Well thank you very much. The Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, the Mayor of the City of Gold Coast, Ron Clarke, my parliamentary colleagues Steven Ciobo, the Member for Moncrieff, and Margaret May, the Member for McPherson, ladies and gentlemen. It is an exciting announcement, not only because it's announcing a Commonwealth contribution in partnership with the Government of Queensland of a project that will involve the largest ever attempted pressure reduction programme of the water supply of a water utility anywhere in Australia, and it is in that sense a first, but this is also an occasion for me to announce, as well as the project that will greatly assist the people of the City of the Gold Coast, but also to announce two other projects also in partnership with the Queensland Government - projects which are important to the water supply and water management needs of other parts of Queensland.
The first of those will involve a Federal Government contribution of $29 million towards the $86 million cost of the Mackay waste water recycling project, and also a smaller amount for a feasibility study, once again in partnership with the Queensland Government to tackle some of the ground water availability problems of Bundaberg. Now these three projects - one of them here on the Gold Coast, one of them far north in Mackay, and another not too far from here in Bundaberg - they all address in a very practical way the challenge that all governments in this country have in relation to water, which I have described as the great conservation challenge of our age. As we meet here, as we speak, large parts of Australia are gripped by a worsening drought, and tomorrow I will visit some of the worst drought affected areas of western New South Wales to find out first hand the suffering of so many of our fellow Australians, who through no fault of their own are in the grip - in some cases the fourth year - of a drought that has denied them the opportunity to plant a winter crop.
That reminds all of us, whether we live in the cities or in the country or in regional Australia, that we have a responsibility to work together and to solve these problems, and I particularly welcome the fact that this is a partnership between the three levels of government - a partnership between the Federal Government, the Queensland Government, and it delivers on a project that's very important to the Gold Coast City Council. And these three projects, particularly the Gold Coast one which will save 7 to 10 gigalitres per annum, it will be seek through pressure management to better conserve and utilise the water supply, and projects of this kind dotted around Australia over a number of years can make an enormous difference. And this has been funded out of a $2 billion National Water Trust that the Federal Government has established, and the aim of this Trust is to work with State governments, local government bodies, and in some cases private enterprise consortia, and in other cases on our own initiative, to fund projects which in an a practical way address the water conservation needs of this country.
Australia will never return to an age where we carelessly and wastefully wash the car in the backyard on a Sunday morning thinking that water was available in a never-ending supply. Those days are gone, and I think all of us have been forcefully reminded of that through the water restrictions of the major cities and, even far more painfully, the suffering of our fellow Australians in country areas of our nation. So I'm very pleased indeed to be associated with this project. I want to thank the authorities of the Gold Coast City Council, and I also want to thank the Premier of Queensland. Australians want their problems solved. They want their problems solved by governments working together. They don't quite mind in what combination, or who does what, as long as it gets done. Australians are very pragmatic people and this is an example of governments working together with a resolve to fix a problem, and I hope it is duplicated, replicated all around Australia over the years ahead.
Thank you very much.
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