Thank you Cedric Bryant. Thank you ActewAGL. No thank you Ted Quinlan.
I am pondering whether to install a rainwater tank. ActewAGL gets kudos for its splendid website. You can log on to your account and see how much water you have used every quarter for the past 10 years. I use about 400 kilolitres (400,000 litres) a year. The consumption for the summer quarters indicates that half my consumption goes on the garden. That is fairly typical in the ACT.
In the 1999-00 financial year, I installed an underground sprinkler system and was talking to Cedric Bryant about it. He told me I was grossly over-watering. That year’s consumption was 750 kilolitres – 350 kilolitres of which was wasted. Cedric has saved me a lot of money. You need only water one a week, particularly for a native garden.
So in the face of Stage Three water restrictions, is a rainwater tank worthwhile?
ActewAGL charges 43 cents a kilolitre for the first 175 kilolitres and $1.05 per kilolitre after that.
So I am paying roughly $100 a year to water the garden with 200 kilolitres of water a year – that is for a four-hour soaking a week.
So we could collect the water from the roof into a tank and via a pump through the in-ground sprinkler system on to the garden and save $100 a year?
What size tank is needed?
Please pardon the rough figures, but they will still reveal a reasonable picture. Average rainfall in Canberra is 620mm a year. Assume a 200 square metre roof. That is 124 cubic metres a year, or 124 kilolitres of water. That is not enough to water the garden. And we have not allowed for evaporation. At best we are going to save about $60 worth of water, assuming we collect and use all of the water without any overflow.
You would not have to collect a year’s worth of water in one tank because you would be using it and the rain would top it up. If the rain were even through the year you might need only two weeks’ worth of watering in the tank – about 10 kilolitres. But because Canberra has such a hot, dry summer and wet springs and autumns you would need to store more than double that, or about 20 per cent of total annual rainfall at any one time. It means a 25,000 litre tank.
That tank will cost $1900 for metal to $2300 for poly with various fittings. Add $400 for a pump and other bits and pieces. There is no change out of $2500. More like $3000 if you want something to last. But if the tank is more than 17,000 litres you need Planning Authority approval. More cost. You need a licensed plumber to put a valve on to prevent backwash into the town system. More cost.
You get a rebate of $500.
Let’s use a conservative $2400 cost. At $60 saving a year, it will take you 40 years to recoup – assuming the cost of water will rise more than enough to account for lost interest on your outlay.
Does not sound like a promising economic proposition – at least not in an ordinary year.
But next summer is different. Stage One and Stage Two water restrictions have been a breeze. It has only been a question of WHEN you can turn on the sprinklers, not WHETHER you can turn them on.
Under Stage Three, you can only water with a hand-held hose and only between the hours when sensible people are hand-holding a glass of chardonnay. Let’s face it, many valuable plants are going to die. And even if they’re saved, the time hand holding the hose is valuable.
I am still pondering the tank at $2400.
Better still, what if all 100,000 Canberra households pondered the $2400. If 100,000 households did this it would run to $240 million dollars. Perhaps they could all gang together and benefit from the economies of scale by building a giant rainwater tank. It’s called a dam. And it is a steal at $200 million.
DOT – DOT — DOT
There is plenty of money for a dam, or at least to lift the rebate on tanks, judging by stamp duty revenue. It has nearly trebled in the past five years. The Housing Industry Association and Real Estate Institute have been campaigning this week about property taxes.
The HIA is appalled at taxation on taxation – particularly stamp duty on the GST component of new homes. But it is falling on deaf ears.
In the March quarter in the ACT we had a significant development.
New stamp-duty rates applied in the ACT from July 1, 2002. When they were announced by Treasurer Ted Quinlan in the previous Budget, he said, “From 1 July 2002, the rates of duty on conveyancing will increase to generally match the combined mortgage duty and conveyances duty imposed in NSW and other jurisdictions. The new rates will have minimal impacts on properties at or below average ACT house prices.”
And the Budget papers said, “The new rate scales have been formulated to minimise the impact on properties at or below average ACT house prices.”
Events show the statements to be worthless. In the March quarter the median house price in Canberra hit $265,000. Under the old scale this would have attracted stamp duty of $7785. Under the new scale it attracts duty of $8100. In short, Quinlan has put the duty up on the average home.
The overall trend is ever upwards. In 1998, the median house price was $150,000. It attracted stamp duty of $3765, compared to the present duty of $8100 on the median house.
The duty rate is not adjusted for inflation and people move into higher brackets as property prices increase. The increase in the marginal rate at the top end (over $1 million) was from 5 per cent to 6.75 per cent. For houses over $500,000 it went up to 5.75 per cent. It won’t be long before the median price hits that level.
ACT REI chief executive Ken Roberts has called for an inquiry in property taxes.
The high rate puts a major impediment on people moving to more suitable housing and so causes inefficiency in the allocation of society’s resources. High narrowly based taxes are counter-productive.