Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill amends the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Act 2005. It allows the setting of additional criteria for registration of a product under the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Scheme. To understand the context of the proposed changes I will first give an overview of the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Scheme (known as the WELS Scheme).

The scheme was established by the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Act 2005 and is part of the COAG agreed National Water Initiative. The WELS Scheme is also supported by complementary state and territory legislation to ensure comprehensive national coverage.

The WELS scheme’s objectives are to:

• Conserve water supplies by reducing water consumption;
• Provide information for purchasers of water-use and water-saving products; and
• Promote the adoption of efficient and effective water-use and water saving technologies.

The scheme aims to achieve these objectives by requiring that all water using products specified under the scheme are registered and labelled to indicate their assessed water efficiency when offered for sale. The labels indicate the water efficiency rating of a product, on a scale from zero to six stars, with six stars being for the most efficient products. The labels inform purchasing decisions in the same way as energy rating labels on electrical appliances.

The minister determines which products are WELS products, and the standard to be met by them. I will now briefly explain the origins and intent of this bill.

While plumbing products included under the WELS determination are subject to the WELS Scheme, these plumbing products are also subject to the WaterMark certification scheme which operates under normal state and territory plumbing regulation.

WaterMark testing and certification is intended to ensure that products are fit for use and will not threaten the safety of the reticulated water supply. WaterMark certification is required before a plumbing product can be legally installed, while WELS registration and labelling is required before a WELS product can be legally sold.

This regulatory difference means that in some cases consumers can unknowingly purchase plumbing products that, while legally available, are not able to be legally installed. In addition, the presence of WELS labels on products which are not WaterMark certified may be misconstrued by consumers as suggesting that the products are broadly government endorsed and are fit for use. The proposed change to the scheme will remove this potential source of discredit to the WELS Scheme.

In 2007, following an extensive public inquiry, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage recommended in its report Managing the flow: regulating plumbing product quality in Australia that the Australian government:

… make the necessary legislative changes to establish WaterMark Certification as a prerequisite for compliance with the Water Efficiency Labelling Standards Scheme.

The government agreed in principle, subject to further examination as to how the recommendation could be most efficiently and effectively implemented. The government also wished to avoid inappropriately expanding the Australian government’s responsibilities relating to plumbing regulation. Following subsequent examination of these issues, I and the government are satisfied that the committee’s objectives can be achieved through this proposal.

The proposed amendment will introduce a general provision enabling additional plumbing requirements, such as those established by the states and territories, to be included in the WELS Scheme by ministerial determination.

Once the bill is enacted, a determination made under that provision will make WaterMark certification a prerequisite for all plumbing products required to be registered under the WELS Act.

The industry strongly supports this amendment, which will provide positive outcomes for consumers and plumbers, with only minimal impacts on the requirements for WELS registrants. I commend the bill to the House.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In addressing the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Amendment Bill 2010 [2011] I want to put the issue of water management into a broader context. The coalition has a proud role in having been the authors, the progenitors, and I was fortunate enough to have had a role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage at the time of the creation, development and passage of this bill. This bill and the notion of urban water efficiency fit into the three-taps approach which we take to water conservation and management in Australia.

The first of those taps is in relation to water efficiency. Water efficiency can be either urban—mostly the subject of this bill—or rural. I will deal with those two elements in a minute. The second of the taps is in relation to stormwater reuse and recycling. The third is in relation to the capture, management and harvesting of water in times of flood so as to ration that water for use in times of drought and to mitigate floods. Those three taps—water efficiency, stormwater capture and recycling and the potential for new dams—represent the essence and the heart of what we want to achieve with water conservation and management in Australia through Commonwealth action. The first of those goes to the heart of this bill.

This bill relates to water efficiency labelling and standards. In 2005, the coalition created the world’s first national Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Scheme, the WELS Scheme. That dealt with water efficiency labels on shower heads, washing machines, toilets, dishwashers, urinals and taps. These labels give consumers a relatively easy-to-understand set of star ratings and water consumption information on the water efficiency of different products. The scheme has been widely supported through industry, though some view that the scheme has not been sufficiently stringent in dealing with noncompliant products—and I understand that. The 2007 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage review of plumbing standards found that the committee ‘shared HIA’s optimistic view that the WELS Scheme is an important step towards a nationally consistent water product labelling scheme’.

