Stuart Henry (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has certainly been interesting to hear some of the comments of the previous speaker, the member for Hindmarsh. I must pick up on the point that he made: that the Howard government has shown no initiative. Let us have a look at the record. The Howard government’s record stands alone, with a 16 per cent increase in net wages over the last 10 years or so compared with the previous Labor administration, which had a net wage increase of less than one per cent over 13 years. We have the lowest unemployment in 30 years. In fact, if we had the same unemployment levels, the 10.9 per cent, that we had during the Labor administration, we would have 1.2 million people currently unemployed. So let us look at who has the initiatives.

The previous speaker referred to the Murray-Darling Basin initiative and the extra $500 million that the budget allocated to that initiative together with the National Water Initiative, which is a very positive program to address the serious issues of water supply and water usage in this country—and it will go a long way to doing that. It happens to be one of the issues I want to speak about tonight.

Not many people know that former US President Herbert Hoover began his career as a mining engineer and spent several years working in Kalgoorlie in my home state of Western Australia. He arrived in 1897 and, during his time here, he served on Kalgoorlie’s water supply board and was involved in the water planning for the area. His writings about those years recall that, in forecasting water demand, the board used overseas figures and did not take into account the local community’s incredible commitment to and innovation in water efficiency. The result was that they overestimated demand at that time by over 70 per cent. It is interesting to note that in 1995-96 the Kalgoorlie community saved an additional 400 megalitres of water per annum by introducing a range of water efficiency programs, which were very well received and which included retrofitting programs in domestic residences.

There is much to be proud of in Australia since Herbert Hoover lived here, but the dramatic rise in our water usage, other than in the Kalgoorlie example, is not among them. Although no-one wants to go back to the harsh lifestyles of the 1800s, it is a sobering fact indeed that most of the increase in our consumption has taken place over the last 30 to 40 years and that our per capita water use increased 65 per cent between 1985 and 1997 alone. I am afraid that this is followed by more sobering facts.

Australia’s average domestic daily water use, for example, is 350 litres per person. Allow me to emphasise that: domestically we use 350 litres for each and every one of us. Before anyone resorts to the easy out of blaming farmers or irrigators or even industry, I will reiterate that this is domestic consumption—that, on average, 268 litres of water is used by each urban Australian as drinking-quality water each day, yet only around one per cent of that is actually used for drinking.

The contrast between the extravagance and complacency of our water use with the dryness of our continent is stark indeed, especially when we compare ourselves to other developed nations where, despite higher water availability, their communities generally use far less per capita than we do. Using 260 litres per day of top-quality drinking water for each urban residence puts Australia 30 per cent higher than the OECD average. In Copenhagen, for example, this figure is only 125 litres per day, which is less than half our consumption rate. I understand that the German ecovillage of Flintenbreite in Lubeck has a consumption of only 77 litres per person per day.

I would argue strongly that much of our water consumption situation is due to a fragmentary state-dominated approach to water supply that dates back to federation. The state based arrangements have affected everything from major infrastructure to plumbing training, standards and manufacturing. During my previous role as executive director of the Master Plumbers and Mechanical Services Association and as Vice-Chairman and then Chair of the World Plumbing Council, I was glad to see genuine progress between the states in their attempts to achieve consistency in some aspects, such as regulations and training standards.

This government’s new Water Efficiency Labelling Scheme, WELS, is an important sign of the innovative and recent progress in this area. WELS officially began last July and moves into its next phase in just a few weeks, on 1 July. It has been developed in collaboration with the state and territory governments and offers huge potential to reduce our water use right across the nation. But today I would like to make a case for another collaborative national approach to water use, which I believe would complement the WELS program and represent significant value to the community, especially in financial and environmental terms. I am proposing a nationwide retrofit initiative focused primarily on replacing the approximately 2.8 million low-efficiency toilets that remain in use in Australia.

