Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

recognises the vital importance of the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system for Sydney’s population and the New South Wales economy;

(2)

expresses its concern at the degradation of the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment and the poor health of the river;

(3)

recognises that the Hawkesbury-Nepean bears the brunt of the State Government’s failure to adequately plan for Sydney’s water needs; and

(4)

calls on the New South Wales Government as a matter of urgency to address the issues facing the health of the Hawkesbury-Nepean river.

The Hawkesbury-Nepean river system is arguably Australia’s most important river system. Its 22,000 square kilometre catchment area generates drinking water for almost five million Australian people. It generates 70 per cent of the goods and services produced in New South Wales and its horticultural and agricultural produce amounts to some $1 billion a year. It also provides a water playground for Western Sydney, itself generating probably $100 million worth of tourism expenditure and, in the broader catchment, several hundred million dollars worth a year. Yet, sadly, the Hawkesbury-Nepean river is in a very fragile state, suffering from low environmental flows and excessively high nutrient levels. Some 50 per cent to 80 per cent of the flow in the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system in times of low flow is treated effluent from the large number of STPs in the upper parts of the catchment, producing some hundred megalitres a day of treated effluent into the system. The manifestations of this are in the large outbreaks of weed that we see. A couple of years ago, there was a terrible outbreak of Salvinia molesta and, more recently, Agraria and algal blooms are seen from time to time in the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system.

Sadly, the Hawkesbury-Nepean has suffered from years of neglect by the state Labor government. In 2001 we saw the abolition of the Hawkesbury Nepean Catchment Management Authority, which had been established by the Greiner government some years before. That catchment management authority very effectively coordinated the activities of a large number of community organisations focused on improving qualities of land management, riparian management and so on that affected the quality of the Hawkesbury River system.

In 2004 we saw the scrapping by the state government of core funding for the local government advisory group consisting of eight councils that together generated several million dollars a year in funding for local hands-on projects that again improved the quality of parts of that catchment. In 2004 we also saw the axing of the recreational water assessment monitoring program which, in my electorate alone, monitored eight sites frequently throughout summer to check the health of the water in the Hawkesbury-Nepean and some of its tributaries. It monitored the safety of water for recreational users.

So on one hand we have seen the neglect of issues affecting the health of the river and on the other the removal in 2004 of the ability to monitor the health of the river and the quality of the water—to the detriment of recreational water users: waterskiers, boaters and swimmers in the river. If you were cynical you might argue that it was a deliberate attempt to conceal from river users the effects of the removal of those other programs that actually were instrumental in trying to improve the quality of health in the river.

Then in May last year we saw the cutting of the environmental flows out of Warragamba Dam by 50 per cent. I know that was in response to the drought, and for emergency reasons perhaps that had to be done. But, if there had been serious long-term planning to address Sydney’s water needs, that desperate measure may have been avoidable. The cutting of environmental flows by 50 per cent has had serious downstream effects in the Hawkesbury River.

This is the point: the failure of the government to adequately plan for Sydney’s water needs has had a serious effect downstream, affecting residents all along the Hawkesbury River. The delay in completing the formal water plan for the Sydney region that is part of the state government’s responsibility as part of the National Water Initiative, to which it is a signatory, is indicative of its failure in this regard. There are a number of short-term, stopgap measures that we have seen. As I said, there has been the government’s decision to cut the environmental flows by half. There has been the decision to pump deeper into the Warragamba Dam. That might help in the short term, but it is not a sustainable solution. The desalination fiasco, which cost tens of millions of dollars, has come up with no solution at all. And now there is the decision to pump from the Shoalhaven.

The point is this: the state government, instead of undertaking a series of stopgap, headline measures to put bandaids on the problem, needs to seriously address the water demand and the water supply in Sydney and seriously undertake recycling programs— (Time expired)

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