In addition, the WaterMark certification is a trademark owned by Standards Australia. Licensed plumbers are generally obligated to install only plumbing equipment which has WaterMark certification. We recognise that the overlap between the WELS Scheme and the WaterMark certification has caused some inconsistencies, and this bill seeks to overcome that problem by allowing the minister to make a requirement for the WELS registration to have WaterMark certification, simplifies the matter by ending the duplication problem and there is widespread support for it. This was a recommendation of the 2007 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage review of plumbing standards. In particular, Dr Mal Washer, the member for Moore, on our side has been instrumental in bringing these ideas to the fore, ensuring that they are on the public record and that there is generally bipartisan support. I acknowledge his role and accept that this is an area of common action with the government.

In the context of our three-taps approach, I note that, whereas there is strong agreement on this bill, there is deep disappointment that the national replumbing of rural Australia, which was championed with $5.7 billion under the previous government, has largely ossified under the current regime. There has been delay, denial and rejection of serious attempts to upgrade Australia’s irrigation infrastructure with potentially 600 or 700 billion litres of water savings per annum going begging as a result, whether for the Murray irrigation area, Coleambally, the farmers of Bourke or the farmers of the Murray-Darling Basin region of southern Queensland. There are areas throughout the Murray-Darling Basin where farmers have put together proposals which have been denied. In particular—and the member for Farrer is here—the Menindee Lakes project has been waiting for three years to begin. It was ready, it was on the table and it should have been upgraded and begun.

Having said that leads me to the second of the areas which constitute our three taps, and that is stormwater harvesting and recycling. Both of these are areas primarily of state jurisdiction, but for which there needs to be Commonwealth leadership. There has been very little done in South Australia, which has enormous stormwater harvesting potential, as is the case in Victoria.

We then move to the recycling component of that, and that is an element of personal passion. Whether it is the Gunnamatta outfall, which has recently been the subject of a commitment to close by the new Baillieu government in Victoria, or the hundreds of outfalls around Australia, this is a wasted resource. It is a source of pollution, and this is the moment in history when we should be gathering that water, recycling it and using it for industry and agriculture rather than using drinking water when a viable alternative is available.

Finally, we capture our water in dams. Our population has almost doubled since we had any serious work on dams over 35 years ago. Certainly on the eastern seaboard there has not been a major new dam in over 20 years, and we have had significant population growth. We need to look carefully at those places which could feasibly and environmentally be seen as places for capturing and storing water. The most likely option is the expansion of existing dam sites. That is a sensible way to go, and allows us to capture water in times of flood, to mitigate those flood actions—where possible—and to use that water in times of scarcity. That is what has always happened; it is what should happen and we should not be afraid of addressing an issue which is about ensuring that we have the adequate supply of water for the population that is real and in place in Australia today.

Having said that, we support this bill; we thank the government for their cooperation and we will offer it safe and swift passage.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Amendment Bill 2010 amends the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Act 2005. It allows the setting of additional criteria for registration of a product under the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Scheme.

The scheme was established by the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Act 2005 and is part of the COAG agreed National Water Initiative. The WELS scheme is also supported by comprehensive state and territory legislation to ensure national coverage.

The WELS scheme’s objectives are to conserve water supplies by reducing water consumption, to provide information for purchasers of water use and water-saving products and to promote the adoption of efficient and effective water use and water-saving technologies. They are pretty good aims and objectives. The scheme aims to achieve these objectives by requiring that all water-using products specified under the scheme are registered and labelled to indicate their assessed water efficiency when offered for sale. The labels indicate the water efficiency rating of a product, on a scale from zero to six stars, with six stars being for the most efficient products.

The labels inform purchasing decisions in the same way as energy-rating labels on electrical appliances. Once enacted it is intended that the minister will determine the WaterMark Certification which will be required for the WELS registration. This will implement recommendation 2 of the House of Representatives inquiry report, Managing the flow: regulating plumbing product quality. The bill’s potential impact, however, is not limited to this proposed action.

Water conservation is becoming much easier with a number of gadgets—if I can use that term—coming onto the market as people try to save water as there is now a price on water use. It is certainly getting people to focus on how much water they use and to find products which can assist them. In fact, a number of people have brought pieces of equipment to my office to show what can be done to reduce water usage, particularly in our greywater systems.

For instance, a new idea was brought to me by Toby Meredith, who used to be one of my constituents and who has now moved into Hobart. He has been working with friends, David Fisher and Quentin Davenport, who invented the Drainwave. You may remember seeing them on The New Inventors on 18 November in 2009. They realised that although the installation of low-flow toilets has greatly reduced our water consumption, this positive outcome has had an unintended consequence: increasingly damaging our sewerage system, which is designed for significantly higher flush volumes.

