Dr Jim Gill informed the audience that it was up to them (the speakers) to train the Plumbers and consumers of Australia on how to save water. I found it novel that these speakers with no qualifications in the required art of plumbing are able to make such a profound statement. I am not sure how qualifications in Horticultural Science, Bachelors in Civil Engineering, Diploma in Natural Resources Law or a past Commissioner of Railways would enable one to speak so profoundly on such a subject. 
However speak and advise they did while I was at a complete loss of how this lecture was going to contribute to the conservation of our water supplies, especially in Western Australia. For anyone not familiar with the topography of Perth, Western Australia, we are blessed with a natural sand plain, and each year, the gigalitres of treated waste water we discharged into the ocean is approximately the gigolitres we consume in our gardens. Strange, we have had the technology to retreat wastewater for secondary use now for some 40 years or more, we have reserves well placed to cater for these small, odourless inexpensive plants in these numerous recreational reserves which exist in our ever increasing suburban sprawl, yet we have not acted. Point of use, for secondary treatment and sale of recycled water is only now being fully appreciated.
I would have thought that those knowledgable in the required arts of water conservation, knowing our population would continually increase, would have developed strategies more dependant on the sustainable use of water, rather than rainfall.
If all our refuse tips had been lined, pollutants from entering our ground water supplies policed some 40 years ago, then I wonder if I would have attended such a lecture on "our drying climate". I would have thought and in particularly in Western Australia, Mundaring Weir our main dam would have been overflowing nearly each and every other year. The immense value of this resource to flush our rivers while recharging our ground water would have made an immeasurable contribution in the conservation of our water supplies.
So how has plumbing or the application of plumbing products in the conservation of our water supplies come to such a situation, that those with none of the required arts, lecture those qualified in the required arts on matters of the weather.
While I may be well trained in the required arts and have integrated knowledge that the drinking of our own waste is technically completely safe. I remain firmly of the view that it is currently politically impossible for any Government or utility to impose the practice on the Australian public, which has been supported by the recent referendum in Toowoomba, Queensland.
