Thursday, 31 October 2019

 Ms NEVILLE (Bellarine—Minister for Water, Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11:20): I rise to inform the house about what the government is doing to secure water security across the state. We are doing it through a massive water infrastructure build, expanding the water grid, modernising our irrigation infrastructure and augmenting Melbourne’s water supply through the desalination plant. We are getting on with the Connections Project, the Macalister irrigation district, the South Gippsland pipeline, Werribee and Bacchus Marsh, Mitiamo, the Geelong–Melbourne pipeline, the south-west Loddon pipeline, east Grampians, desalination, Wimmera–Mallee pipeline extensions and the Sunraysia modernisation.

That is 11 vital water infrastructure projects. When it comes to desal we are securing Melbourne’s water supply, which is absolutely critical, and we know that current storages with the desal added are going up an extra 11 per cent in our storages. Every one of those percentage points is vital because over the last period rainfall is 11 per cent below average. Our desal orders are an investment in the future and that is why we were also calling on Victorians to look at Target 155. We know by reducing our water use we can bring it down by over 11 gigalitres of water.

We know that others, however, are taking other suggestions about how we deal with this. Recently we have had some discussion around dams. There are suggestions of new dams. Let us have a look at them: a Maribyrnong dam, which we know would yield just 11 gigalitres per year and flood communities; Dewing Creek in the Geelong region, just 2 to 2.5 gigalitres, at an enormous cost of $100 million; but the outstanding one is the Big Buffalo dam in the north-east, a project that was tested and rejected—including by those opposite—and if you have a look at the sustainable water strategy in 2008, they said it proves the point, declaring a dam would mean a:

… reduction in supplied demand for the Victorian Murray Water users by around 175 GL/year (11% of average usage).

We are delivering water security based on evidence, and that is working. We know the numbers behind our program and they stack up.