Senator BROWN(10.44 a.m.) —I have put my concern to the committee. I have already seen one newspaper report—in the Canberra Times —flagging an assessment by Mr Costello that a restoration of a natural flow to the Snowy River could be detrimental to the cost of sale of the Snowy Mountains scheme of some $913 million.

I know what is going to happen; I have seen this happen before. We are going to get an inquiry which says you cannot restore the natural flow because it is going to cost X hundreds of millions of dollars. It is the great escape clause: we will not do anything about the environment. I am saying that, if you are taking a fair-handed attitude to this, the alternative figure must come up. That is the opportunity lost by not having the natural flow of the Snowy River downstream of Jindabyne, and that cost must be paid by the Snowy Mountains scheme.

That cost has to be paid because otherwise you have got this blinkered view that you use the cost of keeping environmental excellence as a reason for not doing anything about the environment, but you do not use the cost of not doing anything about the environment as an argument for restoring the environment. It is a one-way thing. I am saying be even-handed about it. This inquiry will be a failure if it does not assess the opportunity lost in not restoring the natural flow of the Snowy River. I think the minister might have difficulty with that, but I will be putting it to the inquiry that that assessment be done.

I would like to know—if the New South Wales legal jurisdiction is the one under which the corporation will operate, and the minister has already indicated that that is so—what legal rights residents of other states, and clearly Victoria is one of those in mind, will have to take action at any time in the next 125 years. What if the good people of Orbost decide that they want to take action because of the cost to them of having a much dimin ished Snowy River flowing through their municipality? How do they take such legal action? Where is their avenue for redress of the loss that they have accrued since 1949? Even if there is not that loss to be taken into account, what of the continuing loss from the date of corporatisation and/or privatisation of the scheme?