This new idea, as I said, is called Drainwave, and it allows world’s best practice in flow fixtures to be installed without having any detrimental effect on plumbing systems. Using two inlet ports, the Drainwave collects greywater from general household use—sink, shower, washing machine et cetera—and combines this outside the house with blackwater from the toilet. When the water reaches 9.5 litres, the Drainwave self-activates to release a batch of water, which surges through the pipe network to the main sewer line to minimise blockages. The invention repeats the process between 16 and 34 times a day per person. It is an ingenious way of saving water, while making sure there are no blockages.

That is just one idea, and there are many others coming through to help people save water domestically. It is important that there are some regulations so as to know what exactly has been approved, for what use and to ensure the ideas perform in the way that they are supposed to and consumers get what they are paying for. The bill will help us achieve those goals. It would be good to see local government ensure that they start being more proactive in their water measurements. I know that there are some councils in Tasmania that still do not have water meters attached to their systems. Though the councils were the ones that failed to put those meters in place, there are now three authorities in the state which have to take over that work. It is hard to get the big picture of water use in different catchments and different cities without having some uniform measurements of water. We are still grappling with this in our country. We still need to do this, and there are all sorts of arguments being used as to why we should not. You only have to read the Mercury newspaper over the last couple of months to see that.

There are systems being developed to not only measure precipitation, water flows and domestic and industrial water use; there are also models one can use to measure different water uses and their runoffs, how much gets retained and how much is returned to the watertable. During the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Primary Industry and Resources inquiry into farming the future, we had representation from the Murray Irrigators Support Group regarding an invention by John Padman, called the ‘Padman Stop’, which is a 100 per cent watertight control structure used in conjunction with a fast watering system, also called low-energy irrigation, developed by the same inventor. As the report said, in the trial sites it was demonstrated that it is possible to control water application fairly accurately onto the bay, where it flows, and to achieve the highest efficiency possible. More research is being undertaken on application rates and frequency of irrigation. These sorts of schemes are vital knowledge that we need if we are to deal with the climate change scenarios that we have had presented to us.

These days you cannot just build a dam on a farm and think you have water storage. There are many aspects of water saving. They may include drip irrigation, measurement of soil water flows and even the takeup of water by different crops. So when we are considering these aspects of water savings, there must be an overall strategy to help all the different users of water to save or reuse the water they are allocated. There are many opportunities in this area, and into the future we must make sure that we have the proper processes and that people know what they are getting for their money. During the inspections of the committee, it was very interesting to note the amount of work going on in trying to minimise the effects of climate change, possible future droughts and any other natural or man-made changes to our lifestyles. We need to continue to reduce the amount of water we use for production or we will have to increase production with less water—great challenges for us as a nation. I am sure that we can get there by being innovative and using the intellects and the capacities that we have in our nation.

This legislation allows many of these inventions and new ideas to be assessed properly and given some efficiency tag that will allow inventions to gain value by being properly assessed for their efficiency. I support the bill.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to contribute to this debate on the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Amendment Bill 2010. There is probably no bigger demand in Australia than for water use efficiency, whether it is a case of urban consumption or food production. Of course, we also use an enormous amount of water in our mining activity, and where would we be without some of our freshwater fishing? The issue in Australia, as we face some of the biggest floods in European history in this country, is that we have an overabundance of water in some parts of the country from time to time but scarcity of water is in fact usually the order of the day in the most populated parts of the country. Therefore, one of the first things our pioneers set out to do was to make sure that there was enough water secured in various reservoirs and dams to tide us over when there was less rainfall. Australia therefore has, per capita, some of the highest levels of water stored in the world.

This particular bill is a very well-aimed attempt to make sure that a consumer can choose a product that they can be quite comfortable with in terms of its level of water consumption, whether it is a water-saving product or a water guzzler. However, there have been some complications over the years in trying to make sure the consumer has good information about the product. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage, which met in 2007, had an extensive public inquiry and determined that there needed to be necessary changes to establish watermark certification as a prerequisite for compliance with the WELS scheme. WELS, of course, is named for Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards.

There had been a complication where one of these means of certification was confused with the other, so we now have a situation where watermark testing and certification—while it is intended to ensure that products are fit for use and will not threaten the safety of the reticulated water supply—are required before a plumbing product can be legally installed, while WELS registration and labelling is required before a WELS product can be legally sold. This regulatory difference means that in some cases consumers can unknowingly purchase plumbing products that, while legally available, are not able to be legally installed. The proposed changes to this scheme remove this potential source of confusion and potential discrediting of the WELS scheme, so it is a sensible move to sort things out and let the consumer be as fully informed as they need to be. I need to say, though, that we need to extend this capacity for consumers to understand the water savings of a product they buy.

Debate interrupted.