Water-flushed toilets are a remarkable human innovation and they have dramatically improved our sanitation and public health. But, by the 1980s, it had become generally accepted that toilets were using far too high a proportion of our precious water supply, and greater toilet water efficiency was urgently needed. Since 1987, Australia has had legislation requiring all new toilets to be dual-flush models and this has certainly helped. New technology, in part driven by legislative changes, has also meant that dual-flush technology has improved over this period. Currently, the widely accepted six/three litre toilets are the maximum standard requirement, with the new, even better 4.5/three litre technology now available achieving a four-star WELS rating. But, with 2.8 million low-efficiency toilets still in operation in Australia, we are not taking full advantage of this progress.

Let’s imagine these 2.8 million toilets were only used once each day. The reality is likely to be much higher—in fact, I understand that it is up to five times a day. Replacing these with high-efficiency toilets would reduce daily water use by over 14 million litres. In one year, that would save 5.26 billion litres and, in five years, it would save more than 26 billion litres of water. Now, if those toilets are used more than once a day, this figure will multiply even more dramatically. The facts and figures quoted on the WELS website, for example, indicate that, on average, replacing an old-style single-flush cistern toilet with a modern high-efficiency dual flush can save 51 litres per person per day.

A minimum water efficiency standard will apply to all toilets sold in Australia. An old-style single-flush toilet can use up to 12 litres of water in one flush, but more water-efficient dual-flush toilets average less than four litres, saving a considerable amount in terms of the cost of water. Operating a single-flush toilet costs around $760 over 10 years, compared to only $250 for a water-efficient dual-flush system. That is a 67 per cent reduction. Using water-efficient dual-flush toilets reduces household water use by many thousands of litres per household per year.

Retrofit or replacement programs overseas have typically fallen into one of four categories: rebates, vouchers, distribution or direct installation programs. The pros and cons of these vary according to circumstances, but overall the key issues are cost management, program control, minimising free-riding and fraud, implementation logistics, the capacity to involve other stakeholders and local politics and demographics. At face value, such programs do not seem cheap, but they are bargains over the long term. In Los Angeles, for instance, a continuous free distribution program supplies 3,000 to 4,000 high-efficiency toilets each month. Elsewhere in California, municipalities run occasional events that supply 1,000 to 2,000 toilets in a single weekend. But of course the key question is: are these programs worth while? Do they work? Do they provide value for public funds? To address this I want to cite a few examples from the US and then outline the benefits as I see them.

The first case is New York City, which in the early 1990s found itself faced with the multibillion-dollar prospect of expanding water supply and treatment infrastructure to ensure security and standards of supply. Instead, they wisely opted to spend a few hundred million on waste reduction through a toilet rebate program, which overall cost less than one-third of the projected cost of expanding their water supply and treatment facilities. The program offered $240 for the first replaced toilet in each residence and $150 for commercial or additional domestic toilets.

New York City spent $290 million in rebates between 1994 and 1997, but the results speak for themselves. Participating apartment buildings reduced their water use on average by 29 per cent. Over the entire city the per capita water use dropped by 16 per cent. The city also introduced fire hydrant locks and an underground leak detection initiative. Together with the toilet rebate program, these efforts achieved a 25 per cent reduction in New York City’s water use. These results were confirmed by similarly reduced inflows to waste treatment plants.

Los Angeles is another example. Although its population has increased by over 700,000 over the last 20 years, its total water use today is on par with the mid-1980s. The City of Los Angeles credits this to reducing the demand for water through ‘sustained implementation of water conservation programs and the city’s culture of conservation as a way of life’. The one measure it cites as being more effective than any other is its toilet replacement program which has replaced 1.24 million old technology toilets since 1990.

In Seattle, Washington, a toilet replacement program has been a key feature for 15 years, and over that time they have not only halted the trend towards increased demands but reversed it. In the last few years per capita consumption has fallen to levels not seen since the 1970s. For us in Australia, it is especially worth noting that Seattle had a period of mandatory water restrictions during a drought in the early 1990s. This resulted in a temporary drop in water use which disappeared immediately afterwards. The long-term trend contributed to by the toilet replacement program, however, has continued, despite this blip on the graph, and it has now brought water consumption down to lower than it was with the mandatory restrictions.

