ACT have contributed significantly. Let us be clear on this as well. The people of the ACT have suffered through this drought.
We had a debate last week about water restrictions and about why water restrictions should be lifted. We are very pleased that Actew has done that. It is not about forever not being able to use water, as the Greens appear to be arguing. But their position seems to be: “No matter how much you save, you should save more. You should expect that there is always going to be drought and you should be without the basic use of the water that you expect.” We are not talking about what we have experienced in the last few years. We are talking about reasonable use of water.
What the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is proposing would potentially restrict Canberrans in their water use in perpetuity. We would potentially be faced with a situation where it would always be as if there were a drought, no matter how much water there was, because we would have such a small allocation to use for the purposes of ACT residents.
We do not accept that. We do not accept that argument. We do not subscribe to that argument. That is why we will not support Mr Rattenbury’s amendments and that is
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