Page 3805 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 22 November 2006
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We started the grey water mining at Southwell Park. We developed our APU, our aged person unit program, and built hundreds and hundreds of aged persons units. They were sustainable and they were adaptable. If it is river health that you are worried about, we put groins in the river to create the conditions that would allow native fish to spawn and restock the rivers. We did the bio-bin test in Chifley, which was then ignored by this government. We started the work to build the new Revolve facility and upgrade some of the work at the tip.
The Stromlo mini-hydro was under the former government. We introduced differential vehicle regos to make people with heavier, larger vehicles pay a little bit more. It was we who put land back into reserves, particularly in Jerrabomberra and O’Malley. We said, for instance, that Jerrabomberra, because of the number of different eco types there, would never be built on. The former government was the first jurisdiction to complete all its endangered species action plans and actually commence the review of them. We were the first government, first jurisdiction, to do that. We were the government that signed up to the packaging compact. We were the government that put in water legislation that legislated for environmental flows.
We were the government that started Greenfleet in the ACT, Second Hand Sunday, and put forward the rural policy package. We were the government that removed the majority of woody-weeds, willows, from our creeks so that the creeks could return to what they should be. We started Adopt-a-Road and we developed upgrades at Tidbinbilla and Namadgi visitor centres so that people could understand their environment better and their contribution. That was a tremendously solid period of achievement. And what was it followed by—five years of hot air and a discussion paper. That is all there was.
If you simply go back to some of the state of the territory reports, it is there—actions. One says that Environment ACT implemented the ACT firewood strategy, including education on the correct operation of wood heaters. Everything that we did had an educational component. Turn the page and it refers to ACT greenhouse gas emissions.
It will be interesting to see, when the government’s discussion paper is finally turned into a policy, whether or not this government will set itself targets as strong as we set, which were to stabilise ACT greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2008—two years away; it has wasted five years—and reduce emission levels by 20 per cent by 2018. So the test is on. The wood will be put to the government. Will it match that? Will it do better? And I bet you the answer is no, because we already know from the failed environment minister, the Chief Minister, who ignored his portfolio for the entire time that he had custody of it: “It is too expensive.”
Today it is the most significant issue facing the world, and the Chief Minister has got the answer: it is all carbon trading. One answer fits all: carbon trading will fix it. You heard it here; Jon Stanhope says so, so it must be true. But what we had in our greenhouse gas strategy were mini things that encompassed things like the use of more efficient heating systems, purchasing more energy from low-emission sources, reducing the use of private motor vehicles, capturing existing methane at landfills, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from government operations—and it just goes on. That was a solid period; what we do not have now is that solid period.
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