Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Thursday, the 4th of October, I had the pleasure of attending the announcement of the stormwater harvesting and reuse project, a $10.6 million joint initiative between the federal government and the Brisbane City Council, at Downey Park, Windsor—the home of Queensland netball and basketball. The member for Griffith was in attendance and it was an absolutely wonderful display of bipartisan cooperation. I want to thank my LNP colleagues, Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk and Councillor Vicki Howard, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water, Senator the Hon. Don Farrell, for their cooperation.

This project will save the equivalent of 74 Olympic sized swimming pools of water each year and is an innovative way to keep Brisbane a clean and green city. In total, the project will save more than 185 megalitres of water per year and will deliver a net economic benefit to the city in the order of $13.1 million over the next 25 years. The Downey Park precinct component of the project in the electorate of Brisbane will deliver water savings of 66.5 megalitres per year. I want to thank the member for Griffith for not seeking to hijack the launch—as he did at the opening of the Brisbane Common Ground project on 29 August this year—with any further sideshow antics and media pitching for lost job opportunities. This project will be rolled out to seven sites across Brisbane following community consultation regarding the final designs, with all systems to be fully operational by 2016. (Time expired)