Page 129 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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opportunity to develop a solar industry. These are the industries we should be pursuing.
It is unlikely any time in our lifetime that the ACT will become a hub for large-scale manufacturing, for low-skilled manufacturing, but we can become a hub for high-skilled industries, for technology, and that very much includes sustainable industries. The Liberal Party, when last in office, pushed these issues and demonstrated leadership, I think, on environmental issues.
Mr Smyth has spoken about no waste by 2010, which was a fantastic initiative but which I think has been downgraded by the Labor Party to not much waste by 2010—a little bit less waste than we would have hoped. No waste was a noble goal and it has stalled in the last few years. We took forward policy to the last election, with green bins which we believe would have helped us take that next step to achieve that no waste target, probably now not by 2010 but certainly some time in the not-too distant future. The green bins policy would have meant much less waste going to landfill and would have also reduced CO2 emissions. Of course we saw the greenhouse strategy which Mr Smyth has also referred to.
But it is worth looking at the alternative. The approach of this government is personified by Mr Hargreaves’s statement when he was responding to Dr Foskey’s motion about establishing the ACT as a centre of sustainable industries and a model for Australia. He said:
However, I do not have the faintest idea what Dr Foskey is talking about when she says that she wants the government “to establish the ACT as a centre of sustainability industries”.
Mr Hargreaves, a member of this cabinet, a member of this government, did not have the faintest idea when it comes to the relevance of sustainable industries. It is quite a concern that we have members of this government who have that approach.
We believe that the ACT is very well placed and should be very well placed but that we also do need to look at where government can leverage and where government can assist. We do not want this to be an idea of simply picking winners; we do not want it to be corporate welfare. Targeted assistance in various ways, if it is thought through, if it is done with a strong business case, should very much be looked at by the ACT government because emerging industries sometimes need that kick-along. In the early days, seed money—whether it is tax concessions, whether it is even assistance with infrastructure, whether it is open-tender processes when we go for things like the solar farm, all of these things—can assist industry to come and settle in Canberra and establish sustainable industries in Canberra.
We also took a policy in relation to solar Canberra. As I have mentioned, the ACT is an excellent location. We wanted to establish a centre for renewable energy excellence instead of simply paying the lip-service that we have heard. A renewable energy park, with a solar plant at its heart, would include research, development, teaching, commercialisation, manufacture, export of renewable technologies. Of course, this would have allowed us to benefit from the world-wide boom in
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