Page 1619 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 2 June 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
important climate change plans. As I have noted before in this place, we still have seen no action by the government on the 10-year review of the Climate Act, and no call for public input. On this, the Canberra Liberals and the Canberra community are still waiting for leadership from the Greens leader and minister responsible for emissions reduction.
Australians are increasingly aware of the need to deal with climate change and the effects of climate change. As Ms Clay remarked, we saw these effects during the summer bushfires, with great damage to Canberra and places that Canberrans know well—the Namadgi National Park and Tidbinbilla. It is not only city folk who are concerned about our changing environment. People living in regional centres and country towns also take these matters seriously. Naturally, they are also concerned about jobs and ensuring that government-led actions to reduce carbon emissions do not cost them and their families their livelihoods.
The fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty has not been endorsed by any major state or national legislature around the world. The only council in Australia to adopt the treaty is the inner Melbourne city of Moreland, where the 11-member council has a majority Greens-Labor membership. Internationally, the highest-level endorsement has been from local governments and smaller areas like the city of Los Angeles and the city of Barcelona. In Los Angeles electricity prices are 53 per cent higher than the US nation-wide average, while Barcelona has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe.
As I have said, the Canberra Liberals support action on climate change and want to work cooperatively with the ACT community to reduce our emissions and make changes to deal with the current and future impacts of climate change in our region. This motion could be seen as a distraction by the government to take attention away from the lack of action in some areas on climate change. For example, as I mentioned earlier, the minister appears to have forgotten to establish a review of the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act. The minister’s development of the current climate change strategy was late, and he did not liaise with all parties in the Assembly to seek broad consensus to deal with what is supposed to be a shared problem. The minister says that the next strategy is due one year after the next Assembly election and it is something for the next government to develop, even though the last one took three years to develop.
If the ACT Greens really wanted to do something about fossil fuels, why wouldn’t they have done more about replacing fossil fuels in the ACT government fleet? In late April, Auditor-General Michael Harris described the government’s failure to include sufficient charging infrastructure in the new ACT government buildings in Dickson and Civic as a missed opportunity. And he warned that a lack of electric vehicle charging stations in the ACT may hamper the public sector adopting a zero-emissions vehicle fleet, with public servants rightfully concerned that they will be unable to charge their vehicles.
If the ACT Greens really wanted to do something about fossil fuels, why have they supported the brand new gas-fuelled government office on London Circuit, as they know how to build electric buildings like the one in Dickson, which uses only
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video