Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. Would the minister outline to the House the government’s commitment to water recycling? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for his question. Right around Australia the Howard government is promoting the innovative reuse and recycling of water. A particular focus is managed aquifer recharge, where stormwater or treated waste water can be returned to an aquifer for later extraction and use. The government has supported a number of innovative projects of this kind in several states. Last week, together with the Western Australian government, I announced the latest of these schemes: a $30 million managed aquifer recharge project at Beenyup in the electorate of Moore. When fully developed, the project could supply up to 10 per cent of Perth’s water supply.

The Labor Party’s commitment to recycling is somewhat different. In a speech earlier this week, the shadow minister for water recycled the coalition’s entire water policy on markets, water trading and pricing. In that very speech the shadow minister confirmed the Labor Party’s commitment to the Beenyup project that we had announced only four days before. The opposition leader goes beyond recycling. He has, as we know, very good sources of information in the Western Australian Labor Party and he learned of the pending Beenyup announcement from someone in the Western Australian government two days before the due date. So he promptly ‘precycled’ the same announcement, and of course the shadow water minister recycled it four days after that.

I invite the opposition to end its trick cycling and abandon this effort in recycling and ‘precycling’. I call on the opposition to stop the games, to stop running around the country front-running government announcements and just, unequivocally, commit to the leadership the government have shown and to the policies they and the Australian people know are right. I am talking about the $10 billion national plan for water security. This plan includes the assumption of Commonwealth control over the Murray-Darling Basin, which the member for Kingsford Smith said in this House a few weeks ago had always been Labor Party policy. We are still waiting for the policy document.

I call on the opposition to commit to the water plan, to commit to the $2 billion Australian government water fund, to commit to the $2 billion climate change strategy, and to commit to the $3 billion Natural Heritage Trust and the $1.5 billion Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund. Above all, I call on the opposition to allow the national interest rather than ideology to guide their energy policy and to keep all the low-emission options on the table so that we can make the right decisions to ensure that our energy policies are consistent with a low emissions future. If common sense and practical measures guide us in our considerations then nuclear power will be on the table, not struck off for ideological reasons.