Water does not exist in isolation naturally, and it does not work in isolation in human communities. Our use of water is tied closely to our overall productivity, and a key part of this is the link between our water use and our energy use. At a recent COAG skills acquisition action group conference, one expert paper estimated that in commercial buildings around 76 per cent of energy use is connected to plumbing. It also quoted data from Melbourne Water which indicates that 4.4 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions are produced for each megalitre of water we use—2.2 tonnes of this comes from the delivery process and 1.8 tonnes from the treatment and disposal process.

It can be all too easy to forget how much energy is needed to provide our water, but we must not forget. These figures mean that, for Melbourne, with a population of 3.7 million, over 580,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases are produced just to meet annual water demand levels. Plumbing industry estimates suggest that improving our plumbing offers water and energy savings of up to 40 per cent. In direct financial terms alone, these water and energy supply savings are impressive. Even more valuable, however, are the indirect benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions and a reduced need for new supply infrastructure, including power generation and water treatment facilities, as well as supply networks.

My years in the plumbing industry have long convinced me that, in general, our water utilities are seriously underperforming in leakage prevention in the water distribution infrastructure. Although hard data on quantities is difficult to come by on this, as it is largely ignored, reducing our water use will inevitably also reduce the proportion of high-quality water we are losing through system leakage and thereby providing another add-on benefit. Similarly, with the retrofit of toilets—a lot of old toilets are consistently leaking—significant water savings are to be made there as well.

Perhaps most valuable of all is that by doing this we would make a very clear national statement of priorities. We would be demonstrating and communicating unequivocally that increasing our water efficiency is a major national priority and a responsibility in which all Australians share. We would be investing cultural change in a permanent new mind-set that says: ‘Water is precious. It’s the lifeblood of all Australians. Indeed, it’s the lifeblood of all humans and animals. It’s too important to waste or take for granted.’

Together these benefits also offer another advantage of this approach: reducing our water demand would give us breathing space to make wise decisions about other water options such as desalination plants. It would give us the luxury of time and perspective within which we could have sensible, informed public debate, based on sound research, about what path we want to follow in the future.

At the moment, almost wherever you look in our nation, we seem to be rushing into intensive capital works projects that do not address the underlying program of inefficiency in the way we use our water. Even if we built 100 desalination plants and ran pipes from 100 aquifers, this would never be enough without getting water efficiency under control. All we would do is spend a great deal of money to postpone facing up to changing our ways. I suggest that changing our toilet technology is a very palatable and easy way to change our ways.

There is no silver bullet for our water challenges. Most utilities are taking a diversified approach, for risk management as well as cost control reasons. This is all well and good but water is a national problem and, if we are serious about making progress, we need national approaches like the WELS initiative and an intergovernmental retrofit project. It would need meaningful commitment by the Commonwealth as well as state, territory and local governments. Ideally, it would also support greater uptake of grey water technology as the safest, cheapest form of waste water reuse. (Extension of time granted) As a nation, and as individuals, we can do so much more. I have already cited Copenhagen’s daily consumption rate of only 125 litres per capita, but I should also note that it plans to reduce this to 110 litres by 2010. Melbourne, by comparison, has a consumption of 328 litres per person, per day and its 2010 goal is only to reduce this to 306 litres.

To return to those facts I started my speech with, the most sobering one of all is that 40 per cent of the world’s population, or around 2.4 billion human beings, do not yet have decent sanitation. Meanwhile, we in Australia are allowing billions of litres of water to flush away. This water is better quality than that which most of our fellow human beings ever get to drink and we needlessly flush it away down toilets that should have been decommissioned and recycled years ago. So I say to all members of parliament and our fellow Australians that we can and should expect more of ourselves. We have no excuses and plenty of good reasons.

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