Page 452 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 June 1989
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provide the wood. We must ensure that we do not have delivery of wood coming hundreds of miles, as it does now, from well beyond Cootamundra, in the process burning large amounts of diesel - our fossil fuels - to get the wood into Canberra to be burnt in very inefficient heaters. All these things add to the greenhouse effect. We have to take responsibility for our environment, and we as an Assembly must think of the future for ourselves, for our children and for many further generations. Let it not be said in history that this first Assembly of the ACT was one of the assemblies that contributed to a disastrous environment, or disastrous world environment. Let it be said that this Assembly played a leading role in working towards a sustainable and balanced environment.
The issues of looking after the environment also go through to urban transport and planning. We need to encourage people into public transport; we need to ensure that when people are seeking to get to places they can do so by using as little energy as possible. In Canberra, we have had the foresight of the Y plan. We have also seen the over-development of Civic, which has required long trips and excessive use of energy. We need to look at our urban planning; we need to look at how our energy can be used positively. Our urban planning must include a situation where the proposed development at Gungahlin, for example, and the development at Tuggeranong are integrated as town centres so that people who live in the area can get transport very easily to the area.
That same Y plan providing a ceiling of 40,000 people in Civic - which has long gone, thanks to a very strong development lobby push - needs to be put in perspective. We encourage development, but if we are going to look after our environment we are going to ensure that that development goes on in the correct places so that the town centres can be close to where people live.
We need a positive attitude towards energy, particularly solar energy, and that can be used, for example, by siting our houses with our windows facing a few degrees north-north-west. By facing windows in that way we increase our use of passive solar energy. Solar energy panels are important and can assist us in this respect as well. It is also important, of course, for all houses to be insulated, and we should look at compulsory insulation.
We need an integrated approach that comes up with a balance between how we use our energy resources and how we can still retain our standard of living. That balanced approach will not come without consideration of all the factors that go into the way we live. We need to be a leader in this attitude and in legislation in this area. We need to play our part in the world scene.
We must ask ourselves what we will leave for our children. Will we leave our children an area with the results of the greenhouse effect, with unpredictable weather, huge storms?
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