Page 3915 - Week 12 - Thursday, 23 November 2006
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trees and shrubs, mostly in difficult conditions. The volunteers keep fronting up to events, motivated by a desire to do more than just talk about the environment. Toby also said that 2007 is set to be a real challenge for community volunteering in key areas such as the lower Cotter catchment to protect and preserve the future water quality of Canberra. Even more volunteers will be needed to get involved.
Volunteering with Greening Australia is a very practical response to environmental issues such as climate change, water quality and loss of biodiversity. It is socially rewarding and good fun. That is one reason that many volunteers keep coming back. I am sure that, like Mr Gentleman and I, other members here will want to get involved in Greening Australia. Members can do so by going to the Greening Australia website. I encourage members to do that and I congratulate Toby Jones and his dedicated team on the manner in which they coordinate these diverse programs.
Environment—government fleet
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (6.19): I want to raise briefly the issue that Mr Stanhope raised yesterday in his press release about his four-cylinder vehicle policy to stop the emission of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide and save thousands of dollars. Obviously, I commend the intent behind that policy, but I do want to raise a couple of issues in terms of the way that it is being implemented and the effect on public servants, particularly public servants with families. One of the issues I would like to address is the blunt four cylinders versus six cylinders rating. Mr Gentleman, being a car man, as opposed to the Chief Minister, might understand what I am talking about.
Let’s look at some of the issues. Obviously, there are many four-cylinder cars which rate much better concerning greenhouse emissions than six-cylinder cars but, if you look at the Australian government’s green vehicle guide, you will see that it has a three-star rating for cars such as the Ford Falcon Futura wagon, the VE and VZ Commodores and the Mitsubishi 380, which are all six-cylinder cars, and that there are many four-cylinder cars, such as the Holden Astra, the Honda Accord, the Honda CRV and the Honda Odyssey, which essentially have a three-star rating, the same as many of the Commodores and Falcons, and have a greenhouse rating of 5.5 and an air pollution rating of five out of 10. For the Commodore and Falcon models that I raised and the Mitsubishi 380 we are talking about the same ratings, a greenhouse rating of five and an air pollution rating of five.
The reason I raise this issue is that, because of this blunt instrument, we are having this cut-off at four cylinders, which in many cases will be good, but for those who need a bit more space, those with a few young kids, the family car is very important and the issues around safety are very important. The RACV and the NRMA have done some comprehensive studies of the relative safety of people movers versus big family cars, and the Commodores and the Falcons traditionally do much better in terms of safety than many of the people movers. In fact, to get to the people movers that have very good safety, you are talking about the very expensive people movers, ones in the $50,000 and $60,000 range.
The policy will be of concern to some of the public servants who will be affected by it, particularly the ones with families who are looking for a safe car that is spacious enough for them. Anyone with young kids would know that if you need to put three of
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