Page 3604 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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MR STEFANIAK: And that is not just the usual Labor pipedream either. We embarked on a range of initiatives to ensure that that target was met. Just go back and look at our strategy, Jon. Go on, Jon—you go back and you look at that strategy. You said there was no money. There is just one example. Have a look at the 2000-01 budget as well; you will find a few others.
Mr Stanhope: Read out the rest of the examples—greenhouse gas strategy, $180,000.
MR STEFANIAK: Despite accepting these targets when you came to office, you jettisoned them in 2005 and you said that the $114 million costing over 10 years was too much to pay. Your strategy costs very little less at $100,000, so that is interesting in itself as well—and, unfortunately, your strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions is extraordinarily unambiguous and disappointing. You plan to reduce emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. Well, most of us will be dead by then, so it is probably pretty safe to make claims like that with nothing to back them up. But by 2025 it is envisaged that emissions will be at 2000 levels. They will not be at 1990 levels until 2035. That is fully 17 years or so after what would have happened had you stuck with the previous strategy, which you did stick with for over about 3½ years.
I refer back to the 2004 election when we had an environment policy that had a solid range of initiatives and targets—an initiative, for example, relating to energy consumption was to reduce per capita use of electricity in households by eight per cent by 2007, 15 per cent by 2011 and 25 per cent by 2015, through education, regulation and leadership, and to meet our previously accepted targets to reduce greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2008.
As well as that, I think there was one promise that we had which you did pick up. However, that was a promise for energy efficiency improvements in government housing. You regurgitated our promise, with $20 million instead of $30 million. So again that is somewhat light on. What you actually produced was really quite uninspiring and we will certainly be launching a policy that is far better than that. I hark back again to the fact that you basically just got it wrong in terms of what was a groundbreaking strategy back in 2000 when it was introduced. You kept it for a while and then ditched it and came up with something that certainly does not really hit the bill and that does take many, many years to achieve targets that could have been achievable a lot quicker, had you kept the original strategy.
Mr Gentleman: I would just like to ask Mr Stefaniak to table that Liberals’ greenhouse strategy paper that he was reading from there.
Opposition members: It’s on the web.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: On a technical point, Mr Gentleman: are you seeking to move a motion that Mr Stefaniak table those documents under standing order 203? Is that what you are seeking to do, or was that just a passing comment?
Mr Gentleman: I was just calling on Mr Stefaniak to do this.
Mr Stanhope: It was an invitation.
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