Page 4654 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 27 November 2019
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actually extract water from it, and we will not extract water from it unless it is absolutely necessary.
During the process of trying to put off the enlarged Cotter dam, Mr Stanhope went to great lengths to do just about anything. We have the Murrumbidgee to Googong water transfer, which cost in excess of $80 million. My mind says $88 million, and I think it was $88 million, but I know that it was in excess of $80 million. If ever there was a white elephant project, that was it. It has pumped two or three swimming pools full of water in its whole life. At the moment, it cannot pump water even if we want it to, because the flows in the Murrumbidgee are too low.
The Murrumbidgee to Googong pipeline was built dependent on the fact that we had water rights to the Tantangara dam. ACTEW, now Icon Water, has sold those water rights. To make the Murrumbidgee to Googong system work, what we need to do is this: if there is a shortage of water, you flush the water out of Tantangara dam and hope that by the time it gets to Angle Crossing there is still enough for you to pump over the hill to the Googong dam, at huge expense. It is really a third or fourth level security measure. But we have sold the rights. We cannot flood water down the Murrumbidgee to Angle Crossing anymore because we do not own the rights to the water. For a variety of reasons, it was considered that it was too expensive. I do not want to reflect too much on that, but it makes the Murrumbidgee to Googong $80 million investment a very poor investment indeed. And when you consider that the turbines have hardly even been turned over since it was commissioned, I think that the ACT taxpayers need to question seriously the $80 million plus investment.
It is important for us in this environment to look at our water security and be very active in our water security. I wish that there were other jurisdictions around the country who had acted in as judicious a way as the ACT eventually did in building a dam.
I look at the discussion about water security that is currently going on in New South Wales and people bemoaning the fact that the Warragamba dam is depleted. New South Wales has not built water storage for Sydney residents, who the Warragamba dam serves, since the mid-60s. The population of Sydney and the Sydney region has more than doubled in that period, but they have not taken this into account. It is negligent that successive New South Wales governments have not taken steps to augment the Sydney water supply or water supplies for cities and towns up and down New South Wales.
We are seeing this in other places as well. When you see places like Tamworth and Armidale with water supplies at 14 per cent, this is neglect. This is neglect from governments who have not had the moral fortitude to stand up to the naysayers and do something about water security in a forward-thinking way. It is neglect.
It was neglect on the part of this government that for the best part of 10 years they put off building a dam because the Liberals had the audacity to suggest it and it was not their idea. I am glad that the Labor Party came to the party, but it is neglect by successive governments across the country that we are in a situation where we are facing another drought and we are casting around to see what we might do. The
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