Page 3597 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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not have one. What the Greens have done—in concert with the conservation council—is to simply damn the government’s climate change strategy.
We saw Dr Foskey’s stand in her presentation again today. We saw her damn as totally ineffectual the ACT government’s climate change strategy, a climate change strategy which, in a report released two weeks ago, the Planning Institute of Australia detailed as the best climate change strategy of any of the Australian jurisdictions. That was the Planning Institute of Australia.
But as far as the Greens and the conservation council of the ACT are concerned, it is totally and entirely ineffectual. They talk it down to make a shallow political point; they talk down a significant strategy with 43 actions which the government is committed to and in relation to which it has already invested $30 million or thereabouts—sending the message to the people of the ACT that it is not worth reading, that it is not worth engaging with and that it is not worth being part of a partnership to implement. Essentially, they are ridiculing it and rubbishing it.
The contribution of the Greens in relation to a detailed strategy has essentially been to rubbish it. We see it again today—a strategy that is totally and wholly ineffectual. It has been parroted by the conservation council that this is a strategy in relation to climate change that is not even worth engaging with, according to the Greens—
Dr Foskey: Point of order, Mr Speaker: I think it is irrelevant to the debate.
MR STANHOPE: You raised it.
MR SPEAKER: Dr Foskey, in the contribution to the motion I think that you were critical of the government—
MR STANHOPE: You were.
MR SPEAKER: Chief Minister.
MR STANHOPE: Here we have it again. In her presentation, Dr Foskey stands, moralises and calls wholly ineffectual a strategy of which I am enormously proud, the climate change strategy.
Dr Foskey: I did not say that, Jon; I did not say that.
MR STANHOPE: When I respond to that, Dr Foskey jumps in her place and says, “This is outrageous; the government is attacking the Greens.”
Dr Foskey: I did not say that either.
MR STANHOPE: That was the point of your interjection—that this was simply not relevant. It is relevant for the Greens to attack my climate change strategy in an environment where they do not have one. It is relevant, so far as Dr Foskey is concerned, to talk down and rubbish the strategy which the government has presented to the people of the ACT—essentially to seek to render it irrelevant, to encourage
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