Page 1465 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 2021
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MR CAIN: Minister, what measures in the current strategy will make the most difference to our greenhouse gas emissions profile, putting aside the delivery of 100 per cent renewable energy?
MR RATTENBURY: As Mr Cain rightly touches on, the delivery of 100 per cent renewable electricity is the single largest measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It has been responsible for around 40 per cent of the ACT’s emissions reductions already—40 percentage points. In terms of the remaining measures, perhaps the best way to answer the question is that there is no single measure that will have such a large impact. That is why there are so many measures in the strategy. Each of them will deliver a bit. Those will vary. I am not able to provide a specific answer to Mr Cain’s question off the top of my head. I will have a look and see if I have any data on that. If I do, I will provide that on notice.
Health—diabetes
MR CAIN: My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, I refer to the Capital Chicks CANberra platform that was launched by Diabetes NSW & ACT in July 2020 and funded by your government. It already has had over 7,000 women engage with the platform but was recently unsuccessful in securing ongoing ACT Health funding. Minister, why have you failed to provide funding to this important initiative?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Cain for the question. I was counting down to two full sitting weeks without a question from the opposition, but I have been foiled at the last!
Mr Cain would probably be aware that Diabetes NSW & ACT received a one-off grant under the Healthy Canberra grants program—that is my recollection of the grants program—to establish the Capital Chicks CANberra program. It has indeed garnered a lot of people coming to it, with a lot of hits on its website and a lot of women engaging with it.
I recently met with Diabetes NSW & ACT to discuss this. At the time, no decision had been made about funding. I will go and check with the directorate, but I am not aware that they have been advised specifically that there will not be any further funding at this point in time.
It is true that the grant that they received was a specific time-limited grant that they applied for. It was specifically time limited. The intention is, for those grants programs, that if you establish something, it is supposed to be able to continue without ongoing government funding. That is the nature of grants programs overall. However, there have been some delays in the establishment of the Capital Chicks CANberra program. We recognise that it may take a bit longer to get to that ongoing sustainability without ACT government funding. If Diabetes NSW & ACT want to have another conversation with me about it, I will be very happy to have that conversation. They did not specifically indicate to me that they had been advised that they were not receiving funding—unless I have some correspondence that has not been drawn to my attention, which that I have not seen yet.
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